True or False: Mia's blog

 Watching The Italian Job and Now You See Me made me think about how entertaining it is to watch people outsmart others, especially when it involves deception or breaking the law. There are so many movies built around this same idea, like Ocean's Eleven and Catch Me If You Can , and I think part of what makes them so entertaining is watching an elaborate plan come together. I love trying to figure out what the characters are doing, watching them execute their plans, and especially getting to the final reveal when everything suddenly makes sense. But it made me wonder why we're so fascinated by this in the first place. What is it about watching someone manipulate a situation or stay several steps ahead of everyone else that makes it so satisfying? I think part of it comes from our natural curiosity and desire to understand how things work. There's a psychological concept called the insight experience , which describes that sudden moment of understanding when seemingly unr...

Our discussion about cults in class made me think about something I've been learning in my psychology classes, which is how certain personality traits can make people more likely to engage in particular behaviors. I'm currently taking a class on attitudes and persuasion, so I started wondering whether certain traits make someone more susceptible to joining a cult. After looking into it, I found that traits like agreeableness, a strong need to belong, and a desire for certainty may make people more vulnerable to manipulation. What I found especially interesting, though, was the idea that almost anyone can become susceptible under the right circumstances, as we talked about it in class. This made me think about something that has fascinated me for a while: how much of who we become is actually within our control? Psychology states that our behaviors, attitudes, and personalities are shaped by a combination of genetics and environmental influences. In a way, these factors create c...

Something that stood out to me during today's class discussion about white slave hysteria and the Mann Act was how easily the idea of protecting someone can become a justification for controlling them. The Mann Act was originally presented as a way to protect women from sexual exploitation and trafficking, which seems like a reasonable goal. However, its broad language also allowed it to be used against consensual relationships, particularly interracial ones. What I found interesting was the contradiction in this. Women were supposedly being protected, yet their freedom to make decisions about their own relationships was being restricted. During class, we connected this hysteria to the Salem witch trials, and I think the similarities go beyond the fear itself. In both cases, society developed a widespread fear around a perceived threat, and that fear helped justify actions that might otherwise have been questioned. This reminded me of something I've learned in psychology about ...

I have realized that a lot of my recent journal entries have involved movies or TV, but I think that is because media has become one of my favorite ways to think about the concepts we discuss in class. I like seeing how human nature gets reflected through entertainment because I think watching people actually experience something can make an idea feel much more real than just discussing it in theory. Recently, because of my roommate, I have been watching Survivor and The Traitors , and our discussion today about self versus others made me realize how much both shows revolve around that exact conflict. Both shows constantly force people to decide who is “us” and who is “them.” People form alliances, decide who they trust, and eventually become convinced that certain people are threats. What is interesting is how quickly those categories can become more important than the actual person. That made me think about the Emily Dickinson poem we read today, especially “Assent, and you are sane...

I watched Primetime (film about early 2000s reality show - To Catch A Predator) recently, and I had so many thoughts after watching, and even more after seeing reviews online. What interested me most was how uncomfortable the movie was willing to let its subject become without necessarily telling me how I was supposed to feel about it. The premise behind To Catch a Predator seems morally straightforward at first. They are "catching" adults who are attempting to meet minors, and I do not really have an ethical problem with exposing that behavior. What became more complicated for me was thinking about the fact that the show was also entertainment. The people producing it were making money because predators existed, and, even more uncomfortably, a more shocking or bizarre predator made for better television. I do not think that automatically makes the show or the people behind it bad. If anything, that is what I liked about the movie. It allowed two things to be true at once. T...

Something I have been thinking about outside of class recently is Dancing with the Stars , which I have been watching a lot recently. Technically, it is a dance competition, but the more I watch it, the more I realize that a huge part of who gets to stay comes down to who people like. That got me thinking about our conversations about con men in movies and how easily our perception of someone can be shaped by the way they are presented to us. What I find especially interesting is that as a viewer, I can start feeling like I actually know these celebrities even though everything I know about them is coming through a TV show. We see their rehearsals, struggles, relationships with their partners, emotional moments, and reactions to criticism. Obviously, those things are real to some extent, but they are also being selected and edited into a story. I might decide that someone is genuine or hardworking based on a few minutes of footage chosen from an entire week. Then, when it comes time to...

I think the werewolf became such a real terror in the sixteenth century because it gave people a way to make sense of something even scarier: the fact that ordinary humans are capable of horrible things. The articles describe people accused of brutal crimes as werewolves, almost as if their actions were too terrible to be human. I think calling someone a beast creates a comfortable separation between “us” and “them.” If they are fundamentally different from us, we do not have to confront the possibility that, under completely different circumstances, any person could become someone they never imagined being. That is why the idea of a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” is so interesting to me. The scariest part is not the wolf itself, but that it looks human and you cannot easily protect yourself from it. I think humans separate themselves from beasts through our sense of higher purpose, which gives us ideas about morality, empathy, and self-control. Yet fear and survival can make those things ...