Submitted for Course SSC 130
Essentials of Psychology
April 12, 2013

Case Study Number One: The Case of Confusion 1. The subfield of psychology that will be of greatest relevance is the cognitive perspective. It focuses on how people think, understand and know about the world. Its emphasis is on how thinking about the worlds influence on our behavior. 2. The cognitive perspective would be most helpful. The focus of this perspective is how people think, understand, and know about the world. The common emphasis is on how people understand and think about the world. 3. Personally, I think Alexis surfing the web and looking at self-help books is a bad idea, she could be looking into all the wrong things and make herself believe she’s worse than she really is, she could end up self-diagnosing. The dangers of this approach are making herself believe she’s worse than she really is. 4. The advice I’d give to Alexis is that she needs to see a therapist and talking things out so she doesn’t get angry anymore. If she saw a therapist, she could be put on medicine and it would control her moods.

Case Study Number Two: The Case of the Cautious Pilot 1. Captain Mueller and his co-pilot sat in the dark cockpit to get their eyes adjusted to the night time before they took off for flight to Dallas from Boston. 2. The ‘rods’ are thin, cylindrical receptor cells that are highly sensitive to light, they also play a key role in peripheral vision. Since the pilots sat in the dark cock-pit the rods in their eyes were more sensitive to the light he saw. 3. The cues he used were that the light was faint but growing brighter, it also stood out against the darkness of the sky because it appeared closer and to be moving. It was difficult to determine whether it was moving because his aircraft was also moving. 4. The object was more noticeable to the