Exemplary Leader Philosophy Paper Essay Example for Free

Exemplary Leader Philosophy Paper Essay I never aspired to be an ethical leader before this class. It is not that I acted unethically, but that I never understood the importance of being an ethical leader. As a child, I was constantly changing my mind about what I was going to be when I grew up, but never once did â€Å"ethical† cross my mind. It seems as though this is a common theme among human beings, that we see success through the masculine lens of materialism and consumerism. Being able to acquire the newest, biggest, most innovative thing is what motivates us from a very young age. This is not something to be necessarily ashamed about, because at one point or another, everyone acts out of self-interest and solely for self-advancement. The thing that has to change, however, is the amount of fully-grown adults who still act out of self interest, and more specifically, adults in leadership roles, managing corporations, institutions, cities, states, and countries, that pull their team in the right direction for themselves, and not necessarily for the organization. This class has taught me who I am, both as an individual and as a part of a cohesive team, who I can be, thanks to the concepts and thought-provoking readings and lectures, and how I can get there by utilizing these concepts and strategies. Throughout the course of this semester, I have been able to continue producing the same amount of success as I have in the past, but I have been able to do it the â€Å"right† way. By identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to those opportunities of my personality and character, I have been able to identify my true self. This identification process is the first step toward becoming an ethical and moral example for peers, subordinates, and even superiors, both in a professional sense and in a personal sense. â€Å"History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.† – B. R. Ambedkar This quote, spoken by Indian scholar B. R. Ambedkar, shows the belief in the common phrase, â€Å"business ethics is an oxymoron.† It is this mentality that began the self-fulfilling prophecy that business leaders use as an excuse for unethical behavior. The â€Å"slippery slope† of ethical breakdowns, as Badaracco calls it, begins with a mentality that justifies the diversion of ethics and economics. Throughout the rest of this exploration of the current self, the prospective self, and the presentation of a development plan, I will disprove this mentality. Current Self In order to effectively assess one’s ethical and moral fortitude, one must objectively identify his strengths and weaknesses relative to being an exemplary ethical leader. Furthermore, one must then address each individual aspect of his personality, including character traits, values, and integrity through relative ethical concepts and principles. By executing this process, one can truly learn about oneself and identify the necessary steps to becoming the possible self, or leader he wants to become. The process of identifying your own strengths and weaknesses can be difficult, especially in terms of being completely unbiased and objective. The key to successfully doing this is in relying on factual evidence that supports each strength and weakness. To be considered either, however, there must be a certain consistency in terms of actions as well as intent, which proves the validity of each strength or weakness. During my self-exploration, I thought back to some of my first memories in order to serve as a foundation for my moral potency and character, and to see how my experiences have shaped my personality, both positively and negatively. This process has given me perspective and helped me attain the knowledge necessary to complete an objective report of my own personality, values, skills, characteristics, and motivations. Without this process, I would have been subject to a common decision making fallacy that was taught in my organizational behavior class, known as the tendency to use information at hand, which describes a person’s inclination to make a decision based on readily-available information, rather than fact-based evidence. In this case, the â€Å"readily-available information† would be anecdotes and experiences that â€Å"stick out† in my memory. These examples are not necessarily wrong to use, but basing my process on them wholly would provide data inconsistent with my true personality. Since I can remember, I have always been a fierce competitor. This is shown through my spirited drive to achieve that has permeated my entire life, from academics, to extracurricular activities, to athletics. This competitiveness has both positive and negative effects on my leadership abilities, because I am driven and motivated to achieve goals, but can prove dangerous in team situations where group consensus is necessary. The competitive nature that is ingrained in my personality can lead to a concept called â€Å"me-ism†, described by Badaracco in chapter 4, which explains the phenomenon of being so goal-oriented that you lose sight of the effects that your actions have on other people. This concept can also relate to Badaracco’s inattentional blindness and motivated blindness, which describe occurrences in which one’s personal goals or lack of careful observation override that person’s ability to sense an ethical dilemma. My competitive nature has led to many successes in my life, including winning the New York under-18 state hockey championship, becoming the first non-senior to be an alternate captain on the Wake Forest club ice hockey team, and of course being accepted into this business school. These examples are all evidence of my competitive nature, and describe my desire to lead and win simultaneously. The concept of the future is tremendously fascinating to me. In another BEM class that I took this semester, we did a personality assessment that included over one hundred twenty questions and returned your five biggest personality strengths, and â€Å"futurism† was one of mine. I truly enjoy thinking about the future because of its uncertainty. I feel so much potential and possibility for myself, which is strengthened by my competitiveness. My ability to constantly think about the future while still keeping my â€Å"feet on the ground† and completing my assignments in the present is one of my most powerful strengths. My futurism keeps me on track toward achieving my personal and organizational goals. Becoming a transformational leader begins with the futurist outlook combined with a strong moral potency, which is the combination of three moral factors: moral ownership, moral courage, and moral efficacy. Moral potency, when combined with futurism, provides a leader with a strong moral and ethical foundation on which to base decisions, as well as the ability to envision the potential of a given organization. By acting in this way, a leader can start a chain reaction called the contagion effect, which is the phenomenon that occurs by promoting a transparent, ethical, and fair environment, starting from the C-level executives and â€Å"infecting† every employee underneath. The aforementioned strengths of mine, a strong competitive nature and a futuristic outlook provide me with an ethically-ambiguous foundation, meaning that both highly ethical and highly unethical leaders sport these qualities, and the actions that I make within the next few years will decide on which end of the spectrum I fall. In order for me to ensure that I do not start down the slippery slope of unethical decisions, I must be conscious of the fact that each decision I make has ethical implications, and I also must be weary of my weaknesses that could lead me down the wrong path. Acknowledging one’s weaknesses is critical to the process of defining your current self. As the saying goes, â€Å"nobody’s perfect,† and the only way to minimize the mistakes you make throughout your life is to accept the fact that you do have weaknesses, and to analyze what they are, why you have them, how you act on them, and how to correct them. My competitive drive has led me to have a strong desire to please authority figures, which is a major weakness of my personality, not in the sense that it is bad to desire recognition and achievement, but it frequently leads to Machiavellian, â€Å"ends justify the means† justifications of morally questionable actions. One of Badaracco’s ethical breakdowns, which he discusses in chapter five, the overvaluation of outcomes, directly relates to this personality trait. Two years ago I interned for a brokerage firm on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and my boss was a task-oriented, results-driven leader, a common type in the financial sector. He demanded that the team of four interns provide a daily projection of trade volume based on an algorithm and spreadsheets dating back to the early 1990’s. After being reprimanded by our boss for presenting him with unfavorable figures, we began to slightly alter the bottom line to get his approval. In this situation, we made a major ethical mistake by overvaluing the results. With the knowledge I have gained from this class, I would have analyzed the decision to alter the numbers using the categorical imperative, and in this situation, especially in the financial sector, it would be a very bad thing if my actions became universal norms. Fortunately, the trade projections were strictly internal, and I found out later in the internship that my boss would assign this project to new interns as a way of â€Å"breaking them in† and showing them the harshness of the business world. This desire to please has affected my leadership skills mostly within the context of leading peers, because, when combined with my competitive nature, I realize that there are few things that I will not consider doing to get ahead, which will ostracize me from my peers and create a divide within the group, decreasing my ability to influence others around me. Another weakness of mine is my tendency to overuse legitimate power when it is given to me. Legitimate power, which is defined as power bestowed upon someone over others, can come as a promotion, as it did in my case, when I was voted captain of my varsity hockey team in high school. This promotion gave me nominal power over my teammates off of the rink, but it was enough to leverage and coerce them to follow my orders. Trevino and Nelson outline the psychology I used to justify this behavior in chapter five, in their discussion of informal organizational cultural systems. The norms usually override formal rules, according to Trevino and Nelson. â€Å"†¦Despite formal rules, regulations, codes, and credos, informal norms are frequently the most influential behavior guides and clues to the culture†. The rationalization that â€Å"it’s the way we do things around here† was understood by my teammates, because the captain before me was the same way. It is this lack of moral potency to realize the unethical behavior and act on my personal values that makes this a weakness of mine. In the heat of the moment, it is hard to stop yourself and think about ethical philosophy, but necessary to promote the organizational culture that is conducive and necessary to running a hockey team. This self-exploration has provided me with a sound basis to analyze myself and prepare to make the jump into the business world with a strong moral compass and the ability to create a working plan to become the exemplary leader that I wish to be. However, first I must decide and articulate exactly what kind of leader that is. Possible Self The second step in becoming an exemplary ethical leader is to identify your possible self, that is, the leader that you wish to become at some point in the future. This can be done in a multi-step process, first by identifying exemplary leaders that serve as role models or mentors to you, and then by analyzing their leadership qualities and determining which of those you wish to attain. It is undeniable that every ethical leader chooses to lead with character and integrity, two of the most important characteristics necessary to manage an organization, but just how do you define character? According to Professor Sean Hannah, character is defined by three aspects: moral discipline, moral attachment or attainment, and moral autonomy. The combination of these facets provides a solid basis for the quantification of leadership characteristics. Moral discipline outlines the ability to act in alignment with your personal values, while moral attachment or attainment refers to one’s ability to hold true to your values over time, and moral autonomy is the ability to formulate moral decisions based on your values and decision-making skills, without the influence of outside factors. Both character and integrity play instrumental roles in the development of ethical leaders, as well as in their ability to become role models for lower-level employees. My most recent role model for ethical leadership is Dean Reinemund, because he has been extremely successful as a leader in two vastly different industries, which shows that he has the skills necessary to lead, regardless of the situational context. During his guest lecture in our class, Dean Reinemund spoke about his â€Å"Four C’s of Leadership.† I believe that these four characteristics are immensely important to become a transformational leader with a vision that inspires employees to work at the highest level possible. The first â€Å"C† is character, which Mr. Reinemund describes as having your internal compass point to â€Å"true north†. Having the character to act in correlation with personal and organizational values in the face of adversity is an extremely admirable quality, and is something that I wish to have in my possible self. Mr. Reinemund’s third â€Å"C† is the one that resonated with me the most, particularly because it is the only aspect of his leadership philosophy that cannot be readily learned. Commitment, Reinemund says, is the passionate, internal drive to succeed, and it is something that is ingrained in your personality. Although you can motivate yourself through other, extrinsic means, the â€Å"warrior’s ambition† that Mr. Reinemund describes is a burning internal passion for the work that is being done. This is another facet of an exemplary leader that cannot be left out. Badaracco writes about Aristotle’s â€Å"Golden Mean† in terms of leadership by describing the balance between having a high concern for oneself and having a high concern for others. By attaining this equilibrium, leaders can act ethically and morally to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This philosophy also relates to Badaracco’s four spheres of commitments that leaders have to navigate during each and every decision they make. Managing the four spheres is an integral part of being an exemplary leader and must be included in my definition of an exemplary leader. The last piece of leadership that I would like to emulate as an exemplary leader is the characteristics of a quiet leader. Modesty, self-restraint, patience, and careful, incremental moves can right, or even prevent, moral wrongdoings without blowing the issue out of proportion. The public displays of heroism, as coined by Badaracco, depicted in movies and television are usually extremely unnecessary and their emotionalism and lack of careful planning undercuts their credibility, while simultaneously decreasing the amount of empathy received from the listener. Being a quiet leader means doing the right thing, especially when nobody is looking, and that is why I admire such a quality and desire to be the quiet leader who allows his exemplary actions speak for him. Action Plan The third and final step to becoming an exemplary ethical leader is to formulate and execute an actionable leadership development plan, which outlines the steps necessary to transform the current self into the desired possible self. By identifying my strengths and weaknesses, and then identifying the ideal leader that I want to become, I can precisely calculate the discrepancy between the two, and what specific steps I need to take in order to become the exemplary leader I want to be. By using course concepts and relating them to my current self, I have come up with the following steps for my action plan: 1. Do not underestimate the weight of any one decision, no matter how seemingly insignificant it may be 2. Follow Badaracco’s steps to becoming a quiet leader 3. Apply Trevino Nelson’s 8 steps to recognized ethical dilemmas 4. Read and reflect on the characteristics of an Authentic Leader every day 5. Establish a strong support group to help assist my decision making and provide comprehensive unbiased feedback These five steps, if followed correctly, will create the optimal environment to foster my development as an exemplary leader. My action plan is conducive to the type of leader that I want to be, because it focuses on further improving my strengths, and transforming my weaknesses into strengths by utilizing concepts and strategies learned in class. The first step is the most important one, because due to my competitive nature, I have a tendency to rush decisions in order to complete tasks more efficiently, but in the long run, especially in the professional world, I must be able to recognize the ethicality of each decision I make. By analyzing every decision I make from now on, whether it is my choice of shampoo or a multi-million dollar contract, I will be able to acknowledge the ethical repercussions of each alternative. My second step is to follow Badaracco’s steps to becoming a quiet leader, particularly the second rule, which says to â€Å"pick your battles†, and outlines the concept of political capital. Leadership is not defined by how many times you â€Å"blow the whistle†, but how much of an impact you had when you did decide to take a stand. Consequentially, I must make ethical decisions like Machiavelli’s fox rather than the lion. By building political capital and using it wisely, the respect that colleagues, superiors, and employees show you will increase, and therefore your ability to influence them will also increase, which will allow you to lead with confidence. Trevino Nelson’s 8-Steps to ethical decision making are extremely important, because they provide a framework for which to analyze and come to a conclusion about any decision. The â€Å"action† piece of this step is simple: I have handwritten the steps on a small piece of paper and put it in my wallet, so that I can refer to it in any situation. By slowing down and analyzing each choice I make in terms of these 8 steps, I’ll be able to consistently make the best decision possible, which will instill confidence in my peers as well as show potential to my superiors. On the reverse side of my wallet-sized 8 steps, I have written the characteristics of an Authentic Leader, because I believe that simply being a quiet leader is not sufficient. Being a quiet leader is a great way to get things done, but in the long term may result with my leadership becoming â€Å"silent† leadership, wherein my peers and employees cannot easily see how I analyze ethical dilemmas and may start to infer that I rely on bottom-line statistics only. This is where the slippery slope begins, and my fourth step will counteract the possibility of being perceived as ethically neutral. My final step is to create a support group of people from different parts of my life, including peers such as friends and classmates, superiors (teachers and coaches), and subordinates such as the younger players on my hockey team. By establishing this group, I will be able to ask them to give me feedback on my projected personality. The first four steps of my action plan are important to my development as a leader, however they will be meaningless if what people perceive about me is different than what I want. Moreover, a support group will help me integrate my different lives, as Dean Reinemund spoke about in his lecture, by teaching me that in order to be perceived as an exemplary leader, I must have complete alignment between my espoused personal values and my in-use values in every aspect of my life. Solely having an action plan, however, will not give me the results I desire, which is why I must set both short and long term goals for myself in my journey to becoming an ethical leader. Short-term goals are imperative to maintaining my improvement in leadership skills, because without consistent feedback, it is impossible to gauge one’s progress. The support group I establish will provide me with that feedback. Specifically, I will create a point-based survey and ask each person in my support group to complete it. By doing this, I will have quantitative results at the end of each month to see which areas of my personality need improvement. By setting short-term goals, my competitive nature will enhance my desire to improve, until I reach my long-term goals. Perhaps the most challenging task of this assignment was to envision the evolution of my personality from a college student to a business leader, because I did not know exactly how to set long-term goals. After thinking it through, I believe that the most pertinent long-term goal that I can set is to reflect on my life as a leader, and have no decisions that I regret making. This seems vague, but it must be in order to work. By achieving short-term monthly goals, I will achieve my long-term goal as a result, which is the express purpose of short-term goals. If I can look back on my life as a leader when I retire, and I can honestly say that there is not a single decision that I made or failed to make that resulted in an unethical consequence, I will consider myself a success. Conclusion Throughout the course of this assignment, as well as the class as a whole, I have been exposed to completely new ways of analyzing situations and have been able to integrate those concepts and strategies into my daily life. By creating this action plan for the development of my character and leadership skills; I have begun the preparation necessary to successfully lead in the business world, which is an incredibly valuable head start on students in other business schools around the country. B. R. Ambedkar’s pessimistic quote regarding the ethics versus economics dynamic that I used earlier in the paper was a perfect way for me to gauge the effectiveness of my action plan. I believe that through the analysis of my current self, the reflection and projection of my possible self, and the creation of my leadership development plan, I have been able to disprove the mentality that â€Å"business ethics is an oxymoron† and begin to strengthen the mentality that â€Å"ethics is good business, and good business is ethical.† References 1. Sean Hannah, class lectures and PowerPoint presentations, 8/29/2012-12/4/2012 2. Hannah Avolio, Moral Potency: Building the Capacity for Character-Based Leadership 3. Trevino Nelson, Managing Business Ethics 4. Badaracco, Defining Moments 5. George, Sims, McLean, Mayer, Discovering Your Authentic Leadership 6. Badaracco, We Don’t Need Another Hero 7. Reinemund, class lecture 10/4/2012 View as multi-pages

An Effect of Mood-induced Emotions on Forgetting

An Effect of Mood-induced Emotions on Forgetting An effect of mood-induced emotions on forgetting non-retrieved personal autobiographical memories Demet Ay Abstract Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) will be investigated with emotional material. Autobiographical memory as a material for presented paradigm gains importance in terms of its emotional component. There are controversial findings about effect of emotional valence on RIF effect between psychological disorder people and control group. While having inhibitory deficit disorder might be related to less RIF effect for negative stimulus, present study also aims to find positivity bias toward emotional component autobiographical memory. Keywords: Retrieval-induced forgetting, emotion, autobiographical memory An effect of mood-induced emotions on forgetting non-retrieved personal autobiographical memories Moods have an influence on several psychological construct like verbal task performance (Gray, 2001), false memories (Storbeck Clore, 2005). Another crucial thing that mood impact on is what we remember (Blix Brennen, 2012) and forget (Bauml Kuhbandner, 2007) from our past. Not only remembering events from one’s personal life but also the fact that which memories and in what ways are forgotten gain importance in recent years (Barnier, Hung, Conway, 2004). Forgetting specific events from our past can be either intentionally or unintentionally, as it names suggested directed forgetting and retrieval-induced forgetting, respectively (Barnier et al., 2004). Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) is firstly investigated by Anderson, Bjork, and Bjork (1994). They define the problem of forgetting not in terms of capacity or real forgetting problem but accessibility problem because of retrieving some of items more than the others. To test which items not to be retrieved, they use retrieval-induced paradigm in which is composed of three special phase. In the original version of paradigm, they use word and associative cues such as fruit, vegetables, or car brands. Participants are first exposed to word pairs with specific cue and then they are shown half of items from one of the presented cue and then tested to retrieve all items. Consistent finding for different material among several studies show that practicing particular item inhibits sharing cue item therefore it is less likely remembered than unpracticed category (Murayama, Miyatsu, Buchli, Storm, 2014, for review). RIF effect has been demonstrated for different materials such as lexical c ues (Bajo, Gomez-Ariza, Fernandez, Marful, 2006), pictures (Ford et al., 2004), videos (Miguelez Garcia-Bajos, 2007) and so forth. Effect of emotion on retrieval-induced forgetting has two main questions (Bauml, Pastà ¶tter, Hanslmayr, 2010). First is about current emotional state of participants. Retrieval practice of either positive or neutral emotion-induced participants tend to forget more non-practiced and shared cue items than negative mood induced participants (Bauml, Pastà ¶tter, Hanslmayr, 2010; Bauml and Kuhbandner, 2007). Bauml and Kuhbandner (2007) find empirical evidence for negative state effect in which exposing negative mood during retrieval practice results in lacking of inhibition. Therefore, they remember more non-practice material from practiced category. Neither emotional material nor autobiographical memory gain rather little attendance but Barnier and his colleagues (2004) are firstly attempted to use one’s personal memory as a material for RIF paradigm recently. However, there are controversial findings about an effect of mood on unintentional forgetting resulting from retrieval practice. For example, Barnier and his colleagues (2004) find that participants tend only to forget neutral stimulus, words, rather than emotional positive and negative one when they manipulate participants’ reported autobiographical memory as positive, neutral, and negative. In other words, retrieval-induced forgetting effect occurs only for neutral stimulus. Another consistent finding about remembering or forgetting emotional stimuli and investigating intensity of each stimuli show similar results with above mentioned experiment (Kuhbandner, Bauml, Stiedl, 2009). However, Harris, Sharman, Barnier, and Moulds (2010) find positivity bias tow ard emotional material of autobiographical memory with dysphoric patients. Hauer and Wessel (2006) also find consistently positivity bias in which means remembering more positive memory than negative memory with an addition of classic RIF effect in their first experiment. Since RIF effect is considered as resulting from inhibition (see Storm Levy, 2012, for review), examining the effect for people who have mood-induced disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD, Amir, Badour, Freese, 2009) and major depression (Groome Sterkaj, 2010) is crucial to investigate effect of mood on RIF effect. Amir and his colleagues (2009) implement the paradigm to PTSD group and either non-trauma exposed group or trauma exposed group. They find the difference between both of control groups and PTSD group in a way that PTSD patients cannot have an ability to inhibit irrelevant material so they do not demonstrate RIF effect. In line with this background, elicited autobiographical memories by participants with regard to each emotion-induced words getting from PANAS (Watson, Clark, Tellegen, 1988) will be used as manipulation across participants and it will hypothesized that memories included negativity will be more impacted from RIF effect based on Harris and colleagues (2010) and Wessel and Hauer (2006) findings. Dependent variable of presented study will be the fact that which material will be remembered and which of them will not be retrieved. Further analysis will be made in terms of emotional ingredients of each emotion. Since population attending this experiment does not have any mood-related disorder, lack of inhibition for positivity will be less expected. Method Participants Participants will be recruited from Yeditepe University psychology undergraduate students by the flyer. Mean age of them will be most probably in between nineteen and twenty-two. Each participants report their past history about the fact that whether they experience mood-related disorder in any part of their life. No one reports such experience. And none of the participants have taken memory course since then. Informed consent will be taken from them and they will be debriefed about an aim of the experiment at the end. Materials Modified version of retrieval-induced paradigm which is investigated by Anderson and his colleagues (1994) will be used in this experiment. Modification was made by Barnier and his colleagues (2004) in order to make it applicable to autobiographical memory. In terms of this procedure, participants’ own past memory that is elicited by them will be used as material. They are willing to report memory in terms of emotional words not just like happy or sad but further higher-order emotions like shame and guilty. Since there are extreme controversies about theory of emotion (Ortony Turner, 1990), affective statements in positive and negative affect scale (PANAS, Watson et al., 1988) in the context of Turkish statements (Genà §Ãƒ ¶z, 2000) will be used as category-cue. Turkish version of scale is consisted of twenty affective statement, ten is closed to positive remaining is closed to negative emotional statements, and each participants will be required to elicit a memory for each emotion-included words. These memories will be used as a material for retrieval-induced paradigm. For control condition, each participant will also elicit two memories in terms of give no valence random word. Since I have enough number of participants, differences between these random words will not be a problem. Procedure Experiment will consist of four distinct phase based on Barnier and his colleagues (2004) experiment in which firstly investigate autobiographical memory in the RIF paradigm. Elicitation phase will involve that memories will be recorded for each participants orally by using audio recorder. Participants will be required to answer five wh- questions specifically. These recording will be transferred into written type by blind people. Rest of the experiment will be conducted a week after from elicitation phase. Deception will take place by saying the fact that an aim of the experiment is to investigate emotional valence of past memories of university students. Learning phase of the experiment will take place individually. Each participant will be shown their own memories elicited a week ago. During retrieval practice phase participants will be half of either exposed to closed-to-positive valence word’s memory or vice versa randomly. Name of each variable will be used as Anderson a nd his colleagues (1994) used. At the final phase of the classic retrieval-induced paradigm, each participant will be asked to retrieve all memories. At the end, emotional intensity of each category cue and elicited memories will be collected by 5 type likert scale. Expected results In the first place, relative emotional intensity among each triggered words will be rated to participants by five likert-type scale by attributing 1 to extremely negative valence and 5 to extremely positive valence after experimental paradigm will be done. Furthermore, relative emotional intensity of each autobiographical memory will also be rated by participants. Results will be expected in a way that hypothesis is constructed. Series of one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) will be used to test hypothesis. To begin with, randomly assigned elicited memories in terms of category cue will be manipulated. Each cue will be analyzed within themselves. Finally, closed-to-positive and closed-to-negative memories (10 for each) will be compared to each other. Positivity bias will also be expected consistent with Hauer and Wessel (2006) finding. Discussion Retrieval-induced forgetting can be said that it has functional importance in terms of different situations such as psychological disorders (Amir et al., 2009). They found lack of inhibition for negative emotional material in PTSD patients. This finding suggests that if neurological basis of RIF can be reliably investigated then PTSD can be figured out by this method. Present study also aims to find specific effect of emotional autobiographical memory on inhibition in which is regarded most probably as reason for RIF (Storm Levy, 2012). Investigating an effect of emotion on any construct is one of the hardest but crucial questions. Result of this experiment will give rise to further questions into the field in a way that how each specific emotion-included material affects unintentional forgetting for people. Neurological basis of the RIF as a phenomenon is recently investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI, Kuhl, Dudukovich, Kahn, Wagner, 2007), and electrophysiological methods (Hellerstedt Johansson, 2014). According to Johansson and his colleagues (2007), ERP studies should shed light first possible correlates of ERP with regard to RIF, and inhibitory mechanisms with regard to individual differences on RIF scores. Further studies about neurological basis of RIF should be accounted for possible specific location activation during retrieval practice in terms of emotional content of the material. I expect special amygdala activation during retrieval practice when negative-correlated stimulus is presented. Reference List Amir, N., Badour, C. L., Freese, B. (2009). The effect of retrieval on recall of information in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder.Journal of anxiety disorders,23(4), 535-540. Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A., Bjork, E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: retrieval dynamics in long-term memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,20(5), 1063. Bajo, M. T., Gà ³mez-Ariza, C. J., Fernandez, A., Marful, A. (2006). Retrieval-induced forgetting in perceptually driven memory tests. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(5), 1185. Barnier, A., Hung, L., Conway, M. (2004). Retrievalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ induced forgetting of emotional and unemotional autobiographical memories.Cognition and Emotion,18(4), 457-477. Bà ¤uml, K. H., Kuhbandner, C. (2007). Remembering can cause forgetting—but not in negative moods.Psychological Science,18(2), 111-115. Bà ¤uml, K. H., Pastà ¶tter, B., Hanslmayr, S. (2010). Binding and inhibition in episodic memory—Cognitive, emotional, and neural processes. Neuroscience Biobehavioral Reviews, 34(7), 1047-1054. Blix, I., Brennen, T. (2012). Retrieval-induced forgetting after trauma: A study with victims of sexual assault.Cognition emotion,26(2), 321-331. Ford, R. M., Keating, S., Patel, R. (2004). Retrievalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ induced forgetting: A developmental study. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22(4), 585-603. Genà §Ãƒ ¶z, T. (2000). Positive and Negative Affect Schedule: A study of validity and reliability. Tà ¼rk Psikoloji Dergisi. Gray, J. R. (2001). Emotional modulation of cognitive control: Approach–withdrawal states double-dissociate spatial from verbal two-back task performance.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,130(3), 436. Harris, C. B., Sharman, S. J., Barnier, A. J., Moulds, M. L. (2010). Mood and retrievalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ induced forgetting of positive and negative autobiographical memories.Applied Cognitive Psychology,24(3), 399-413. Hauer, B. J., Wessel, I. (2006). Retrievalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ induced forgetting of autobiographical memory details.Cognition Emotion,20(3-4), 430-447. Hellerstedt, R., Johansson, M. (2014). Electrophysiological correlates of competitor activation predict retrieval-induced forgetting.Cerebral Cortex,24(6), 1619-1629. Kuhbandner, C., Bà ¤uml, K. H., Stiedl, F. C. (2009). Retrieval-induced forgetting of negative stimuli: The role of emotional intensity.Cognition and Emotion,23(4), 817-830. Kuhl, B. A., Dudukovic, N. M., Kahn, I., Wagner, A. D. (2007). Decreased demands on cognitive control reveal the neural processing benefits of forgetting.Nature neuroscience,10(7), 908-914. Murayama, K., Miyatsu, T., Buchli, D., Storm, B. C. (2014). Forgetting as a consequence of retrieval: A meta-analytic review of retrieval-induced forgetting. 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Manuscript :: essays research papers

ManuScript is a simple, music-based programming language developed to write plug-ins for the Sibelius music processor. It is based on Simkin, an embedded scripting language developed by Simon Whiteside (www.larts.co.uk/simkin.html), and has been extended by him and Graham Westlake. (Simkin is a spooky pet name for Simon sometimes found in Victorian novels.) Rationale In adding a plug-in language to Sibelius we were trying to address several different issues: Music notation is complex and infinitely extensible, so some users will sometimes want to add to a music notation program to make it cope with these new extensions. It is useful to allow frequently repeated operations (e.g. opening a MIDI file and saving it as a score) to be automated, using a system of scripts or macros. Certain more complex techniques used in composing or arranging music can be partly automated, but there are too many to include as standard features in Sibelius. There were several conditions that we wanted to meet in deciding what language to use: The language had to be simple, as we want normal users (not just seasoned programmers) to be able to use it. We wanted plug-ins to be usable on any computer, as the use of PC?s, Macs and other platforms is widespread in the music world. We wanted the tools to program in the language to be supplied with Sibelius. We wanted musical concepts (pitch, notes, bars) to be easily expressed in the language. We wanted programs to be able to talk to Sibelius easily (to insert and retrieve information from scores). We wanted simple dialog boxes and other user interface elements to be easily programmed. C/C++, the world?s ?standard? programming language(s), were unsuitable as they are not easy for the non-specialist to use, they would need a separate compiler, and you would have to recompile for each different platform you wanted to support (and thus create multiple versions of each plug-in). The language Java was more promising as it is relatively simple and can run on any platform without recompilation. However, we would still need to supply a compiler for people to use, and we could not express musical concepts in Java as directly as we could with a new language. So we decided to create our own language which is interpreted so it can run on different platforms; is integrated into Sibelius without any need for separate tools, and can be extended with new musical concepts at any time. The ManuScript language that resulted is very simple.

Gabriel Garcia Marquezs A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Essay

Trisha â€Å"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" Critical Analysis If I ask you to picture an angel, what do you see? Is it a vibrant white, majestically dressed individual with lush and strong wings who commands reverence with his presence? What does this ethereal creature stand for? Righteousness? Protector of good and the purest form of a celestial being besides God? If you have read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s â€Å"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings† then you may have been introduced to a conflicting image of an angel. This angel is in no way similar to the one described above. Actually, we are not even sure he is an angel. What we do know after reading this story is that the creature presented represents the overwhelming need of humans to understand and interpret every facet of their lives. The angel does not fit the general consensus of what an angel is and leaves human expectations unmet. This story embodies the nature of humans to explain, categorize, and label any affair that is not already so. Marquez’s story is written in a fairy tale format with strong magic realism elements throughout. This style combines real, normal details of day to day life with fantasy and blurs the reader’s division of reality and magic. This method of writing emphasizes the attempt of man to apply logic and knowledge to all matters. Marquez is so skilled in this technique that we come to view the fact o...

Politics and Stem Cell Research Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Argu

Politics and Stem Cell Research The President’s Council on Bioethics published â€Å"Monitoring Stem Cell Research† in 2004. This report was written in response to President Bush’s comments regarding research of human stem cells on August 9, 2001. President Bush announced that he was going to make federal funding available for research that involved existing lines of stem cells that came from embryos. He is the first president to provide any type of financial support for the research of human stem cells. A Council was created with people who are educated in the field of stem cells to help monitor the research and to recommend guidelines and consider the ethical consequences that this research could create. This report is an â€Å"update† given by the President’s Council in January of 2004 to make the public aware of the significant developments in the science and medical aspects of stem cell research. It also describes the ethical, legal and political implications that stem cell research may create. However, since the research is still in its beginning stages, this â€Å"update† does not describe a complete or definitive study of stem cells nor does it provide specific guidelines or regulations. This is a report that is suppose to help the President, Congress and general public make better-informed decisions as to the direction that we should go with stem cells. This report does a fairly comprehensive job on educating the public to the definition of stem cells, describing them as â€Å"a diverse group of remarkable multipotent cells that are relatively undifferentiated and unspecialized cells of the body.† Stem cells have the capacity for unlimited self-renewal and the possibility to produce differentiated descendant cell types. The main in... ...rstanding exactly how they function and what their potential may be. The Council neglects to discuss what the boundaries should be in regards to research and whether not it is ethically or morally right to use and destroy embryos for the sake of medical advancement. They also do not clearly state who should pay for the research on stem cells. Since President Bush appoints the Council, there has been criticism that the committee is bias towards his views. In general, the report is ambiguous and does not specifically come to any concrete conclusions, nor does it provide any new information. Sources: The President's Council on Bioethics, Washington, D.C. January 2004. www.bioethics.gov News Briefings. U.S. News Libraray http://www.usnews.com/usnews/briefings/stemcell0701.htm Russo, Eugene. The Scientist: No decision on stem cells. Daily News. January 16, 2004

Save the Earth, Save Mankind

Good morning Miss and my fellow classmates. Today, I would like to talk to you about topic on â€Å"save the earth and save mankind†. My dearest audience, imagine it’s after class now and you’re heading back to your car under the bright hot sun. After you get in the car, you grab some tissue and wipe all your sweat. What would you do after using the tissue? Well, let’s be frank. We wind down the window and just throw them outside. It is fun doing it when you see no cars behind or beside you. Let’s pollute the earth and hopefully clog the drain.We would love to swim in the flood. Next, imagine you just woke up from your sleep, went to wash up while leaving the air conditioner on. After washing up, you feel like having a cold soft drink in your room. So you open up the fridge saw some chocolate bar, hesitate a while, grab a can of soft drink and went back to your room. While you’re about to step into your room, you feel like having a bar of cho colate, so you go back to the fridge, get a bar of chocolate and went upstairs. Now the most enjoyable magical moment in this morning is the moment you step into your room.With a can of soft drinks, a bar of chocolate and most importantly is the cold enjoyable CFC releasing room. What more to ask in such relaxing morning? Imagine your friend called you up and he asked you to come over to his walking distance house. What would you do? Well of course you start your car and drive to his house because it is an irrational act to walk to your friend’s house. Reason because you’ll be a victim to kidnappers? Unfortunately no, but something even worse than being kidnapped, it is because the sun will melt you down and the distance will break your leg.Let’s drive more and burn more fuel to release more carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide to the air. Who says we cannot fight god’s creation? We can increase the earth temperature and defeat mother earth with greenhouse effect! Imagine you’re a person with the authority to voice out in your country. In order for a country to develop, the best way is to develop land. So let’s organize campaign to support deforestation! Let’s celebrate for every single tree being cut down and you’ll see new project in the future. Let’s support burning down more forest and hope for a better economy.Burn more and increase the greenhouse temperature. We would love to inhale polluted air but not with forest around us. Imagine you’re living in the arctic, freezing cold, no place to go during winter so you just stay at home and pray that the people from other region can help melting the ice by increasing global temperature. The best part of melting the ice is not to solve the cold temperature but to increase the sea level. Let’s pray and hope for a rise in sea level. Let’s cover more land with sea and with this increase of sea level let’s hope for another mega tsunami.We shall wait for a brand new video on this beautiful tragedy. Let us all leave the air conditioner in the room turned on while we’re not using. Let’s drive more and burn more fuel. Let’s burn more and increase the earth temperature. Let’s increase the temperature and melt the ice. Let’s melt the ice and increase the sea level. Let’s increase the sea level and pray for more tragedy. Now please take a minute to think! In the end, who is the one suffering? Who is the one will pray for a better day to live? Who is the one begging for another chance to fix the problem?We are the one. But don’t be afraid. I’m here to remind you the ways of preventing. Let me start with the easiest way which is start recycling. Since young, we were all taught to learn how to recycle by differentiating different types of material that can be recycled such as glass, paper, aluminum and plastic. This is the easiest way that we can start to help saving the earth. By recycling, we reduce factory production and therefore it reduces the air pollution as well. With one stone, we can kill 2 birds, it’s worth a shot.

Child Responsibilities Essay

Many parents may be very strict on their kids when it comes to doing things like playing with fire, using power tools, having a job, or even owning a pocket knife, but I on the other hand, disagree. Although I understand that it’s very dangerous for kids to be handling such things, it also builds their character. You wouldn’t just allow any kid to be in charge of such thing, they must have maturity and responsibility up to a certain point to be able to be trusted in these situations. A speech titled â€Å"5 Dangerous Things you should let your kid do† by Gever Tulley on TED.com talks about kids who are allowed and even encouraged to do things most parents would never dare to let their kids be involved in. Tulley discusses how kids who participate in these activities build strong character. It’s good for kids to be in these kinds of environments as long as they already have responsibility up to a certain level. An issue similar to this that is thrown around in politic and economic discussions now days is child labor. Should we allow kids to have jobs? Should families who are economically struggling allow their kids to work in order to bring in enough food and necessities to the family? I don’t see a problem in child labor. Like Tulley, I agree with these ideas and think they build better personalities and make a child more understanding. Although, I do not think that a family should be able to force a kid to work, it’s also important to a kid’s childhood that they get a chance to be a kid, and not have to worry about work. The earlier a person starts working, the bigger chance they have to be successful in life. I can understand why some parent’s wouldn’t be willing to let their kids be in such environments, these environments can be very unsafe sometimes. A kid could have the possibility of cutting a finger off, or doing something that they would have to live with for the rest of their lives, but with adult supervision this is less likely to happen. Although UNICEF has stated that children are more likely to get hurt then adults because they have yet to learn what not to do, we have to understand that getting hurt can happen in any activity that a person participates in, that’s just part of life.