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Gender differences with humor and laughter
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Memory refers to the “facts, events or other kinds of information we have acquired in the past and the processes involved in the acquisition, retention and retrieval of the this information” (Glisky, 2011). We rely on the validity of our memories everyday to perform basic functions such as recalling our name, age and home address. Our memory also forms an integral part of our personality: our recollection of our life experiences. However, can our memory be trusted? This essay will endeavour to show that, while we may feel as though our memory is certain, it is easily tricked and its accuracy cannot be relied upon. This will be achieved using an explanation of bias and its effect on source memory in two different psychological studies - Appearance-Based Inferences Bias Source Memory (Cassidy, Zebrowitz and Gutchess, 2012) and Who’s funny: Gender Stereotypes, Humour Production, and Memory Bias (Mickes et al., 2012). The first study looks into how facial characteristics affect source memory and the latter study investigates the interrelationship between gender and humour and how the associated bias and stereotypes affect the recall of comedic captions. Source memory is the ability to remember the context in which information was presented, rather than what was presented alone (Pandey, 2011). Also, it must be established that, in this context, bias is defined as the “distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on recollection of previous experiences” (Schacter, 1999).
The first study, Appearance-Based Inferences Bias Source Memory, investigated how facial characteristics, in this case whether or not a person had a ‘baby-face’ (IV), contributes to source memory (DV). Someone is considered to have a ‘baby-face’ whe...
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...ed inferences bias source memory. Memory & cognition, 40(8), pp.1214–1224.
Glisky, E. (2011). Memory. In Caplan, B., DeLuca, J., & Kreutzer, J. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Hicks, J., & Cockman, D. (2003). The effect of general knowledge on source memory and decision processes. Journal Of Memory And Language, 48(3), 489--501.
Mickes, L., Walker, D., Parris, J., Mankoff, R. and Christenfeld, N. (2012). Who’s funny: Gender stereotypes, humor production, and memory bias. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(1), pp.108–112.
Pandey, J. (2011). Source Memory. In Caplan, B., DeLuca, J., & Kreutzer, J. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54 (3), p. 182.
Hippocampus is a small, curved region, which exists in both hemispheres of the brain and plays a vital role in emotions, learning and acquisition of new information. It also contributes majorly to long term memory, which is permanent information stored in the brain. Although long term memory is the last information that can be forgotten, its impairment has become very common nowadays. The dysfunction is exemplified by many neurological disorders such as amnesia. There are two types of amnesia, anterograde and retrograde. Anterograde amnesia is inability in forming new information, while retrograde refers to the loss of the past memory. As suggested by Cipolotti and Bird (2006), hippocampus’s lesions are responsible for both types of amnesia. According to multiple trace theory, the author suggests that hippocampal region plays a major role in effective retrieving of episodic memory (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). For example, patients with hippocampal damage show extensively ungraded retrograde amnesia (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). They have a difficult time in retrieving information from their non-personal episodic events and autobiographical memory. However, this theory conflicts with standard model of consolidation. The difference between these theories suggests that researchers need to do more work to solve this controversy. Besides retrieving information, hippocampus is also important in obtaining new semantic information, as well as familiarity and recollection (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). For instance, hippocampal amnesic patient V.C shows in ability to acquire new semantic knowledge such as vocabularies and factual concepts (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). He is also unable to recognize and recall even...
“Morreall argues that, if we want to answer these questions, we shouldn’t focus on whether the joke happens to trade on a stereotype. Instead, he takes the primary problem with some humor to be that it involves disengaging from things with which we ought to be engaged.” (Morreall, 529)
... took approximately six months, but shows that explicit measure, according to Schneider (2004), “is more prone to recall information that is associated with the stereotype” (p. 60), and thus “can be taken as measures of existence of stereotypes” (Schneider, 2004, p. 60), which the subject revealed – and the original reason for the direct association with the subject and study by the author.
Experience plays an immense role in presenting the desolation that age and education has on one's capacity to remember. Individuals compare and contrast the correlation between these two variables; for example, the greater ones age the less recollection they seem to have. However, Psychologists Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman challenged this case by presenting a similar a preposition comparing two opposite variables: Does one’s sex affect his or her ability to remember day to day events? The interconnection between sex and memory is surprisingly a controversial topic. According to the research they provide, an individual’s sex does, indeed, play an immense role in commemorating the affairs that arise day to day.
Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists study humor because it is a fundamental culture value, but they still can’t determine why certain things make some people laugh and others not. There are “humor quotient” tests that are designed to measure an individual’s sense of humor, but these tests are questionable. These tests aren’t accurate because almost all humor depends on cultural background knowledge and language skills. Not every person in the whole world, or even in one country share the same background knowledge and skills, therefore they cannot have the same type of humor. “The fact remains that individuals vary in their appreciation of humor” (Rappoport 9). Since humor varies from individual to individual, humor lies in the individual. How successful or funny a joke is depends on how the person receives the joke, humor cannot be measured by a statistical
A study by Memon, Holiday and Hill (2006) has proven that stereotyping can influence recall of memory. In the study, children aged five read one version of a story about a character called Jim by their class teacher. The three different versions described Jim as either careful – a positive stereotype; clumsy – a negative stereotype; or neither careful nor clumsy – a neutral stereotype. A few days later, ‘Jim’ visited their class and introduced himself. He performed some neutral activities, such as showing them a photo of his dog or playing the flute. One and three days later the children were read a description about Jim’s visit by a researcher. The description was the same for all three groups of children, and it contained misleading details; some of these details were positive and some were negative. Three days later, the children were tested on two sets of yes or no questions by a different experimenter. It was made clear to the children that one set of questions related to what happened during Jim’s visit and one related to what they were told about his visit. This procedure was done to find out whether stereotyping affects a child’s memory positively, negatively or both. They found that the children who had heard the positive details about Jim gave answers that were prone to fitting the stereotype. The children were more likely to say ‘yes’ to positive statements about Jim. However, the
Atkinson, R.C. & Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control process.
Memory is an internal journal or account of a previous circumstance or experience that a subject has met. A person's ability to keep and store mentally retained impressions and information also define memory. While information is not just naturally recorded in our brains, how one applies a theory or theories of memory and forgetting can help to improve how a subject remembers. Memory is essential to our everyday lives. People must recant who they are, they must recognize other people’s faces, and need to also remember how to maneuver and how to communicate. There are various models of the way memory is composed and how it works. Although there is much diversity between the models, they all consider memory as a method of processing data. People do not candidly record information; they carry out a form of processing as data is stored, organized, and retrieved over period.
Burkley, M., Burkley, E., Stermer, S.P., Andrade, A., Bell C.A., & Curtis, J. (2014). The ugly duckling effect: Examining fiex versus malleable beliefs about beauty. Social Cognition. ,(32), 466-483.
“I have a terrible memory”. How often have you heard a person say this statement? A human’s memory is an amazing and interesting hidden wonder that has been a major topic neuroscientists have been studying for many years. One of the first to propose an idea on how memory works was Plato. “Plato proposed that impressions are made upon the brain much as a stylus marks a wax tablet” (Yepsen 148). Karl Lashley, a neuropsychologist, has more recently searched for proof by picking apart rats’ brains. He had stated that memories were electrical impressions that had been stored. Even more recently than Lashley’s theory, it was theorized that memories are placed in the brain as three-dimensional structures. Even though there is not one specific agreement on what memory is, experts have seemed to come to a consensus on why memories are either chosen for withholding or allowed to fade. The consensus was that a fragment of information has to go through three stages for it to be stored over a long period of time (Yepsen 148). The three different stages are sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory (“Memory Storage”). After many years of medical research and a large number of theories, the question still remains on how the memory works (Yepsen 147). Even though the exact answer cannot be given on how memory works, researchers have found some answers by studying the neurologic aspects, sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory, and how a person can improve their memory.
Bonvillian, John. "First Impressions." Psychology 101. Class Lecture. Gilmer Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. October 1999.
Schacter, D. L., & Slotnik, S. D. (2004). The cognitive neuroscience of memory distortion. Neuron, 44, 149-160.
The materiality of visual memory is deceptive, in that it overstates elements of the visual that cater particularly well to memory work. Visual memory depends on images that are simplified, conventional, schematic, and often composite. These images tend to arbitrarily connect with the event or object being remembered, rarely making explicit how they construct what we see and remember. Collectively held images thus act as signposts, directing people who remember to preferred meaning by the fastest route. These signposts are deceptive, favoring certain strategies for making, collecting, retaining, storing, recycling, and forgetting images that privilege certain ways of remembering over others.
2.Tulving , E. 1972 Episodic and semantic memory. In Organization of memory (ed. E.Tulving & W Donaldson), pp.382-403. New York:Academic Press
Everybody goes about their life on a daily basis making endless amounts of memories, but does not think back on them until later down the road. In reality, people’s lives are constructed by these mostly great however sometimes undesirable times called memories. Early researchers believed that there was one particular part of the human brain that contained memory; however, present day researchers have found that specific parts of the brain are responsible for different aspects of memory. As gratifying it is to create a life filled with joyous memories, due to various theories, accidents, or simply old age, forgetting memories can happen as quickly as making them did.