Personal Development Aligned to the Course -
In Comparing and Contrasting the
Personal Development Aligned to the Course -
In Comparing and Contrasting the
Introduction
The personal development gained from this course connects to my new tolerance of other peoples' unacceptable behavior, of forces creating limitations on my self-esteem, new insights to my understanding of my own and others' behavior, my new ability to view unwarranted claims expressed in the media or credentialed authorities, and finally, summarizing new awareness of psychology applied to everyday life. This understanding I continue assessing about behavioral psychology as the driving guide leading my effort in my personal development includes theories relating human behavior connected to social learning theory, personal meaning, experiences, and language, and finally the effect of self-perception influencing my and others' belief systems. The following academic investigation of behavior of self and others connects to what I understand from the knowledge gained about these topics and addressing the five specific areas presented in my thesis statement.
New Tolerance about Deviant or
Unacceptable Behavior
A major result of the influence of learning from this course directly connects to changing some preconceived ideas I maintained about how peoples' low self-esteem and inferiority complexes frame deviant or unacceptable social behavior. This new understanding provides me a kind of empowerment about having some kind of educated control about my attitudes toward peoples' behavior I lacked before learning about the reasons contributing to such a condition. People experiencing maladaptive development of his/her personality leads to feeling disconnected with society in a fulfilling and contributing manner for the welfare of others and engenders healthy feelings about self as an equal with people. I gained a broader tolerance from understanding this and now realize undeveloped healthy qualities derived from the social environment lead to low self-esteem and inferiority complex affecting emotions and behavior or conversely become overcompensating exhibit of superiority and self-centeredness and remain characteristics of maladaptive personalities in people (Prus & Grills, 2003).
Peoples' fears and anxieties create behavior often associated with deviant and even repulsive actions. Now instead of turning away in ignorant disgust, this course enlightens my understanding that such behavior comes from maladaptive personalities caused by any number of circumstances including biological, mental, emotional, and intellectual issues. Part of the understanding I now have about this human behavior phenomenon connects to community as much as a person's views about this behavior. Ignorance underpins so much of society's uneducated views about other peoples' behaviors and the way society too often reacts in negative and prejudicial manner and particularly as I view myself in the greater community about this topic (Prus & Grills, 2003).Applying my understanding of social cognitive theory explains how personality of people in three different areas. While an adaptive personality makes peoples' behavior often spurred by goals to gain desired outcomes, the maladaptive personality lacks cognitive understanding how his/her behavior often does the opposite (Bandura, 2001).
The understanding gained from theorists such as Bandura’s on psychology and the study of human provides a straightforward style for gaining the knowledge I now possess about human personality types exhibiting deviant or maladaptive behavior and its connection to genetics and/or environment (Boeree, 2006). This understanding about the biological markers that affect cognitive processes existing through neural brain activity provides a much-desired contribution to my understanding and tolerance because of this acquired knowledge I have about the physiological structure to the psychological and emotional development characteristics of humans' actions. I also understand how this process derives from a conscious process of brain activity that exerts influence on decision-making, and reflects human behavior in the process (Bandura, 2001, 1).
Limitations on My Self-Esteem and
Understanding My Own and Others' Behavior
Taking the academic lead investigating and identifying any limitations affecting my self-esteem has completely opened an entire world of perception allowing me new tools for learning about me and how I can change my view of myself connected to my behavior. At the same time, because this class opened this new insight I find this newfound grasp of theories of psychology aligned to self-esteem, what limitations I may face affecting this aspect of myself are at the same time, attributable to understanding other peoples' behaviors.
The Construct Theory introduced by Kelly (1955) looks at the only way I or anyone else comes to understanding self, aligns directly to examining my reasons for why I behave the way I do and in turn, this leads to questioning the reasons for others' behavior. The idea Kelly's theory offers connects to discarding standard complexes of behavior. My behavior directly links to my experiences and what feelings I experience (d) connected to the actions going on at the time. In this respect, this challenges that I put myself in the other person's way of looking at the world when attempting understanding why he or she acts the way do in particular situations as an example (Veludo-de-Oliveira, Ikeda, & Campomar, 2006).
Kelly believed in the power of me or any other person having the means as a scientist for making meaning of my behavior by constructing or organizing my experiences from a cognitive approach about what these experiences mean intellectually and emotionally. Using this understanding about self, then provides the means for recognizing personal systems I construct directly influencing the way I behave even to the point I can predict how I behave in particular situations. In doing so, I am the master of my ship. Understanding this about myself then used in understanding other people helps me to achieve something extremely important – not to judge myself and in turn, I will not judge others' behaviors (Veludo-de-Oliveira, Ikeda, & Campomar, 2006).
In this understanding emerges the universality behavior exhibited by most human beings including myself depending on the situation. Included in my understanding of this particular concept connects uniqueness versus universality as this aligns to morals and values as a universality type of human behavior. When I exhibit, behavior linked to who I am individually this comes from the way I view the entire picture of the situation based on biological, mental, emotional, and my own spirituality. This is the outcome of constructing dichotomy corollaries attributed to the combinations of these characteristics applied and how I behave towards unexpected situations in life. As already explained, I realize understanding Kelly's Construct Theory opens better understanding of other personality development theories, the logic of this applying to our my self-perception connects with my belief systems about the world and my reactions underpinned by this personality characteristic. In turn, the same applies to observing, reacting to, and having a better understanding of others since taking this higher education course.
Having an academic understanding of social learning, modeling, and this influence on peoples' behavior including my own, opens a new appreciation of how I developed socially. In turn, that understanding gives a perspective on the same about all ages of human development. I can now understand that some of the behavior issues among people – children, adolescents ranging from 11 years to young adults at 17 to early 20s (this includes me) have causal attributions to undesirable social modeling by adults underpinning some of the undesirable behavior issues he/she/me have to work through in becoming the person I (he/she) wants. This new insight links with Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory (1973).
I have also come to understand how social cognition results in some kinds of prejudiced attitudes among people toward others. This is about processing preconceived perceptions of the differences between people through social contact creating interactions with others with the predisposition for categorizing different groups they deem inferior by gender, race, class distinctions, socio-economic status, even about what street a person lives. Social cognition in terms of prejudicial attitudes such as racism derives from how the individual processes social information (Reid & Foels, 2010).
With the direction of this course, I clearly have a new insight about how group categorizing of people linked to racism leading to discrimination directly attributed to aspects of human behavior, and I and other people perceive this behavior. One example I can understand about this is how behavior towards others includes exclusion. Intergroup relations and its influence on prejudicial attitudes is a result of the differences existing between individual personalities. This is in comparison to issues arising from situations influencing categorizing self and I realize may put limitations on my self-esteem if applied negatively (Perry & Sibley, 2011),
Unwarranted Claims Expressed In the Media or Credentialed Authorities
Today, another influence on person's beliefs including my own, rely on what the media including views of credentialed authorities broadcast to the masses. My new appreciation of the 21st century as the age of technology lends to my understanding how the media more than ever influences so many people with unwarranted claims about human behavior on news shows, talk shows, and even specific specials about these types of topics. What I now do if I hear a report about human behavior connected to scientific studies, if it is something that interests me I am more likely to do more investigation on these subjects myself. The idea of taking responsibility for what is true and what are assumptions take on a personal focus I did not have prior to taking this class.
Summarizing New Awareness of Psychology Applied to Everyday Life
In summarizing this new awareness of psychology applied to everyday life it is at this point I want to discuss anger and how it affects most people including myself. Since understanding cognitive behavior and cognitive modification of undesired behavior, I look at the past and my reaction in misappraisals of people and life situations resulting in feelings of anger I did not want. Sometimes, my anger arose because of my harsh evaluations of others, and about anger toward anything in my daily life causing fits of frustration and unfortunately, sometimes, the causal aspects of situations led to anger where I felt the need for retribution or justice (Kassinove & Trafate, 2006).
` One of the most important things from my new insights derived from this course is my ability for changing unwanted behavior I find myself involved in daily life. Cognitive modification of my unwanted behavior connects to Kelly's theory and provides a pragmatic and proactive means for empowering me with options about how I act. As this academic discourse intended, I have brought forth the gamut specific insights this course provided in options about how I can change my perception of things and work toward feeling better about myself as part of a healthy lifestyle.
Conclusion
As I explained in the introduction describing my personal development, and that I continue assessing the process resulting from the knowledge gained from this course connected with insights about my own behavior now and my perception before this class seems like a beginning rather than the end. Metaphorically, a realization I now experience, what appears as a familiar door closing on a formerly safe place where I could go and find comfort with myself. I now realize this place remains forever locked and I find myself going down a long hallway toward new truths about life yet, I wonder where I fit in and what that means about beliefs I hold have a purpose or place. This new understanding about social learning, about constructing understanding from my own experiences, and self-perception influencing beliefs about the world connected with my own personal development as well as applying this to understanding to other peoples' behavior certainly challenges me. It is of course, a direct result from the new ideas learned in this course about the varieties of theories applied to different influences on human behavior.
References
Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, A. (2001). Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. Annual Review of Psychology. COPYRIGHT 2001 Annual Reviews, Inc
Boeree, G. (2006). Albert Bandura. Retrieved from
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html
Kassinove, H., & Trafate, R. C. (2006). Anger Related Disorders: A Practitioner’s Guide to Comparative Treatments. Fender, E. (Editor) Springer Publishing Company New York
Kelly, G. (1955). Personal Construct Theory. Retrieved from
http://www.pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/pc-theory.html
Perry, R., & Sibley, S.G. (2011). Social dominance orientation: Mapping a baseline individual difference component across self-categorization. Journal of Individual Differences. 33(2).
Prus, R., & Grills, S. (2003). The Deviant Mystique: Involvements, Realities, and Regulation. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Reid, L. D., & Foels, R. (2010). Cognitive Complexity and the Perception of Subtle Racism Basic And Applied Social Psychology, 32:291–301, 2010
Veludo-de-Oliveira, T. M., Ikeda, A. A., & Campomar, M. C. (2006). Discussing Laddering Application by the Means-End Chain Theory. The Qualitative Report, 11(4), 626+
Warren, B. (1998). Philosophical Dimensions of Personal Construct Psychology. London: Routledge.
