Tuesday, January 26, 2010

First Impressions!

First of all I would like to state that I am a crazy movie buff and own more movies that came out before the year 2000 then anything else. I'm not a fan of the new stuff, however when talking about first impressions I'll take a page out of the new age of television and movies and compare my opinions of Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. My opinions on these two women can be related to the primacy effect, confirmation bias, and trait negativity bias. I will explain how each of these social psychological concepts apply to my opinions of these two women.

The primacy effect is related to my early love for the television series, "Friends." I started watching "Friends" about two years after it started and have since, re-watched all ten seasons at least 5 times. Jennifer Aniston played one of the leading roles on the show (Rachel), who happened to be my favorite female character on the show. She was introduced to me at an early age and my decision to like her was based on the fact that she played an imaginary character whom I liked, on my favorite television show of all time. Today, if information regarding a dismissal of her good character was to be presented to me, I would choose to disregard it as hearsay.

In my eyes, today, Jennifer Aniston, who was thwarted by her ex-lover Brad Pitt, who now, in my opinion, is unattractive, selfish, and untrustworthy, is a saint. To me, she is the epitome of a classy woman who, even when the man she had spent the majority of her adult life with was leaving her for another woman, did allow her pain to show. I think that my interpretation of the various things that have occurred in her life have arisen through the confirmation bias. I had already believed that she was a good person, therefore, when given more information about her, I used that to support my already formed opinions.

Now to talk about the (evil) Angelina Jolie. I never really had any opinion about Angelina Jolie until "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," and the debacle that followed the movie's release. I knew that she was a little bit weird, due to all of her blood-vile wearing nonsense with Billy-Bob Thorton. However, that "weird" vibe turned into deep dislike of her as a person. When Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston, I was no longer swayed by some of Angelina's better movies (i.e. Girl Interupted... that's it), and Brad Pitt's good looks. She was defined as the "evil mistress/other woman," and he was defined as the "cheater." This is a perfect example of the negative trait bias.

Okay, so here's a little window into my mind and the things that I consider evil (lol). I didn't realize that I was making all of these social psychological concepts take life in such a simple aspect of my impressions of two different female celebrities.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2008). Perceiving Persons. In Social Psychology (7th ed., pp. 93-127). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company

Monday, January 18, 2010

Welcome!

Hi! My name is Jordan Romero. I'm a psych major at SU and am really excited to explore the whole social psych thing. I'm a sophomore here at SU and find that college here at SU never really gets easier. I play for the Women's soccer team here as well. I think that's pretty much everything about me. 

    Jordan Romero