1. Choose ONE question to respond to. Also, don’t forget to reply to another student.
— What do you think is your most important sense? Explain your choice.
— If you could get rid of your ability to feel pain, would you? Why or why not?
2. Choose ONE question to respond to. Also, don’t forget to reply to another student.
— Are you a lark or an owl? Humans are generally diurnal, meaning they are typically more active during the day than the night. However, individual differences exist among chronotypes, which refer to the time of day that people prefer to be active. As explained in the text, “lark” chronotypes tend to be most alert during the morning, whereas “owl” chronotypes prefer to be most active in the evening. Horne and Ostberg developed the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) to evaluate an individual’s chronotype. Take a short, online version of the MEQ provided by the Center for Environmental Therapeutics here. Reflect on your score. How can you use your chronotype to be most productive?
— Can you be addicted to social media and your phone? One way to measure is the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (originally designed for Facebook but since generalized for all social media). It’s a short survey used in psychological research that has been widely accepted by the psychology community. It’s quick and something you can take yourself.
Here are six statements to consider. For each, answer: (1) very rarely, (2) rarely, (3) sometimes, (4) often, or (5) very often.
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- You spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning how to use it.
- You feel an urge to use social media more and more.
- You use social media in order to forget about personal problems.
- You have tried to cut down on the use of social media without success.
- You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using social media.
- You use social media so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.
If you scored a 4 or 5 (“often” or “very often”) on at least 4 of those statements, it could be an indicator of social media addiction.
Reflect on your score. Do you think social media addiction is the same or different as other types of addiction? Should it be a diagnosable disorder?