Category Archives: Research Project

Second draft of my research proposal: Positive Psychology

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The main purpose of this research paper is going to be positive psychology and how people aren’t assisted in achieving their full potential of happiness. This topic seems intriguing because of it’s unique views, not many people have even heard of the concept. Positive psychology revolves around the idea that people are often aided to become basically neutral in life, when they should be guided on becoming happy. Often when individuals are diagnosed with depression they are given medication and therapy to get them to a place where they’re okay with life. Not jumping for joy but not in a dark place like they were, but when this concept is brought into play it makes people think, is that any better? If people are being helped to get out of that bad place and emotional state then why leave them half way? Wouldn’t it be more helpful in helping them achieve happiness? This is why this idea is so interesting. The fact that it is believed that these individuals are being helped by just making them feel OK isn’t a service. Feeling neutral isn’t happiness or content, it’s just getting by. People shouldn’t just get by in life, they should experience happiness and live their life to it’s full extent, actually enjoy it. When people seek medical help for their problems or are recommended to get help, their goal or mission isn’t to be mentally OK, it’s to achieve happiness. This idea of trying to make people happy and not just OK is fascinating especially if you’ve witnessed someone going through depression and also in therapy. It gives you more of an insight on how people are helped to only achieve the bare minimum of happiness. Throughout this research paper, the focus is be on how doctors aren’t putting their all into making their clients happy but more so into just getting them to a “normal” state.

Seligman, Martin, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “Positive Psychology: An Introduction.”Http://onesearch.cuny.edu/. US: American Psychological Association, 1 Mar. 2000. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

The main focus in this article is to prove how building yourself on the in and outside could make you a better person. Whether it’s building knowledge or the way you’re living it makes your life in a whole more positive and how it leads to a better life. Individuals often don’t believe that the simplicities in life such as basic needs can aid someone into being happier. When doing these things can cause happier people and happier lives.

 

 

Cohrs, Christopher, Daniel Christie, Mathew White, and Chaitali Das. “Contributions of Positive Psychology to Peace: Toward Global Well-being and Resilience.”Onesearch.cuny.edu. US: American Psychological Association, 14 Oct. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

A lot of people don’t know is that people’s current state of being and mind can disturb peace. Of course it alarms the question of how so, but it can actually cause stir ups in communities. In the article’s abstract it states, “we discuss positive emotions, engagement, meaning, personal well-being, and resilience may impact peace at different levels, ranging from the personal and interpersonal to community, national, and global peace” if people are happier it makes for a happier community. In the end or the bigger picture a happier community makes a happier place. There are also arguments on how experiences could tie into this and how it could eventually help to tackle bigger and more serious issues.

 

Burne, Jerome. “Lives Destroyed by Happy Pills: As Our Use of Antidepressants DOUBLES in a Decade, Experts Say Thousands Are Being given Dangerous Drugs They Don’t Need.”Http://www.dailymail.co.uk/. 29 June 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

In this article a woman is misdiagnosed with anxiety and depression. It may seem like no big deal until later on in the passage they explain how she was given numerous medications to assuage her symptoms. Not only did they make her feel worst than how she originally felt but she began to have suicidal thoughts. She had tried to explain to her doctor from the start but because of the 2 basic questions she was asked, they just diagnosed her with depression/anxiety and doubled her dose every time she tried to explain that she was only getting worst. They also state, “a busy GP sees about 100 patients a week. Out of those, 20 will be suffering from depression, but he will spot only ten of them and treat five, usually with drugs. Not only are the depressed missing out on treatment, 16 of those 100 patients will be told they are suffering from depression when they aren’t.” Doctors seem to believe that medication will solve any and everything when it could’ve simply been solved another way.

How music affects teenagers behavior towards society

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After a lot of thought and brainstorming I finally came to a decision that I wanted to my topic to be on something to about music. I knew it had to be really specific and precise so I continued to think about what area would I like to learn more about that has to deal with music. As I was on my way home a couple of days ago I saw a group of teenagers listening to rap music and they were behaving in a crazy and somewhat hostile manner. I then thought to myself I should research how music affects teenagers behavior towards society. sometimes music can have a bad or a good influence on people especially teenagers. In high school my friends were always listening to music and would go around saying quotes from the songs. For example Chris Brown wrote a song about females not being loyal, ever since then boys or guys would go around saying that girls aren’t loyal so don’t trust them.

When you look around most of the time when you see teenagers they are always listening to music. Everyone of them having their own personal preference of what style of music they like. Some of them you see are dressed in all black and listening to goth and others you may see are dressed with snap backs, Jordans and white tees listening to rap.

“How Music Affects Teens.” Teen Ink. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.

After I finally figured out what I wanted my topic to be I started to do some research. It honestly didn’t take me much time to find article or website that I liked because I went through the first couple of them I found interest in this one. This article talks about how certain music can define who a person is. It says that you can tell a person’s mood by the type of music that they are listening too. I agree with that because when I’m sad I don’t listen to songs that would make me dance but I listen to songs that  are slow and depressing. What I mainly love about this article is that it says, teens hangout or cling to other teens who like the same style music as them. That is also true because you would hardly see a person who likes country music hanging out with somebody who likes rock. It’s not something that is done on purpose but it’s something that is done naturally. They wouldn’t do that because like article also states teens would always be disagreeing with watch genre of music is right or what genre music is wrong. As teens they may not know how to really express themselves in the right way at times. I know when I was a teen I always listened to music that had a con ection to my mood. If I was in a mood where I didn’t want to talk to anyone I would listen to rap music so loud that you wouldn’t be able to hear yourself talk. The article mentions that music helps teens show emotions and express there feelings in way they sometimes can’t so by themselves. This article was a little short but gave me a basic outlook on my topic. I feel that from here on I will find even more interesting articles about my topic.

The relationship between happiness and sex

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The goal of this paper is to make a reader gain a new perspective on the relationship between sex and an individual’s happiness. When asking about what feelings are related to sex, a person often answers good, or happy. Many wonder why this connection is so often made. This paper will explore this idea through a series of online articles and studies. This level of importance is seen in teenagers and adults lifetime. What is more surprising is the age that people are starting to have sex, as early as 13. But nobody really understands why. It is easy to say that teenagers don’t make the right decisions that they don’t look at the long term situation and only focus on the temporary feelings it may produce. But it is difficult to comprehend why, and that’s what this paper is aimed to do, to help the audience comprehend the why’s.
This topic interest me because teen pregnancy was something I saw a lot in my high school and I always thought why engage in risky sexual behavior that has serious consequences. When asking my 16 year old friend, she answered because she wanted to make her boyfriend happy. This statement left me thinking, does sex really make a person happy? Or is it something else? Why is sex advertised so much now a days? Birth control and free condoms are available for easy access to adolescence. There are so many factors that come along with sex, if a person expects to receive happiness from having sex, you might be let down. So I want to look at all these ideas and see why the feelings are associated. Also I feel like this is the elephant in the room while people think about it, talking about it may sometimes be awkward but definitely necessary.

Dr.Charles. Schmitz, Elizabeth.” Why touch is so important in a loving marriage”. Huffingpost.2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/16/sex-how-important-is-it_n_4275969.html
This article speaks on the relationship between happy couples and sex. The emphasis is put on sex, stating its necessary for a successful and happy couple. The article speaks on why this is, with evidence from a study conducted on happy couples. It explains why affection and touch from another person is essential to a person feeling good. The article is written to highlight sex as something good and necessary to a happy couple.

Happiness at home= happiness in life?

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There are many factors in life that can have a positive or negative effect in achieving happiness. I have decided to study one of these factors. My possible topic for my research paper is about how growing up without a parent can affect a child’s ability to achieve happiness in their lives. This topic interests me because I believe that a person’s characteristics are the ones that lead them to success or failure/happiness or unhappiness. However, the characteristics that people have are often developed due to certain situation they went through in their life. A certain situation that can be considered is not having one of their parents in their life. This situation may affect the person and causes them to be in a certain way. This topic may be of interest to others because people are often curious of why others or themselves are the way they are. My research paper would give people insight to how individuals were affected by the absence of one of their parents and are suffering consequences in their personal traits and may not be able to achieve happiness because of that.

The sources that I may use for this research paper will be books such as my psychology book, articles about statistics in my topic, articles from newspapers related to my topic and I may ask some people about their experiences. I think some of the questions I should be asking about my topic are: what does a mother and father contribute to their child’s life? What contributions are essential in the well development of their child? What would a child lack of without one of their parents? Emotional stability? Economic stability? , How do these things affect the point of view of the child towards the world?, Are there negative characteristics that the child develops that may affect them in their lives?, How do these characteristics prevent them or may be an obstacle to achieve their desires, goals and happiness?. I think my proposal is argumentative because many people can give different reasons of why a person may not be able to achieve happiness. They may say is not justified that a person is not successfully happy because they were affected by the lack of one parent throughout their childhood. People may say that it was because of a bad relationship the person might have had, the bad economy, and so on.

Annotated Source:

https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/chaptertwo.cfm

Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, U.S., Children’s Bureau Rosenberg, Jeffrey., and Children’s Bureau Rosenberg, Jeffrey. “The Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children.” Fathers and Their Impact on Children’s Well-Being. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

This source mentions about how children who grow up without a father tend to develop negative characteristics such as: low self-esteem, lower IQs, anti-socialism and so on. It also states that the relationship of mother-father has an important impact of how parents will treat their children. If a father has a good relationship with the child’s mother then he would most likely spend more time with the children. Therefore he will give more attention to the children, who will eventually be healthier psychologically and emotionally. Same if a mother has a good relationship with the child’s father, she will respond more affectionate and caring for the children. This source will help me to prove that there are behaviors parents have that affect their child’s characteristics. Hence, the child’s characteristics will eventually affect them on how they achieve happiness in their lives.

 

The U.S. Military and Well-being

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The U.S. Military has been making making their new recruits take a class about happiness and well-being. How is it that people who are being trained to kill others or enemies of the country be taking classes about well-being and the happiness of others? How are they going to use what they’ve learned in the those classes in a battle field? Or is it that the class is for themselves for when they’re are out of service for good? I mean it is a complex argument that cannot be just left alone meaning how are corrupted soldiers going to utilize happiness in war? Maybe, for those who have gone to battle and have see the worst of horrors, this class is to teach them about how  to come out of that situation sane or to be able to live their lives without the burden of what has happened. Maybe it is also to teach them about just being or becoming happy. However, why are they being forced to take a class about happiness before they go into service? Is it to feel happy about killing? These are serious questions that I have because I can’t seem to understand the reason behind this military class.

Annotated Bibliography:

http://www.arng.army.mil/soldierresources/Pages/WellBeing.aspx

This website talks about what is the Army National Guard. It talks about its changes to meet the challenge of its missions. Also, it talks about how we must keep in mind the personal, physical, material, mental, and spiritual state of our Soldiers, civilians, and their families. Their “Well-Being” contributes to their readiness to perform the Army National Guard mission.

Research paper proposal

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For my research project I would like to focus on the effects of mass media on individual’s well-being. Mass media includes everything on T.V, news papers and on the radio. We tend to be influenced by our surroundings so I’m interested to see how our everyday entertainment or things we find normal influence our decision making and even our ethical behaviors. We pick up on trends that are constantly promoted such as the recent Ebola scare. It is flu season but since for a long period of time everyone was discussing this virus every time someone would sneeze or look sick others would automatically be scared or assume that they had the virus. Although some of the things we hear or see on mass media have negative effects on our behavior some are used to improve policies or to make people aware of risky situations. For example recently I have noticed that elementary schools are creating safety drills that were never in place when I went to grade school. considering a recent spike in school shootings I believe that the awareness the media has created makes a safer school environment.

 

Coleman, Loren. ” The Copycat Effect: How the media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines New York : Paraview Pocket Books, 2004.

I found this book interesting and relevant to my topic considering that it uses the effects of mass media relating to crimes. This book discusses copycat crimes and how because of the media people get the idea to commit their own crimes, these people feel encouraged and even inspired by people who have already committed such crimes and believe that they can get away with it. Because of the media they are able to follow closely on such cases and plan their own.

 

 

 

Happiness Research Project on Different Countries

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The topic of my research project is happiness in different countries. This topic is interesting to me because many people say they want to live the “American dream”, but at the same time  they then want to go on vacation and/or retire somewhere else. Many people hear happiness and they turn to money, materialistic things and etc. Happiness is not just the possessions you may have, but it is more of what, other than possessions, will make you truly happy. This interests me and it should interest others as well because it can teach others that happiness is achieved in the smallest matter. Individuals do not necessarily need to have the biggest house nor the newest car in the market. These things are great satisfying goods of course; but as long as an individual have supporting and caring people around them they will be happy. Some of the questions I will be addressing are Does the “American Dream” really make people happy? What do they do that makes them happy/happier? Who are they mostly around with ? Do people in 3rd world countries work harder or less than people in the U.S? Does this contribute to their happiness?

Annotated Resource:

Happy directed by Roko Belic (2011)

This documantary movie shows peoples lives in different 3rd world countries. It then shows peoples lives in the U.S and Japan wich are busy developed countries. It compares the peoples experience and life style and how happy they are. The video shows how people can have nothing and still feel satisfied and happy with how they are living.

i love you babe

 

Research Project Proposal:

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Choosing a topic for my research project was very hard. A variety of topics went through my head as I brainstormed ideas that interested me, but also related to happiness. Happiness has a different meaning for everyone what may make another. I decided on the topic, the importance of belonging needs in personal relationships whether it’s a friendship, family relationships, or lover relationships. People value close relationships.Everyone deserves to feel like their accepted, loved, and that their important in an individual’s life. Not being accepted or belonged can cause an individual to feel unwanted, lonely, depressed, and have low self-esteemed which cause their well-being and happiness to diminish. Well-being is life satisfactory and happiness if you don’t have that are you really living, or are you just here on earth? The need to belong increases satisfaction in personal relationships well-being and happiness.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/stei0301/sp_bbk/BandM%20Need%20to%20Belong.pdf

This source is helpful in my topic because it talks about interpersonal relationships and belongingness. Individuals seek the need to have frequent interactions with others, people who care about their welfare. The lack of belonging can cause a variety of effects such as depression or suicidal tendencies all depriving an individual’s well-being and happiness.

GAY= HAPPY

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When thinking of a topic and what I wanted to research about I was oblivious on what I wanted to research on. At first I wanted to do drugs and how it make people happy , or bring some type of happiness into their lives is why they do drugs, but then I thought that topic can be too broad and I researched up on it and didn’t find much to help me back up my point. Then I always thought about gay couples LGBTQ and thought to myself I can research why gay couples are more happier and open then heterosexuals. The reason I chose to research this topic because I am a person who supports LGBTQ although I am not gay, but I do support them and every summer I go to pride which is the gay parade. The reason I go to it is because I have family members who are gay and the parade is fun and enjoying to me. I see different things and meet new people who are very open and confident within them selves.

Therefore my main objective is pointing out that no matter what people think they are going to be happy and love themselves for them regardless of what anyone else think. Is why I am making this my topic because I was someone who didn’t have much confidence in myself and always cared what someone thought of me. Now that I am older and started to get more confidence in myself. I don’t care what people think of me. Seeing class mates I use to go to school with who were gay they were different meaning their style, how they talked, how they walked and they knew that people will have opinions, but that didn’t stop them from being them. Which I loved because I like seeing gay people in the street till this day and it actually makes me smile because they walk as if they are in a fashion show with their heads up and they don’t care who is looking at them in a certain way.  Which is why gay couples are happier than heterosexual couples because they can say how they feel to their partner and not hold things back. On the other hand heterosexual couples say how they feel but the simplest things to a gay person they will speak on it unlike heterosexual they will rather wait.

Also, gay people are people that I actually look up to because they don’t let people or negative vibes stress them out. They live their life for them and not anyone else. Which relates to Rhonda Byrne statement thinking positive then positive things will happen. Which connects o gay people because they are people who do think positive and are more free and happier. The more positive someone is about their life the more positive things come into your life.

Annotated Bibliography:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-key-to-a-happy-relationship-be-gay-or-childless-or-make-tea-9057349.html

Gardner, Richard. “The Key to a Happy Relationship? Be Gay. Or Childless. Or Make Tea.” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 14 Jan. 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

This supports my topic because it supports why gay couples are happier than straight.  They are happier than straight because they are more comfortable with each other  Although they discussed that gay couples are less affectionate. Which I can argue against because now in society they are open with one another, they show affection to each other and they don’t hide how they feel. Also, it argues that LGBTQ couples are more happier and positive about their relationship which I stated because their positive within themselves. Not only they discussed about gay couples and straight. It supports how straight couples such as couple who have children can be just as happy as gay couples are because they have someone who is a younger version of them.

  

Research Proposal Draft

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The topic I chose to do a research about is happiness in adolescents who are struggling with their sexual preferences. Being in a public high school myself I saw that there were many kids who were homo sexual and had a hard time being accepted in such a harsh world. I personally had a friend who struggled all through high school with accepting himself and being worried about losing his friends or about what others thought about him if he was to be public about his sexual preference. I believe that everybody should have an open mind about homosexuals because they are no different from us and have the same feelings we do. This topic will most likely attract the people who already accept homosexuals but I want the people that don’t accept them as of yet to see how this affects people. How can someone be happy if they are hiding who they really are? They aren’t being true to themselves and to others around them. A lot of adolescents commit suicide and its always on the news about another teenager not wanting to live because they aren’t being accepted by the world. I want to know how they can find happiness knowing all the hate thats going on around them and how do they stand up to what they believe in because not many people can do that.

http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/adolescence/identity-formation

This article talks about the ways adolescents feel pressured about telling others who they really are and how it leads to depression, stress, low self esteem, drug abuse, and even having suicidal thoughts. Also how they have identity problems and not having parents who are accepting who should be the first person to have their back in this situation and it also creates conflict with self and being stereotyped in your teenage years is hard because when in that stage of your life you are still finding who you are and having that holding you back even more can be more difficult for yourself as well.