Week 8: Best presentation

Dear Students,
Choose the best presentation and  justify your choice.

Week 8: Stereotypes about mentally ill people

Once people who were mentally ill or had a mental disorder , were considered to be possessed by demons. For many years these people have been isolated from the rest of society, closed in institutions, where often treatment was far from humane methods. A symbolic crucial point was at 1792, when new hospital right was established " take off chains and release from cages mentally ill and mentally retarded". Philipp Pinel issuing this law started a wave of change in the world.

From this perspective, it would seem that their (mentally ill people) image in the eyes of others and approach towards these people has changed considerably . Still, many things need to change, especially change of beliefs about this social group.


There is a lot of stereotypes and myths about people afflicted with mental:

- Dangerous, unpredictable, aggressive
- Having no contact with reality
- Less intelligent

It's the unknown that causes fear. There is lack of awareness of  what kind of mental illnesses and disorders exist, what are their characteristics, but instead people use the myths . With such a picture of these people, it should not be surprising that society is afraid of  mentally ill/disordered and thus, avoids them.

The impact of loneliness

Consequently, the fear of such persons, may result in their loneliness. It has been shown that loneliness causes a decrease in intellectual performance and a decrease in physical and mental health. By isolating from those people, ignoring them , we can increase their pain and suffering.A major role is played by the media, which spread misconceptions, myths about those people. It may result in social rejection.

Survey – what do you think about mentally ill/disordered people

The survey of 1996 (repeated in 1999, 2005, 2008) conducted on behalf of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, showed that these people are excluded from social roles, such as : doctor, boss, teacher, babysitter etc. Often speaking of the members of this social group people use pejorative terms :crazy , psycho, tip, freak. Some of these terms emphasize the intellectual inferiority: insane, mentally retarded, or refer to the mental state: psychopath. More than 60 % of people use that kind of terms.


Here you can find the results of survey (in polish): 

http://www.bezuprzedzen.org/doc/06Choroby_psychiczne-stereotyp_i_dystans_2000_CBOS.pdf

Interestingly, although there is so much , so misguided misconceptions about these people , the prevalence of diseases and mental disorders is very high - almost ¼ of mankind has ever suffered from mental troubles, or was affected by illness / mental disorder, which could indicate a greater awareness of the people in this area. Unfortunately, it is not.

Questions:

What kind of mental disorders/illness do you know? Do you know the symptoms of them?
What do you think about people suffering from mental disorder/illness? Did you share (or still do) the myths about them, before reading this text (and why)?

Week 8: Danger - violent pornography

One of the current Internet threats is aggressive pornography. Violence in pornography Chris Hedges in Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle says " the violence,cruelty,and degradation of porn are expression of society that has lost the capacity for empathy."

People's expectations of porn have became very high and diversed. I feel confident saying that in the world of an online pornography,a person can get an illusion of satisfying the most eccentric fantasies and needs. In the era where people turn back to each other and terrorism is a treat to every nation; violence in porn industry is a common thing. Both women and men are viewed as objects, not humans or spirits. Alarming is the fact that no one finds it shocking anymore.

Former porn actress Jennie Ketcham blogged for the New York Times earlier this month that being a porn star was traumatic, and she experienced symptoms similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder after leaving the industry. Post-traumatic stress disorder is commonly known mental disturbance experienced by war veterans and people who survived traumatic accidents. Other group that is negatively affected are viewers who often have unrealistic expectations of sex and intimacy. They become frustrated when their fantasies and images they have watched in porn, don't match real life human interactions.

According to studies, watching pornographic, erotic moovies, which include acts of violence, increases the aggressiveness of the recipient. What's more, watching pornography (any kind of pornography, not necessarily aggressive) may also result in treating women and sex like objects (Kirwil, 2011).What is more, sex is a signal that stimulates aggression - activation of sex in the case of men leads to an increase in their aggression, while in the case of women increases the tendency to interpret the behavior of men as aggressive (Wojciszke, 2011).

Pornography affects more lives in negative way than in a positive way. We should keep in mind that as long as there is a need, porn will bring more harm than good.



Questions:

What position would you assume: for or against production of pornography, which includes acts of violence? Or maybe you are not against production, but only against easy access in Internet to such contents? Argue your statement.

Week 8: Body language and micro expression: detecting lies and “reading” people like a book.

The idea of this topic crossed my mind during watching a TV series “Lie to me”. It made me think about the power, which you gain with knowledge (and practice) of body language. Than I thought “Wow, I wish I could read people, just like that”. It could be very useful in everyday life, especially that about 70% of our communication is a non-verbal communication (verbal communication is about 30%). An example? Relationships - women, who unfortunately hope that they don’t have to tell us, what they think and that we can come to that, what they mean (No, we can’t.) I believe that every man, who reads that, would agree with me, that this knowledge connected with skill of good observation could be very useful J



What are body language and micro expression?

Body language is a nonverbal, indirect communication, consisting of informations, which are send by your body. Basicly, whatever you’re doing (or doing nothing) -  your every movement, gesture, glance, or even a twitch of a muscle on your cheek send some information about you, your feelings, desires, fears, etc. Micro expression is a reflection of our emotions on our faces – depending on which emotion we feel at the moment, we activate different facial muscles.

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Detecting lies

Did you know that an average person lies about 3-4 times in 10 minutes of conversation?
Few weeks before, one of the articles was about the polygraph. It can be useful, but, as it was said, it’s not 100% effective. It made me wonder: What about human lie detector? Is it more reliable? Which lie detector is easier to cheat – a machine, or a human being? 

Examples of lying:

- scratching the nose
- muting tone / hand covering mouth  - as if he/she doesn’t want to be heard
- avoiding eye contact / unnaturally prolonged eye contact
- shaking (lifting) arm
- saying “yes”, but nodding “no” / saying “no”, but nodding “yes”
- avoiding admitting to not remembering something, to look more reliable (honest person has no reason to do that )


How to verify the truth: 

Tell your interlocutor to repeat his story, but reversing the order of it (from the end to the beginning). Person, who was telling the truth shouldn’t have any problems with that, but lier will have difficulties with performing the task.


“Lie to me”

The motto of this TV series is “The truth is written all over our faces” – it introduce us to the world of “Lightman group”, whose job it is to find the truth working on other people's orders, including the FBI, the police, or even the president. To achieve the goal, by which I mean getting the truth, they use their knowledge of body language and micro expression. This knowledge allows them not only to “read” the emotions of others, but also makes them human lie detectors.

Here you can watch a trailer of “Lie to me”

Questions:


1. For what would you rather use this knowledge: to detect lies and protect yourself from liers, or maybe - to become a better lier? J

2. Do you see any other ways of using this techniques and knowledge in everyday life (career, business etc.)?

3. Have you ever had a feeling that somebody is lying to you (I’m sure you all had!) ? If yes, try to recall more details of that situation – why do you think this person was lying, did his/her body language told you that (and how)?

4. Ria Torres, one of the TV series characters, has a natural talent for detecting lies. Do you find it as a bless or a curse? Just think about it: Yes, you can get the truth from your boss, if he’s ever going to promote you, or not. Yes, you can use this talent to get rich, for example by playing poker at casinos. BUT: You may also become aware of how often people lie to you, which can be really depressing, considering the fact, that people tell about 3-4 lies in 10 minutes of conversation. 

Week 8: Choosing your own way: Entrepreneurship vs. Employment

“There is only one success- to be able to spend your life in your own way.”  - Christopher Morley

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Week 8: The Power of the Internet

Daily business

    Can you ever imagine everyday life without the internet? "Of course" you say, "I do not need it". You are probably right - suprisingly only 33% of the world population is able to connect to the Web. Furthermore, only twice as many more in the Europe.. keeping in mind that we think we have a spread access all over the countries (free wifi etc.). Let's back to You: daily business may be quite diffucult to handle nowdays, how many of the following (or may be more?) are you doing over the internet?

Shopping

    Are you used to surf over the allegro, ebay, merlin, empik, gumtree or many other among similar websites? Have you ever done any online shopping? This is still not commong in our country but more and more people start using it - beyond electronics, food and clothes - we willingly try to economize our time and buy presents and essentials this way in order to avoid queues, traffic jams or simply to have more time to our neighbors.

PlayStation4 DE Release in MediaMarkt

Banking

    Problably you are young generation - much more of them use online banking. If you have tried it, it will be hard to stop (like candies or chocolate). Personally, once a month I have to go to the bank and take my money by cash - and I really hate standing in the queue which usually takes me additional hour (together with route). I hope most of you already save your own time by paying bills online as a much faster and comfortable solution. Not so long ago it still was something fresh for polish guys and often, wrongly, assumed as not safe.

What is your opinion? Which way do you prefer?

http://www.microfinancecongress.com

New & information

    Have you ever felt that today's media are providing us a bewildering amount of information? A lot of portals, subscriptions, RSS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS), videos and much more? Have you ever compared similar topics on different pages (onet.pl, wp.pl, gazeta.pl and more) ? I did couple of times and I was not astonished to learn it proved that, depending on the political connections/beliefs, they present topic from quite different point of view.

Keeping that in mind, together with the whole well-known latest noise with ACTA and Mr. Snowden - do you feel you are well informed and the new delivered to you are the true? What about TV?

http://www.asca.cc/

Knowledge

    How would our world look like without searching for knowledge over the internet? Thousands of students failing to pass exams, chaos within using public transport, missinformation related to different points of views (have you ever experienced differences in, for example, handbook of history?) and a lot of unresolved quarrels about dates, names and so on... can you imagine how hard it was to aquire some information via standard way? I strongly believe that throng of information slowly leads us to devaluation (of the) information? As it is no longer hardly possible to get any data we want to know, we do not appreciate the value of knowledge itself.

What are you feelings about that? Have you thought how often you use the Internet to search for something?

www.wikipedia.org

http://academic.research.microsoft.com

Monitoring

    Quite a short topic, the benefits of online monitoring are often compared to threats (when goverment or institution watches over us). I have seen that very nice feature is being started to be used within polish kindergartens. A colleague from my work uses 'monitoring' to watch if everything is fine with his child during his absence.

Social

    Okay, I am very familiar with most of the possible opinions right there. I do not want to start a 'flame war' if the internet is necessary to stay in touch. Just keep it simple - Internet has an important role in keeping our social stuff on the top, especially young people - it looks like it is very natural for them, let me use the very true and sad comic there:

http://thedoghousediaries.com/

Okay, a lot of advantages of using the Internet in common life... or at least to get used to it as it seems that sooner than later even our fridge will be talking (oops, it is already!).  I know there is much more benefits to our every day life but I suppose I won't live enough to write all of them down.

Real Threat

For sure there should be a space for topic connected not only with banking (but mostly) - thievery!

http://forum.telus.com

I am almost sure that most of us are familiar with words "token", "SSL" (lock next to the web address glowing with green color), "phishing" et cetera. Enough to say is that we have to be very careful when doing something online and listen to bank advices - always check if the mail is from the known source, if the page address is legit, do not click before looking at and never giving password/pins anywhere. It is only a tip of the iceberg.

Reverse monitoring?

    All of us know that we are being watched. Monitoring - it's fine, but it can works both sides, like stealing your cam view - seeing where you are and what you are doing.

Sometimes storing the information what you are searching for over the web is ok, like Google helps finding what you really need (i.e. is storing personal information and preferences about you) but is it okay so that a company sometimes know more about you that youself?

Helping

    We often search for help - we should use with caution! Unexperienced people search health advices - which often can be a disaster thanks to malignant users which will tell you for sure that your symptomps can be easliy connected with cancer! but do not be so sceptic - I remember a story when guy described his problems and story of the treatment and all opinions of doctors - nobody could help him. Finally, online forum helped him with correctly finding out the real disease - another guy has very similar situation.

It is well-known fact that infamous website, 4char, helped finding person much more better than police many times.

Okay, there are much more topic to talko about which are the part of the Internet, couple of them:

• online trips

• planning journey

• finding people with interest like you have

• funny fact - daily news, internet memes

• global actions, like ACTA

• is it useful when 'like' = 'food'?

At least - what are you unusual ways of using the Internet? 

Have you ever did thank 'Internet' for something (finding your love, favourite cooking recipe, buying some old and rare stuff online...) ?

What do you think it could happen to the world when all of the web is gone in a blink of an eye?