1.What is the downside of adaptation? That is, how does adaptation cause us to d
ID: 3458803 • Letter: 1
Question
1.What is the downside of adaptation? That is, how does adaptation cause us to do things that actually lead us be less happy?
2.What is the upside of adaptation? That is, how can you make adaptation work for you to make you happier?
3.Why is it that people will give tremendous sums of money to individuals but not to other tragedies where we cannot see individuals but the event is much more atrocious?
4. When people were asked to be rational in the experiments what happened? Why?
5.How can short-term emotions have long-term effects?
Explanation / Answer
Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.
(Answer) (1) In psychology, adaptation is when behaviour or stimulus is changed in accordance with internal and/ or external elements. Adaptation might cause a person to be less happy because the process of adaptation does not generally entail finding a solution or changing the situation but rather changing oneself to fit the situation.
(2) The upside about adaptation is that is helps one cope with issues that cannot be solved. Evolution has been the greatest illustration of adaptation. This is where our animal ancestors could not particularly change the way the earth was and so to survive, they changed to fit the dynamics of the earth. Adaptation has its upside when we recognise that it needs to be used only when a situation cannot be changed.
(3) When a person gives money to help out an individual, the problem gets a face and an identity. This makes it easy for the donor to sympathise with the individual. Furthermore, along with not being able to meet and see individuals affected by disasters, it is also that, donor are not entirely trustworthy of managing organisations. A donor would generally want to make sure that the money they donate might get into the right hands and not get caught up in bureaucracy or the hands of corrupt officials.
(4) Humans tend to make decisions based on their instinct and heuristics. Although this may seem like an irrational response, it is more than just a gut-feeling or short cut. When people in the experiment were asked to make the rational choice, they considered the details well and weighed their options. This led them to make improper decisions in the long term. They were unable to take into account the emotional variables, their thoughts based on experience and other such factors. They simply accounted for the elements that were before them which led to a cognitive bias. According to an experiment by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, human beings are actually incapable of being completely rational.
(5) Short-term memories, like the name suggests, are remembered only for a short while. However, these memories can be subjected to extreme emotions just like every other memory. When an individual might recall a short-term memory that might anger them, they might generally react impulsively. This reaction might be able to do long-term damage and hence have long-term effects.
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