Archive for April, 2009

A Research on Positive Psychology

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Positive psychology is defined as the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups and institution. Positive Psychology, therefore simply focus on the wellbeing of humans or the wholesomeness of the personality in contrast to the trouble ones. Prior to the establishment of Positive Psychology, Most psychologists focus entirely on the negative aspect of human emotions and personality. This kind of study dated back as early as the 2nd half of the 20th century. The center of study then was negative human emotions such as depression, anxiety, stress and personality disorders. Experts and professionals in the psychology discipline earn their living by convincing and making troubled people wholesome and normal like everybody else. Hence, many individuals were reluctant to seek the help of psychologists because they were afraid of being labeled as emotionally sick. This is so because psychology has much less to say about character strength, virtues, and the conditions that lead to high levels of happiness or civic engagement. Psychology attempts to improve the lives of the disturbed but focus less on how to improve the lives of average individuals. This conception is likened into a scale, where one tries to make a negative eight into a zero and does not attempt to make a zero into a positive eight. Thus, in layman’s point of view psychology is all about undesirable human emotions and all that come closer to it. However the emergence of Positive Psychology does not necessarily mean that the other forms of psychology are negative. In fact, the ideas embedded in Positive Psychology actually dated back from the time of William James writings when he invented the term healthy mindedness in 1902. Allport had also tackled positive human characteristics in 1958 and a decade later, Maslow advocated for the study of healthy people in lieu of risk people. Finally,Cowan’s research on resilience in children and adolescents was also an example of positive psychology (Cowan 2000).With these facts, one can conclude that positive psychology has indeed undergone a long process of development.

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An Essay on Diversity

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Diversity and demographic characteristics often create differences that result to conflicts. In schools, workplaces or even typical milieus, people can’t help but form their own groups or affiliations which can affect or contradict others. Indeed, diversity inevitably creates frictions and misunderstanding.Diversity can be seen on different aspects such as ethnicity, gender, age, socio-economic status, skills and abilities, religions, etc. First, ethnicity has been a basis for accepting or rejecting other people. Diversity causes people to manifest or imply discrimination and prejudice. The skin tone, language, beliefs and culture served as bases whether a certain ethnicity has to be embraced or not. Truly, the people who were turned down felt alienated and often regret for being different.Another diverse thing is gender or sexuality. Most people judge or weight the capability of a person through his/her gender. Indeed, even the work loads, amount of trust, treatment and wages differ because of diversity on gender. Such made specific gender an underdog or second sex, depending on the extent of judgment and discrimination.Age is also another demographic characteristic which sometimes causes conflicts. Different ages provide different levels of thinking, behavior and understanding. We cannot expect a college student to think the same way that professional do, or vice versa. This difference often opens a room for misinterpretation, gaps and “lapse in communication”. Even differences in skills and abilities become a reason for misunderstanding. Icek A. Ajzen (1988) conveys that most psychological surveys show a close relationship between an individual’s level of skills and abilities in a particular occupation. Ajzen elaborates that a person is likely to commit errors if his/her abilities fall below a means for a particular occupation. On the other hand, if a person has too much skills and abilities higher than what the job requires, he/she may soon becomes bored since the job will not offer any challenge. Much more, successful people also prove that diversity enriches the educational experiences of students and promotes personal growth and healthy society. It also strengthens communities and workplaces and even enhances the economic competitiveness of a certain country.

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A Research on Fast Food Restaurants

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Fast food restaurants are very much prevalent in today’s society. So intense are their impact that more and more businesses have ventured into this kind of industry. Everywhere in the world, busy streets are lined up with various fast food restaurants that never fail to attract busy customers in coming for more. Aside from their immense popularity, they are time-efficient as fast food chains regard time as of the essence. They are also affordable, most especially to hungry students and tight-budgeted professionals. And more importantly, these business establishments are appealing to the young and the young-at-heart. In the international forefront, the leading fast food chains include McDonalds, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), and Burger King to name a few – all of which cater to more or less the same quality of services. Because of the wide number of fast food chains, as well as the array of customers, various types of fast food restaurants have been coming out one after the other to effectively cater to various demands of society.

Basically, there are two types of fast food restaurants: self-service restaurants and service restaurants. Self-service restaurants are simply defined as food establishments that allow customers to personally collect and pay the food at the counter prior to eating. Because of immense competition, numerous sub-varieties have been designed and developed to suit the needs of the customers and the establishment. The most common sub-variety is the collection of ready portions from the counter, commonly found in fast food chains such as Wendy’s, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), among others. In the case of McDonalds, customers are served with pre-measured meals. Burgers are all equally proportioned, with the burger patties being weighed before being fried. Tomatoes, lettuce, and other vegetable fillings are also equally weighed prior to inclusion in the burger bread. On the other hand, the French fries are weighed or measured after being fried and before being served to the customer. The same procedure goes the soda drinks or beverages (except for Burger King where they serve bottomless drinks), hotdogs, spaghetti, and the like. Another sub-variety is that the customers serve themselves from containers. Wendy’s also uses this serving method in their salad bar, where customers are allowed to serve themselves from containers containing different salad toppings. The other type of fast food restaurant involves those chains who allow customers to order at the counter but food is served and brought to the customer’s table. In this aspect, payment may be done upon or after eating the ordered food.

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Essay: Marriage

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Marriage is a legally recognized relationship which is established through a religious or civil ceremony between two individuals with the intention of living together as domestic or sexual partners. Nearly every society, marriage exists. There are countless reasons why do people enter into this serious relationship, exchanging vows of living together until the end of time. But among of which, it is founded by love. But the truthfulness of this promises echoes to non-adherence of either one or both of the parties. In the story of “Vows”, we will identify whether the two couples, Adam and Jan, will happily live ever after amidst the personal circumstances coming their ways.

Adam and Jan will have a successful relationship because they need each other. Both the two couples came from a divorce, leaving Jan one daughter named Rebecca. Although divorce is a painful way or escape from getting out in a relationship, it may be considered as a relief when you had suffering from a more serious grief and there is no way out but to lead separate ways. Sometimes, loving in second time around or more brings you the love and the happiness you ever wished and dreamt of. After all, what we want is to have a partner in life whom we can talk with until our golden age. This is exactly what is happening to Adam and Jan. Both knew from the start that they have many personal differences and the fact that they both came from unsuccessful marriage is not valid enough not to accept each others shortcomings and impairments. The following reasons support the statement that they will have a successful relationship. Communication is a vital factor to have a successful relationship. It burns bridges of gap and it will lead to understanding of ones feeling and situation.

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An Essay on Terrorism

Friday, April 17th, 2009

The common ideas among legal or federal definitions of terrorism offer an up-and-coming compromise with regard to the description or characterization of such act and collaboration of the law enforcement personalities among the many countries around the world. Included in this group of varying definitions are those which do not identify the likelihood of legal utilization of aggression or force by the members of one’s society in defense and protection from intruders of a dominated nation and will, in effect, put a label on all opposing organizations or interest groups as terrorists or terrorist groups. Some would differentiate a lawful and an unlawful use of violence. In due course, the distinction will be based on a politically considered opinion. Years after the terrorist attack that happened in New York City, the global convergence controversy on large-scale worldwide terrorists goes on. The government and its associates should collaborate with agencies which operate closer to places of high risk threats in order to increase and develop more effective and durable terrorist counter measures. The international collaborative endeavors have evidenced indisputable developments on safety measures for the most part in providing dependable protection amongst boundaries and transportation, augmenting document protection, unsettling financial sources of terrorist groups, and limiting their interchange. There is also an achievement of success for the global community in disbanding associations and distracting their leadership system. These had been huge factors in lessening their functioning capacity and had also led to incarceration or demise of a number of significant terrorist leaders.

The opportunities to operate with cohorts and associates across the globe by synchronized management and exchange of disseminated data from reliable sources, a reduced tolerance and forbearance operating atmosphere for terrorists have been created. This had kept the heads of the organizations in hiding and in constant relocation that affected operations and had disintegrated their capacity to do extensive planning and escalating attacks. The evidence that a huge sum of large countries and many other associates had participated significant parts in this victory is recognizing that global terrorism is a menace to the entire world community.

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Thursday, April 16th, 2009

There was a time when police officers were viewed as guys who were very gentle and friendly that they would stop while on their patrols and give lectures to a minor who returns home late or would stop to help a child tie his shoelaces or would mingle with the members of the community he is assigned. Several decades after, the characteristics usually associated with police officers have completely changed. They are stereotyped now as those who exhibit the following characteristics: machismo, bravery, cynicism, aggression, authoritarianism, suspicious, solidaristic, conservative, alienated and thoroughly bigoted. Some say that police personalities are a product of their individual characteristics which are innate and unique to them. However, because of the emotional demands of the job, the psychological testing shifted from intellectual maturity to emotional stability. The shift in focus was the realization that the nature of police work itself is extremely stressful and places tremendous emotional strain among police officers. The point is that every police officer must possess certain personality before they are hired and accepted in the police force.

On the other hand, there are who that say that police personality is a product of their shared experiences and socialization activities that they create in order to adapt to their stressful and dangerous environment. This emphasizes that the common traits associated with police officers such as machismo, bravery, cynicism, aggression and authoritarianism are not innate individual characteristics of police men are but are traits they learned from associating with their fellow police officers. They say that police officers create their own culture to deal with the recurring anxiety and stress that is endemic to policing. This culture was developed by policemen as a mechanism to protect themselves from their working environment which is described as harsh, uncertain and dangerous.

Like every other social being, police personality is a mixture of different factors. It bears stressing that before an applicant for police officer is accepted, it is necessary that he must possess a certain level of intellectual and emotional maturity to be accepted. He must undergo a battery of psychological screenings and exam to determine his fitness for the profession. The theory here is that there are basic personalities which every police officer must have.

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Music and Autism Essay

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Music is a good “channel of communication” for autistic individuals because of they exhibit an affinity to it, and they tend to be better in music than in normally developing children: they usually exhibit skills in recognizing and performing music. Some display superior long-term memory for musical material, and have excellent pitch-processing abilities, so that they can outperform even trained musicians. Autistic children have been observed to be more accurate than normally-developing children in associating tones with pictures. A study involved 13 autistic children with high functioning autism, and these children were compared with 13 typically developing ones, matched in terms of age, non-verbal IQ, and laterality. They were asked to listen to pairs of melodies, and were asked to judge whether the pair contain the same or different melodies. The group of autistic children performed better than those of normal intelligence. This may be due to their enhanced processing of auditory properties of incoming stimuli (Mottron, Peretz, and Ménard). Thus, since they are attuned to music, it provides an avenue through which one can communicate with them, especially since other usual channels of communication found in normal individuals are deficient or lacking altogether.

Music, with its structural regularity, appeals to this sense of repetitiveness found in autistic children. The melody and rhythm in music, which exhibits patterns of regularity, provides a point of contact with autistic individuals. Since there is difficulty in establishing communication with them, finding any avenue by which to reach out to them is valuable. Music is one; most respond favorably to music, and others may be unaware of the extent of an autistic child’s interaction with music. Take the example of an autistic child, who although had no functional communication, apparently had holiday and children’s songs stored in her memory. When the last note of a song was not played, she not only said the correct word, but also sang it at the correct pitch. From this example, we can see that music can be used to improve autistic children’s verbal abilities. By stopping a familiar song and its accompaniment, especially at points of maximal tension, one can coax them into supplying the missing words. In cases involving children on the severe end of the autistic spectrum, music is often the means of communication. Even while exhibiting extreme isolation and retreat into their own world, the beginning of a music session elicits excitement, with them visibly indicating pleasure derived from the music (Shore).

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An Essay on Euthanasia

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Euthanasia is one of the most morally controversial issues of our time. In this regard, the issue may dwell on the morality attributed to the act of killing or the act of allowing someone to die. Two of the most highly regarded articles on this matter are “Active and Passive Euthanasia” (Rachels 78-80) and “Killing and Letting Die” (Foot 177-185). This paper discusses the moral issue involved in “passive” and “active” killing with reference to Rachels’ and Foot’s articles. It is posited that Rachels’ argument cannot be considered valid, and that Foot’s argument may well be the most appropriate to the moral dilemma surrounding euthanasia.Euthanasia is generally encountered in the medical profession, wherein practitioners, along with a number of key people, would need to make decisions regarding the life/death situation of patients with special cases. For instance, in cases wherein a patient is undergoing severe pain and suffering from a crippling disease, the problem now dwells on whether or not to continue having the patient in such a condition. One perspective may be that the patient suffers continually being in such a state, and therefore would be better dead as soon as possible. Another perspective, however, would be that the patient is still alive and thus maintains his right to life.

In such cases, the moral issue is not only on the rightness or wrongness of deciding whether or not the patient should be killed or allowed to die. The issue is also on which decision is significantly more morally favorable. Doctors and family of the patient would have to consider the situation in terms of moral relevance and act upon whichever is more morally sound. Doctors and family of the patient in the case given above could all decide that it is more morally sound to actively kill the patient. In other words, they may all decide that the removal of life-supporting equipment and/or the administration of drugs to induce death are acceptable on moral grounds. However, the situation may also be viewed in such a way that the administration of drugs to the patient is morally unsound because of the “active” nature of the act.

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A Research Paper on Tinker Doctrine

Monday, April 13th, 2009

One of the most well known land mark cases that involve students’ rights is the Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District case. It is said to be the case where most laws and policies concerning students and administrators were founded.The root cause of the case had transpired in December 1965 when John Tinker, 15 years old, and Mary Beth Tinker, 13 years old, together with their friend, Christopher Eckhardt also 15 years old, decided to wear black armbands to their schools as a sign of protest against the Vietnam War. Apparently, school administrators heard of this and implemented a policy that banned the wearing of armbands in the school. In such policy, violating students would be subject for suspension and would be allowed to return to school if they agree to abide by the policy. Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt have both chosen to violate the policy. The next day, John Tinker had also followed them. The three were suspended from school until after New Year’s Day of 1966 as their protest had been scheduled to end.

In disgust about the school’s decision, the parents of the three suspended children filed suit in the U.S. District Court, upholding the decision of the Des Moines school administrators. There was a tie vote in the U.S. Court of Appeals, which meant that the decision of the school administrators was allowed to withstand the complaints. This had forced the Tinkers and Eckhardts to appeal the case directly to the Supreme Court. On November 12, 1968, the case was argued before the court. On February 24, 1969, the 7 to 2 decision of the court was handed down. The decision maintained that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that the school administrators have to establish constitutionally well founded reasons for any particular regulation of speech in the classroom.

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Creation Myths Essay

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Greeks, Christians, Egyptians, etc. had different beliefs on how the world started. There are also some similarities in these different creation myths even though it has different stories. If we will notice the Greeks, Egyptians and Babylonians had many gods, Christians also have a god but Christians praise only one God and that is the Creator of all things. In Greek, the story of their creation all started from chaos, their universe is surrounded by water– Oceanus is the god of water. Eurynome is the God of all things in Greek myth, she divided the sky and the sea by dancing on the waves of Oceanus. In contrast to the Egyptian myth creation, the god of Sun known as Ra created the Khepri which was known as the great creation of the universe. At first there was only water, Ra the god of sun came out of an egg that appeared as the water’s surface. Ra had four children, Shu and Geb became the earth and Nut became the sky. On the other hand, Christians had a different version of creation. The creation all began when God created the heaven and earth. The earth was empty and dark, and then God separated the light from darkness, He called the light day and dark as night. God divided the water, God made the expanse, and the expanse was called sky. God created a dry land called Earth and the waters that were gathered together were called Seas. The Chinese creation myth was different, in the beginning heaven and earth were together, the universe was described to be a big black egg where Pan Gu was sleeping inside. Pan Gu woke up after 18 thousand years. The egg cracked when he took a deep breath because he felt suffocated. The clear part floated and became the sky while the muddy part stayed on earth. Pan Gu stood in the middle to separate the sky and the earth.

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