Puckett 1

Katherine Puckett
Julia Intawiwat
University Writing and Inquiry
9 December 2015
Journal 1 Introduction
This will be a journal for my Psych 1104 class, Why People Make poor
Choices. So the first prompt is about the basics and my opinions. I will treat this as
any other journal I write, while keeping it clean. First things first, a choice is deciding
between two or more options. Going further, a decision is a conclusion or
resolution reached after consideration, or a judgement according to dictionary.com.
I believe that people make poor choices for any number of reasons. It could be
damage to the brain wherever choices are made in there. Obviously outside sources
play into it too. I would say peer pressure
is a big one. General intelligence and
maturity have to play into stupid choices
also, I cant seem to make it one day
without seeing some college student
make a head-shaking, face-palming,
choice. For example, my roommate (an
engineer) decided to throw her rotted pumpkin off our balcony. Why? Maintenance
was annoying while fixing her bathroom for free. I know theres other factors but
I cant think of them, plus I think thats the purpose of the course.

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Journal 2 Social Pressures

So I think the best way to evaluate social pressures on our decisions is to talk
to people about how they see the issues. In one interview with Justin, my boyfriend,
he said that the pressure he felt from his teammates throughout the years was
among the most intense. When youre on a team you want to feel like part of that
team, so you act a certain way he said when I asked him why he would act
differently with them. My roommate, Ali, mentioned that her team was more of
family, however she felt pressures from other friends and admittedly has pressured
others. I asked her why she would pressure someone else, her response was I
thought I knew what they would enjoy (doing what she enjoyed) and more or less
forced it on them, not really thinking about they wanted.
I researched this more and found a pretty interesting article, How peer
pressure affects you. In the article the author, Radwan Farouk, claims that the main
three ways that peer pressure effects your behavior is that it
creates certain mindsets of If they can do it then I can do it
too, Its difficult for everyone so I am not to blame if a failed,
and lastly Its shameful to make a mistake if others didnt do it. I think I can safely
say that we can all relate to these thoughts pretty dang well.
Ill relate it to college kids choosing to party (too much). The first thought is
that well if they can go out and party and get away with it and drink that much and
still succeed so can I, which leads to the choice to go out and drink a bit too much
maybe. The second thought connects to partying by a bit of a stretch, but if the

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whole party got busted its not my fault because we all let it happen, this makes the
wrong choice easier to justify, therefore easier to make. The final one is one that
really irks me. So by college kid standard its a mistake to not go out and party.
Why? Because everyone else is doing it. I know this isnt phrased the same way but
you get what I mean. I dont go out and party much because I dont have the time. I
think it is worth mentioning though, that peer pressure can be a good thing. You can
influence people in a positive way and I think that version goes unnoticed a lot.
Journal 3 Emotions
Dictionary.com tells me that an emotion is an affective state of
consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as
distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness. I have never
thought of emotions as a form of consciousness. I really like that this state of
consciousness is different than cognitive consciousness. Does this mean that when
we are experiencing emotions that we are less (or not at all) cognitive? I had to look
up the exact definition of cognitive, it definitely controls the judgement and
reasoning part of us.
So purely going off dictionary.com we are not using judgment or reasoning
when we are running with our emotions. Now this sounds about right to me. In our
textbook Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely, states that When he (a college student
Roy) is gripped by passion (aka gets horny), his emotions may blur the boundary
between what is right and what is wrong. When analyzing this he states, Even so,
we all systematically underpredict the degree to which arousal completely negates
our superego, and the way emotions can take control of our behavior. So we know
this happens, and underpredict it! How many times does every single student have

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to hear this lecture? We had to take the fake online
course over summer on it! Now I know hes referring to
more than just that specific example. I know hes
saying that we somehow choose to believe our human
nature is better that we know it is. In terms of my
example of over partying, I know that being drunk around that certain guy may
lead to some iffy choices, but Im good Ill totally be able to handle it. Hes such a
good guy! It wont matter hes black out drunk! Hell make great choices and
respect me.
Journal 4 Mistakes
To quote the lovely Miley Cyrus, Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has
those days. Weve all done it and felt the full force of hindsight bias. Im going to
define this one without dictionary.com. To me, a mistake is a bad decision that for
some reason you couldnt stop because you just didnt know any better. Im sure we
can all think back to freshman year and relate to that. I didnt know that four Jello
shots on an empty stomach could get me THAT drunk, You can overstuff a
washing machine? The door shut and the one that got us all Im sure the Wi-Fi in
my dorm room is good enough, Ill just take the super important online test in my
cozy bed. No worries that Im at least 10 minutes away from a school computer.
Then theres the sad way it relates to my example. There will always be the handful
of freshman girls who get invited to a fraternity party by the cute older frat guy in
her class or that shes sitting next to in Prospector. To her this is a personal
invitation, because until now invites always have been. Then she gets there, all
dolled up just for him, just to realize shes one of 30 other girls; all identical in his

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eyes. Luckily Taylor Ken has a better perspective on this than I do. In his book, The
Irrationality of Human Decision Making, he concludes that people cannot always be
sure of what they are doing, but if we never
made the mistakes we would never grow as
people or a society.
Journal 5 Risk vs Reward
We all know that feeling of risk, and either the good or the bad results that
follow. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it bites ya hard, either way weve all
experienced it. In The Mind within the Brain by David Redish, I learned that risk is
the potential for loss in the face of potential gains. My favorite line in this chapter is
The ability to precommit to one option over another remains one of the most
powerful tools in our decision-making arsenal. He goes on to describe risk and
reward as a form of falling to temptation. He also gives the example of a teenage
boy driving incredibly fast on a back road, and says that the boy is risking his life to
test his boundaries. To me there is little reward in that situation and therefore more
towards the immature/stupid reasoning behind his actions. The way this could relate
to our over partying little freshman would be that they risk a drinking ticket to go
out and party late into the morning, knowing to get back inside to her dorm room,
she will have to pass the terrifying and notoriously strict security guard, Patrice.
Journal 6 Into the Wild
Okay, I hope were in agreement that this kid made a pretty poor decision, if
not multiple. First, Social pressures, this relates to Chris McCandless in the opposite
way that it would most. He let the way other people around him, specifically his

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family, acted bother him so fundamentally that he decided to take extremely drastic
decisions he wasnt quite prepared for. Emotions, I think that emotions had a lot to
do with his choices but again in an odd way. To me it seemed that he kept moving
from place to place (even when he really liked a place) because he wanted to avoid
emotions all together. Therefore letting his aversion to emotion act as emotion itself
and lead to very poor choices he would regret. Now if you cant quite see aversion
to emotion as an emotion (it is a bit of a stretch) then Id say that it was an honest
mistake. He didnt know any better. The few personal relationships he had had were
pretty bad. So he mistakenly thought hed be better off without any. He also grossly
overestimated his abilities which was a blindingly obvious mistake. He took many,
many risks, but to him the reward was more than enough to justify the risks. The
temptation of the freedom and independence was too much for this kid. He wanted
the reward that came with Alaska, ultimate aloneness, and risked his life for it. That
temptation led him to make the terrible decision.

Works Cited
Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.
New York, NY:
HarperCollins, 2008. Print.
Decision Influence Interview by Katherine Puckett. Making Decision 31 Oct. 2015:
n. Print.

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"Decision Making." Interview by Katherine Puckett. Making Decision 31 Oct. 2015: n.
Print.
Feinberg, Mortimer R., and John J. Tarrant. Why Smart People Do Dumb Things. New
York: Simon &
Schuster, 1995. Print
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor, 1997. Print.
Redish, A. David. The Mind within the Brain: How We Make Decisions and How
Those Decisions Go
Wrong. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Taylor, Ken. "The Irrationality of Human Decision Making." Philosophy Talk. N.p., 23
July 2010. Web. 10
Oct. 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philosophytalk.org%2Fcommunity%2Fblog
%2Fken-taylor%2F2015%2F04%2Firrationality-human-decision-making>.