Factitious Disorder

I am factitious disorder. The only cause of my disorder is my yearn for attention. I always feel the need to have people focused on me. All of the symptoms I experience are created by myself to recieve the attention of others. Some days I like to fake sick, other days I like to break my arm. Many people like me inflict damage or hurt their bodies in order to win the attention and sympathy of the people around us. Sometimes I pretend to be sick so I don't have to go to school and my mom can stay home and take care of me. I have become very good at faking the symptoms of the flu and know exactly what to do to get my mom to bring me to the doctor. I like when people feel sympathy for me and give me attention to my needs. My disorder is linked with kids who were abused and had parents that were ill all the time growing up.

Personality Test Reactions

The personality tests are a good judge of my personality. Many of the questions on the tests asked fair questions based on realistic situations. They were easy to relate to and I could easily and swiftly come up with answers. However, there were questions that might have tested intelligence. I was unsure what the dice questions had to do with anything or how they related to the personality test at all. This could be like the ink blot, judging a person's personality based on how they view the dice and answer the question. I don't think this is a fair judgement of personality. Many questions that directly related to situations, however, gave me realistic test results in the end results. I could agree upon all of the final test results that the tests came up with. The Big Five Trait test was far more accurate and reliable than the other personality test. I feel like the questions asked in the second test did not relate to anything what-so-ever and I could not personally relate to the questions from experience. The questions were weird and made no sense. This test exactly relates to the inkblot test. It cannot be proven that certain thoughts are associated with a person's personality.

Universal Emotions

Today, anyone can recognize the emotions of the people around them. Easily recognizable emotions are happy, surprised, angry, or sad. At one point in time, emotions were thought to be different in varying cultures. Paul Ekman, a graduate of the University of Chicago and New York University discovered that facial expression of emotions was universal throughout all cultures. This was an important finding because this proved that emotions were not determined by culture. Ekman went on to study a tribe of people from Papua New Guinea. He studied their facial expressions and made cross-cultural connections to facial expressions of emotions in other cultures. From this, he was able to make the connection that facially expressed emotion is universal throughout all cultures.

Next, Ekman began to study "micro-expressions." Micro-expressions are very brief, involuntary facial expressions of emotion that occur during moments of emotion felt. For instance, if i saw something funny on TV, my eyes might show very slight signs of happiness or the eyebrows might move very briefly in accordance to a happy expression. Ekman started a study with another psychologist called the "Wizards Project." This project evaluated the abilities of over 20,000 people and their abilities to read micro expressions. Microexpressions can be used to detect lies in the individual being surveyed and questioned. The 20,000 people that were evaluated and tested of their abilities to detect lies included attorneys, psychologists, law enforcement officers, secret service officials, and so on. Only 50 of the 20,000 people tested had the unique ability to detect lies. These people have the ability to hone in on emotional, expressional, and behavioral inconsistencies. These inconsistencies last no more than a split second. This is a rare ability to have. These people will also use tone of voice and other keys to the deception of the truth from the individual being watched. Below is a good video I found that shows what exactly these micro expression readers look for when trying to detect lies. They look for wrinkles, movement of the mouth, eyebrows, eye direction, anything that cues a lie.
Paul Ekman has also written a system to detect lies using facial expressions. It is allied FACS or Facial Action Coding System. This takes into effect the different movements of facial muscles, the eyes, body movement, and any other factors in order to detect if a person is lying or not.

Intelligence Tests

Intelligence testing is going to vary by location and race. It is very hard to have a standardized test in the United States with the amount of people, different cultures, different races, and different living and educational conditions throughout the U.S. Standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT are going to show much different results in intercity school systems than in wealthy suburbs. Curriculum and teachers, as well as teaching tools and technology, are much better in wealthy suburbs than those of intercity schools. The fact is, it is hard to even the playing field of standardizing a test for everyone. Intelligence testing is not a fair type of testing. Some classes offered in wealthy suburbs cannot be taught in intercity schools, perhaps from lack of funding or cognitive level of the students attending the school. 

The quizzes we did in class are a perfect example of why intelligence testing is not fair. The first test I took directly applied to my lifestyle and culture. I easily got a 9 out of 10. The second test, however, was quite different. It was the Original Australian Test of Intelligence, not relevant to my life what-so-ever. When answering these 10 questions, I was 1 for 10 correct. This goes to show how much I actually knew about a different culture from around the world that I was never faced with in my life. I didn’t know that you could not eat a kangaroo because it would make children and adults sick. I had no idea that you could eat water. The culture I live in is quick to think that other ideas are stupid and don’t make sense, where as in the Australian culture, this makes perfect sense and they would think we were stupid for saying that we drink water or that flour and water-lilies are not related closely to sugar. 

These tests greatly prove that intelligence tests may be able to be standardized for a specific culture, living style, or location, but not for the whole world, or multiple cultures. I was on a cruise last year and I was talking to a girl from Arizona. I referred to something that was “sweet” as in cool or rad. She looked at me as if I was weird. She had never heard that before or ever though about using that in the context I had used it. It goes to show that location and culture do matter.