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Joaquin Moreno

Psychology 1010

Professor Thomas Hanson

31 July 2020

Topic 1: Research Result #2

Part 1:

The Big Five Personality traits are a grouping of traits that can determine one’s

personality with positive and negative aspects. The five traits are Openness, conscientiousness,

extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These will then be evaluated and combined to

determine one’s personality type. With this evaluation, we can expect certain behaviors and

mentalities for people based on their results. Like with this research study they have already

made some correlations with their behavior towards the internet and their personality traits.

Simply by looking at the scores the study provided, the people they correlated with this

poor internet behavior seem to have a pretty negative score for many traits. Low agreeableness,

low conscientiousness, high openness, and high neuroticism. The correlation between having low

agreeableness and problematic internet use is easy to see. Somebody who has a high value in

agreeableness tends to be very friendly, polite, trusting of others, affectionate, etc. They are

someone that would easily make friends and feel empathy for others. When someone has a low

score in that trait we can expect the opposite. They will have very little social life, low affection,

and they may struggle to make friends. Which makes the internet such an addictive and

comforting tool for them. It is always there for them and will always do exactly what they ask of

it to do. Endless amount of entertainment, it could even be considered a distraction from the
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struggle their daily life gives them. This then directly correlates with the adolescents also having

high neuroticism. This usually means being moody, struggling with mental problems such as

anxiety and frustration, depression, and many more. Someone with these problems would easily

get attached to the internet because they will find it to be an escape from their reality, they won’t

have to deal with their problems while using the internet. This is also a trait that I would usually

imagine being followed by low conscientiousness, which it was in this study. This is a trait

categorized as being low in someone who is weakly goal-oriented, doesn’t enjoy socializing as

much as others, and isn’t driven. Again connecting to getting attached to the internet due to their

lacking desire to do anything in their real life. And lastly, the high openness which usually is a

positive trait, but in these circumstances, it’s even worse for the internet abusing adolescents.

High openness usually entails somebody open to new things and very curious. Knowing that the

internet has endless websites and forms of entertainment it will make it even harder for anyone to

not get addicted and spend hours exploring new things online. The internet can be addictive for

anybody really, third variables that may also be affecting these people are popular on social

media. Very common in high school, the desire to get likes and be known on social media is very

high and desire for popularity may be affecting these adolescents as well.

Part 2:

I gotta say I am a little bit surprised by these studies simply because I would expect

internet addictions/inability to control internet use to appear in almost anybody, not just the

people with these scores. Without a doubt, people with these personality traits (Low

conscientiousness, high neuroticism, etc.) will be more susceptible to having an addiction but

I’ve noticed in my life that the majority of people my age today also struggle with putting down
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their phone. We have become so attached to our phones and social media that I think many of the

students in SLCC would agree that they spend more hours than they would like on social media

or just the internet in general. I too struggle myself, it’s just a constant stream of entertainment at

your fingertips. And for that reason, I am surprised that they didn’t find Problematic Internet Use

in almost all of the adolescents tested. I don’t think one needs these traits to have a problem; it

can happen to even the best of us.

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Topic 2: Research Result #5

Part 1:

Sleep has proven to be a necessary thing for humans to work properly and develop

effectively. Despite science’s inability to fully understand what’s going on in our brains while

we sleep, it still seems to be a necessity, without it people would go insane. Some think sleep is

time in the day for our brains to rest after all the hard work it has gone through during the day

but our brains are even more active in our sleep than during the day. A lot more connections and

messages are being sent all around the brain during sleep hours. Sleep is a time for our brains to

process everything that’s been going on, store important thoughts and memories, and it allows us

to effectively keep progressing and moving forward day to day.

Neurogenesis I believe is a big reason why infants who get quality sleep will have better

social skills when they are older. Neurogenesis is the process by which new neurons are formed

in the brain allowing further development to take place. With these new neurons building and

growing the brain can store mass amounts of new information every day. The brain can store

valuable information/experiences and dispose of unuseful information. This is extremely

important for infants because they are always watching and learning from other humans. They

can learn new social situations, how to speak, what mannerisms to use, what emotions to convey,

etc. All very necessary skills to be an effective socializer. If an infant is unable to get the good

quality sleep their brain needs, they may not have time in the night to store this information, and

it may even not be able to tell apart the useful information and bad information causing it to store

anything it has. This along with memory storage will be affected a lot. We also store memories

in our sleep and just like with learned things our brain keeps what it needs and disposes of what
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we don’t. These memories build character and build personality, if our brain is unable to get

sleep to story these we may have a very poor sense of self and that would then heavily impact

our ability to connect with others and socialize. Sleep is a necessity that our body needs, humans

take it for granted too often and we need to learn to appreciate it and sleep as much as we can to

be as healthy as we can.

Part 2:

The results did in fact change my perspective and sleep and human development. I

always knew sleep was important but I didn’t know it would drastically affect one’s ability to

socialize. I always thought social skills were something learned at the moment while doing it but

I realized that we also need time to store those learned experiences in our sleep, therefore making

sleep part of the equation. I myself have struggled to get quality sleep especially during high

school and I could tell it was affecting me. Back then I simply thought I was tired which was

why I felt sluggish and unable to socialize or be “fun”. But after this course and reading more

about sleeping I’ve realized that sleep wasn’t just making me feel tired but it was also impacting

my desire to socialize and create new memories. It affects us dramatically, but we can’t even tell.

After reading this study I will always make sure that my child (when I have one) gets a good

night’s sleep every night, no exceptions. I want my child to be able to make friends with ease and

have fun socializing. I want my child to effectively store memories and learn from past

experiences, I will make sure they sleep because I regret not getting more of it myself.