Blog Post #7

Sensation is the use of our five senses, hear, taste, sight, smell, and touch. The sensation we have is because of the body taking and understanding stimuli and turning it into a sensation or feeling. Perception is the way we perceive or interpret these sensations our body picks up. Depending on our minds it changes how we perceive and sense things occurring in our body.

I found, out of the senses, one of the interesting senses was our sense of smell. Although it’s not as keen as our sense of hearing or sight, it’s an important part of our body functions. Many animals have better sense of smell than humans and they use this to find their prey and mates. This affects me because without the sense of smell mammalian ancestors used their sense of smell, to sniff out food and predators. Without the sense of smell before our cerebral cortex fully developed being able to smell helped keep us alive. Now days sense of smell helps bring back memories. We acquire the liking of a smell when we are babies. It was said that before we knew our mothers smell we did not like it, but after awhile of constant interaction with that smell it because natural to us and a smell we look for, and come to like. I find it very interesting that our sense of smell is one of the hardest to explain. We can only explain what we smell not specifically what that smell is. Usually smells are associated with food or flowers, or even the sweet aroma of a friend, but never and actual name of that smell.

I searched for perception in the psychblog and found an interesting article called “Why Career Planning is Time Wasted.” The article talked about how planning our futures at a young age is a waste of time because you never know what the future brings. Who are we to expect what we will enjoy doing in 5 years time. They did a study on people and their choice of sandwich for lunch. They made two different groups, one group had to choose the sandwiches they predicted they would want to eat throughout the week a week in advance, and the other group had the choice of a sandwich ever day. Results showed they people who were giving the choice that day picked their favorite sandwich and were happy about their decision. The people who had to decide in advance what they wanted to eat each day, when it came to that week they weren’t happy about their decision. I think this proves that as we grow older even just the next week, we are going to have different likes and dislikes. How are we suppose to decide what we want to do as a career in the next 10 years, but can’t even make the simply decision of what we are going to eat in a week. It was said we are very bad at predicting our futures and how we are going to be and feel. They also said a reason it’s time wasted is because our future self is like a stranger to us. Our futures may seem like we have them in control, but we will never know until the time comes.

I find this very interesting because I don’t know what I want to do with my life when I grow older. There are so many paths one can take and it’s hard to decide what one I will like more or will be happy with doing. I never know what life is going to be like or what is going to happen even the next day. I always seem to make list or schedules of things to do and things I have to get done, but they always seem to change or I don’t get them done by my deadlines. I think this article just proves what I do on a daily basis.