I need some interesting topics for my extra credit papers for my psychology class, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to send them to me until August 10, 2011 (that’s my last day of summer classes).

I already did one on the ultimatum game, which you can read in my blog post from July 09, 2011.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #194: Recently Rupert Murdoch, as part of investigation into corruption at one of his newspapers, was attacked in courtroom by someone wielding a custard pie. Historically, people used to throw food at other people as a sign of protest, particularly eggs and tomatoes. Would you ever throw food at anyone? Perhaps in a college dorm food fight? Or have you ever had food thrown at you? Tell the first story that comes to mind.

I don’t think that I would ever throw food at anyone in protest or rebellion. It’s obviously wasteful to throw food, but regardless, it doesn’t seem like something that I would do unless I was in a life-threatening or harming situation and throwing something at my attacker’s face would give me a good-enough opportunity to avoid pain, injury, or death.

I (fortunately) do not live in a dormitory at my university, but if the members of my apartment randomly chose one day to have a food fight, I would not participate and instead would try to encourage the management to cancel the event.

I don’t think I’ve had food thrown directly at me before with harmful intent, but I have been hit by food when I was in high school because the people I used to sit by in the cafeteria during lunch liked to argue with each other, and thought it was a good idea to throw food at each other to prove their point. Once in a while, I would be in the line of fire, but when that happened, I usually shifted my seat and started eating my friends’ food so they wouldn’t have anything left to throw.

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

This is a very short paper I wrote for my Shakespeare class about my favorite quote from Much Ado About Nothing.

I’ve been slacking on putting up good blog posts lately because I’ve been busy, so I decided to put this up in today’s post, even though it might only make real sense to people who have already read Much Ado About Nothing. It does, however, slightly touch on psychology, which I know I’ve written about a lot before, and I know a lot of you seem to enjoy, based on your responses to my work.

A line in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing that I found particularly memorable was in Act 2, Scene 3 when Benedick says “Ha! ‘Against my will, I’ve been told to bring you in to dinner.’ There’s a double meaning in that.” This was said after Benedick overhears a set-up conversation among Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio about how much Beatrice loves him, and then Beatrice comes out to get him for dinner because she was sent out against her will. Relative to the remainder of the play, this line is at the end of the event that marks the beginning of Benedick’s change in attitude that ultimately leads to his marriage with Beatrice. This is immediately before Beatrice falls for the same trick and starts believing that Benedick loves her.

The fact that Benedick believes the conversation and believes that there is a double meaning in what Beatrice says is what started the remainder of the plot between Benedick and Beatrice. If Benedick had not believed what he had heard and knew that it was a set-up, he would not have changed his attitude towards Beatrice. However, because he believed that Beatrice loved him, he adjusted his behavior such that he acted in a manner a loved man would. I think this is extremely effective at getting the point across to the reader because it gives insight into Benedick’s mind and opens up an opportunity for us to relate to Benedick’s situation with a situation of our own where our attitude made a difference in our actions.

Benedick’s change in attitude also emphasizes the importance of preliminary attitudes when approaching a new or unfamiliar situation. Benedick and Beatrice had a history of making fun of each other and arguing at every chance they had, and if they had continued living with that attitude, they would have never seen the positive sides of each other. However, because of the deception and the change in attitude, Benedick and Beatrice were able to see through each other’s covers and realize that they had enough in common to become good friends, and later, spouses.