Transcript Intro to Psych

The Story of Psyche
• “Greek goddess of the Soul”
• Began as mortal – in love with the god, Eros
• Required to complete 4 tasks
– Sort grains
– Retrieve the Golden Fleece
– Fill a bucket of water from the River Styx
– Retrieve a sleeping potion from Persephone
So what IS psychology?
The discipline concerned with
behavior and mental processes
and how they are affected by an
organism’s physical state,
mental state, and external
environment.
Psychology is a lot like…
What psychology is NOT!
1) _______________
example: playing Mozart makes babies
smarter
2) ________________
3) ________________
Above All…
Psychology is an
EMPIRICAL science!
What does that mean?
How does psychology
affect our World?
Student Becomes Youngest
American Rhodes Scholar
Coral Gables, FL, December 11, 2003. Devi
Sridhar, 18, has become the youngest U.S.
Rhodes scholar in the organization’s 100year history. The University of Miami student
was named one of 32 Americans to receive
the prestigious scholarship to Oxford
University. Sridhar, the daughter of two
doctors, speaks five languages and is
coauthor, with her siblings, of a book on
Indian mythology. She joins a group of
select Americans who have been Rhodes
scholars, including former President Bill
Clinton and Supreme Court Justice David
Souter.
Teens Arrested in Hate Crime
Yorba Linda, CA, March 4, 2003. Two
teenagers have been charged in the
vicious beating of an 18-year-old ArabAmerican man. The victim, Rashid Alam,
was left with a broken jaw and shattered
bones in his face. Alam’s friends say he
was attacked by a mob of up to 20 people
yelling white-supremacist slogans, and
that some of the assailants were armed
with bats, a golf club, and beer bottles.
There are conflicting accounts, however,
about who brought the weapons and
whether why were used. Police contend
that the fight was an arranged showdown
between rival groups, but Alam’s
supporters say the attack was
unprovoked and was motivated by antiArab feeling.
Zaniness on Parade in Pasadena
The 27th annual Doo Dah
Parade, a joyful celebration of wacky weirdness, will
take place tomorrow in Pasadena. Known as “the other
parade” (the more famous one being Pasadena’s Rose
Parade), the event has entertained thousands of
spectators over the years. Participants get to shed their
inhibitions and dress as outrageously as they can. A
Doo Dah Queen is chosen in public tryouts, which are
open to “all women and men of
any age, color, shape, and mental
state,” and is presented with a
crown of foam Cheetos and a
bouquet of fake flowers.
Pasadena, CA, November 22, 2003.
McDonald’s Sued for
Causing Obesity
New York, NY, November 22, 2002.
A lawsuit filed today on behalf of several overweight
teenagers charges McDonald’s, the fast-food
company, with contributing to the young people’s
obesity and health problems. The suit, one of
several, brought recently against fast-food chains,
alleges that McDonald’s deliberately misled
consumers into thinking their hamburgers and french
fries were nutritious. The mother of one plaintiff, a
15-year-old who weighs more than 400 pounds, wrote
in papers filed with the courts, “I [had] always
believed McDonald’s was healthy for my son.
Geographic
Breakdown
of the
obesity
epidemic
in America
Bottomless Soup Bowl Experiment