Subliminal Persuasion

In my opinion i believe the first explanation for subliminal persuasion is the strongest.  When things are popular, sometimes no matter how stupid they may be, everyone will like it.  Like Gangnam style was not a very good song and everyone realized this after the fact when everyone did like it and it became the most watched youtube video ever.  I just find that ironic and at the same time fascinating that the public can be manipulated by something as simple as a song.

I believe the weakest explanation for subliminal persuasion is the final explanation.  When someone does not know why they did something and they claim as the presentation stated "the devil made me do it" i think is ridiculous.  People can always make their own choices when it comes to harming or upsetting someone or something else.  If anything i dont believe the final explanation truly exists because there is no true evidence behind it.  We go by what everyone says from their heads not what we all see.

I believe subliminal advertising does exist.  Old play writers used to express subliminal messages in their performances to reflect upon the emotions of the crowd.  Not only that, but when a price tag says "$9.99" you think, oh thats not that bad but when you see "$10.00", you think woah wait, thats to much, or i dont want to pay for that. This is because if you paid with a $10 bill, you lose all of the money from that bill but when its "$9.99" you still receive something back after paying, so the human mind plays tricks on you and companies and stores have unfortunately figured this out to their advantage.

Sensation Vs Perception

Sensation occurs when sensory organs absorb energy from a physical stimulus in the environment  then sensory receptors convert this energy into neural impulses and send them to the brain.  While Perception follows and the brain organizes the information and translates it into something meaningful.  Sensation in the body is not voluntary it is involuntary and after a sensation is sensed from the environment  our bodies identify this sensation and perceive it to be one of the many perceptions we have today such as, pain, excitement, involving hearing, touch, tasting and seeing.  

Some students may find this confusing due to the very close similarities between sensation and perception.  Like i said before, sensation is involuntary and comes before perception. After a sensation is sense the body turns it into perception and the brain then tells the rest of the body how to react and feel based on its perceived notion of the sensation.  Both words are very close in definition but very different in actual action.

"Suppose that a reader has just read, "Daylight savings time ends tomorrow, and so people should remember to change their..." According to the top down view, the reader guesses that the next word in the sentence will be "clocks."  The reader checks that the word begins with a "c" and, because the hypothesis has been supported, does not take in any remaining letters of the word.  This is an example of the sensation of sight because in order for the body to interpret perception after sensation, it must sense a sensation then translate  it into something that can be responded to or acted upon, in this example knowing the next word is clocks.  After the reader has read the sentence but before reading the word clocks, the person reads the first letter of the word instead of the full word assuming its clocks and moves on.  Bottom up processing is the opposite where the reader would read the full word then interpret its meaning without assuming what the word actually is instead.

Phrenology

I find the concept of phrenology fascinating.  When examining the boys of the lower class it was either a coincidence or biological that all three kids had the lump by their ears.  Although it is not accurate i still find it interesting that this was the start of the study of the parts of the brain.  Phrenology explains that each section across the brain deals with 37 different traits.  It's kind of astonishing that in fact, there are, for one not 37 parts and that two each brain part participates in several of these traits each amongst the brain itself instead of there being 37 different parts.  Also, the concept drawn when talking about the "smarter" classmates and their bulging eyes was kind of humorous because it drew the conclusion that the frontal lobe was pushing them forward when in fact it has nothing to do with the frontal lobe than it does genetics and biology.  Biopsychology was the hardest topic for me last year but i still understand that the brain and body are so different yet so similar in how they work together. From the firing of neurons to the autonomic spinal cord control reflexes that mind and body are a fascinating well oiled machine.