Blog Post #7

If I were to explain to someone what sensation was, I would say that it is when our sensory receptors and nervous system recieve and represent stimulus energies from our environment. Sensations are what we smell, taste, see, and physically feel.
I would explain perception as when we organize and interpret sensory information, which enables us to recognize meaningful objects and events. We organize and interpret the smells, tastes, sights, and feeling of objects. Perception helps us to make decisions such as when we pick up a fruit that feels soggy, smells bad, and has a brown tinge to it, we know not to eat it. You can percieve all the different sensations of that nasty fruit.
The most interesting thing I learned in this chapter was about Prosopagnosia, which is face blindness. Heather Sellers suffers from prosopagnosia, which makes her sensation go out of whack when coming in contact with acquaintances. She does not recognize acquaintance's faces because of her disorder, yet she can recognize people sometimes by their hair, voice, or physique, just not by their faces. Her perception is almost normal because she can reconize most features besides faces. Also, when she would look at a friend, her sensation is normal and her sensory receptors detect the same information that yours would because she is so used to the features of that friend.
Learning about this disorder makes me appreciate that I am able to always recognize faces. I would apply this to everyday life by just appreciating my fully functioning sensations and perceptions.
The article I read was "A Slow Smile Attracts". In this article, psychology researchers did an experiment to find out at what speed a smile is most attractive to people, and also if tilting your head while smiling was even more attractive. The results that were when you give a person a long on-set smile, over about 0.5 of a second is more attractive than a smile over 0.2 of a second. Tilting your head to the right is also found very attractive by the opposite sex. Long on-set smiles that are seen as more flirtacious and authentic. This article was really interesting because it's very true. When someone takes the time to give you a nice, long smile, you know that they are being sincere and giving you attention. These findings change the way I think about things by making me realize how I represent myself. If I don't want to appear flirty to a guy, then I won't give him a nice, long smile. With applying this to my everyday life, I can smile accordingly to how I want to be perceived.