Subliminal Persuasion

          After reviewing the presentation, I feel that the first factor, "pop" psychology, is the most strong explanation for subliminal persuasion.  This deals largely with companies appealing the needs of their consumer.  By portraying the importance of the product in the media, people are likely to rationalize that they need it because the media said so.  Also, after witnessing a commercial of something, a person subconsciously thinks about the product, further leading to their indulgence.  Furthermore, Pratkanis acknowledges that companies utilize this to reach their customers unconsciously to sell their products, a process we see each and everyday, hence furthering the strength and prevalence of this factor.
          As for the weakest form of subliminal persuasion, I feel that the witch test poorly accentuates the concept.  Opposed to the other factors of Pratkanis' experiment, this one highlights a test that is no longer used to day, thus discrediting the influence of the test.  Moreover, people find other ways today to prove themselves innocent, rather than just abandoning their company.  In other words, people today contemplate multiple pros and cons to decisions, such as consumption of certain goods or their involvement with a company.  They do not make rash decisions and therefore, the witch test would not be as persuasive as some of the other subliminal perception factors.
          In my opinion, subliminal perception does exist.  Everyone today, whether they admit it or not, have been subliminally persuaded by particular advertisements or companies.  We all indulge in consumer products at one point or another and that comes with our subconscious mentality that we need things, when in reality, we do not.  While people can exercise decision making to an extent, subliminal persuasion overrules thought even when we do not notice it.

Sensation vs. Perception

          Sensation and perception go hand and hand; however, I was not aware of their distinct differences prior to the intro to this course.  Sensation deals with how our sensory receptors, as well as our nervous system, receive stimulus from our environment.  In other words, it deals with the process of our body receiving the outside energy, such as sounds or pain.  On the contrary, perception is how we organize that information once it has been received by our senses.  Furthermore, perception is more the handling of the stimulus rather than the stimulus itself. 
          These two both deal with our senses, which gets confusing.  I think the most important thing to remember when differentiating them is sensation correlates directly with our body receiving energy from our environment, while perception is our body organizing and analyzing the energy that our senses just picked up.  The way I think about it is sensation almost deals with the more external side as it springs from the environment, and perception appears almost more internal as it is how our body deals with the stimulus.
          One example that deals with sensation and perception would be the sounding of a fire alarm.  First, our ears pick up the loud siren, thus signaling to us that something isn't right.  The original hearing of the siren correlates with sensation in the sense that the sound is what our body receives from the environment originally to then begin the stage of perception.  Our perception begins once we start analyzing the meaning behind the alarm and our panic begins to set in.  Our brain starts to organize the extremity of the siren and what that means for the individual, including an escape plan.  By utilizing a bottom-up process, our brain would analyze all the individual separate aspects of the alarm and what we know about alarms to conclude a final solution that brings all the possibilities together, helping us to comprehend what has happened.  As for the top-down process, that deals with looking at the whole picture and comprehension of the situation and then from there breaking it down to understand how that conclusion was made.

Phrenology

          To be completely honest, I had never heard of phrenology until this afternoon, however I find it quite intriguing after taking a look at the presentation.  Evidently, phrenology exemplifies a specific example of how things have evolved in psychology over the past 100 years, as Mr. Womack emphasized today.  The powerpoint suggests that this principle was defended even late into 20th century, thus emphasizing the strides that have been made recently.  We mentioned in class today the influence of machines such as the MRI and cat scan, which now allow us to view the brain electronically opposed to hypothesizing based on the shapes of heads.  Furthermore, I think the shape of a person's skull deals more with their genetics and the phenotype they obtain based on the shape of their ancestors skulls, opposed to the intelligence of their brain or the special skills one brain obtains.  Not only have the methods altered as the years passed by, but our hypothesis' have come a far way from being vague to more concrete based on previous evidence.
          Another aspect of the presentation that I found compelling was how phrenology relates to today's society.  Just like how psychologists used to associate large skulls with more intelligence or certain bumps with certain traits, we associate how people dress and appear with certain traits.  For example, the common misconception of blondes lacking intelligence often gets thrown around; yet we know that this correlation has no relevance.  Similarly, a person's skull shape has no similarity to the expertise of that particular brain, though scientists thought that.  Moreover, things are not always what they seemed and science has come a long way to prove that point.