Angie Dahnous
Psychology 101
June 29, 2017
“How Puppy Photos Can Teach Your Brain to Love Your Partner More”
The article I have chosen is from Time Magazine called “How Puppy Photos Can Teach Your Brain to Love Your Partner More” by Belinda Luscombe. The research shows that if married couples look at pictures of babies, food, and puppies for six minutes every three days reported being happier in the marriage after 6 weeks. James McNulty, a psychology professor at Florida State University and his team, conducted the experiment.
They were asked to do the research study by the officials at the Department of Defense since they wanted to come up with ideas to help military personnel that are deployed to help save their marriages. This study was commenced because of a former study that was conducted by Sven Wilson; an assistant professor at Brigham Young University showed that there is a 62% likelihood of divorce among combat veteran soldiers. Before the experiment began, McNulty and his team explored if people could change their feelings about their spouse and realized the feelings would be tricky to capture if their feelings towards their spouse are negative. …show more content…
A psychological theory about likes and dislikes was used in this study about relationships since they work in the same way. The theory about likes and dislikes that it is a process of associative learning. Associative learning is the process when someone learns an association between two stimuli, or a behavior or stimulus. An example of associative learning is when a person loves the smell of the Cheesecake Factory because it reminds them of all the good times they had there with their friends. Another example is a person likes an article of clothing because they have worn it out on their first date with their lover.
Relationships also use the process of associative learning, and as a result from associative learning the feelings become automatic. If two people in a relationship have good experience and build a good memory together, they can remember it and feel happy. For example, my boyfriend and I love to go Frames n’ Games, the bowling alley located in Pooler, Georgia. When we think about going to that specific bowling alley, we remember all the good times we had there and it makes us feel happy. On the other hand when two people in a relationship had a negative experience they will always remember that moment and it will make them feel sad or angry. An example of this is that my boyfriend and I had a fight when he was helping me film a project for design class and we were always arguing. The mini film we were filming was called Bowie Under Pressure. For the video I was dressed up as David Bowie and the song Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie was used in the background. Now my boyfriend told me he cannot listen to the song Under Pressure because every time he hears the song now, he always associates the song with the fight we had when we were shooting the film. The goal of the experiment was to see if the process of associative learning could be used to improve marriages since the soldiers were away from their partners and it was hard for them to communicate with them and all the soldiers talk about is bad experiences from the war. McNulty and his team asked one hundred forty-four couples to look at a stream of photos online every three days for six weeks. McNulty wanted to trick the participants into having more positive feelings toward their spouse so he told them the experiment was to take note of when a romantic photo of a couple holding hands or a wedding photo came up on the screen. How the experiment worked was an image would appear on the screen next to their spouse’s photo along with a positive word. For one group of participants a neutral image would appear next to an image of their spouse like a button with no word beside it. For this group of participants there was no change in their feelings towards their spouse. The other group of participants, an image of a food, a cute animal, or a baby would appear next to
Psychology 101
June 29, 2017
“How Puppy Photos Can Teach Your Brain to Love Your Partner More”
The article I have chosen is from Time Magazine called “How Puppy Photos Can Teach Your Brain to Love Your Partner More” by Belinda Luscombe. The research shows that if married couples look at pictures of babies, food, and puppies for six minutes every three days reported being happier in the marriage after 6 weeks. James McNulty, a psychology professor at Florida State University and his team, conducted the experiment.
They were asked to do the research study by the officials at the Department of Defense since they wanted to come up with ideas to help military personnel that are deployed to help save their marriages. This study was commenced because of a former study that was conducted by Sven Wilson; an assistant professor at Brigham Young University showed that there is a 62% likelihood of divorce among combat veteran soldiers. Before the experiment began, McNulty and his team explored if people could change their feelings about their spouse and realized the feelings would be tricky to capture if their feelings towards their spouse are negative. …show more content…
A psychological theory about likes and dislikes was used in this study about relationships since they work in the same way. The theory about likes and dislikes that it is a process of associative learning. Associative learning is the process when someone learns an association between two stimuli, or a behavior or stimulus. An example of associative learning is when a person loves the smell of the Cheesecake Factory because it reminds them of all the good times they had there with their friends. Another example is a person likes an article of clothing because they have worn it out on their first date with their lover.
Relationships also use the process of associative learning, and as a result from associative learning the feelings become automatic. If two people in a relationship have good experience and build a good memory together, they can remember it and feel happy. For example, my boyfriend and I love to go Frames n’ Games, the bowling alley located in Pooler, Georgia. When we think about going to that specific bowling alley, we remember all the good times we had there and it makes us feel happy. On the other hand when two people in a relationship had a negative experience they will always remember that moment and it will make them feel sad or angry. An example of this is that my boyfriend and I had a fight when he was helping me film a project for design class and we were always arguing. The mini film we were filming was called Bowie Under Pressure. For the video I was dressed up as David Bowie and the song Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie was used in the background. Now my boyfriend told me he cannot listen to the song Under Pressure because every time he hears the song now, he always associates the song with the fight we had when we were shooting the film. The goal of the experiment was to see if the process of associative learning could be used to improve marriages since the soldiers were away from their partners and it was hard for them to communicate with them and all the soldiers talk about is bad experiences from the war. McNulty and his team asked one hundred forty-four couples to look at a stream of photos online every three days for six weeks. McNulty wanted to trick the participants into having more positive feelings toward their spouse so he told them the experiment was to take note of when a romantic photo of a couple holding hands or a wedding photo came up on the screen. How the experiment worked was an image would appear on the screen next to their spouse’s photo along with a positive word. For one group of participants a neutral image would appear next to an image of their spouse like a button with no word beside it. For this group of participants there was no change in their feelings towards their spouse. The other group of participants, an image of a food, a cute animal, or a baby would appear next to