I have interests and passions that I pursue over time. In psychology we did a social influence video analysis where we picked a TV show and analyzed it to see what social influence techniques were included in that show. I found this assignment really interesting because these are things we don’t typically pay attention to in our lives, let alone in TV shows. For mine, I chose groupthink for the show iCarly. In the episode I chose, the main characters chose to go to a trip to Japan to attend an award show. They go on the trip with people who are competing with them in the same category and they end up getting sabotaged by them. As you can see, the entire group made irrational decisions, thinking it would benefit the whole group, they went on this trip and trusted these strangers because they thought it would make for a fun trip, when in actuality it caused them to end up in this really bad situation. I connected this to a similar assignments we did in marketing where we analyzed marketing techniques in commercials. Analyzing media for psychology techniques is really interesting to me, just being able to look at human behavior and attributes that we do not notice on the surface.

My core competency goal for the rest of the year is to be able to understand and share information about a topic that is important to me. Something I really struggle with is being vocal and sharing my opinions with a group. I work well individually but I also recognize that working in a group can cause me to learn new ideas and make a better project as a group. If I’m more assertive and make sure my ideas are heard I think I can be more comfortable working in a group because I know my input will be heard and considered.