Distortion of Reality: Quinn Colwell

Small head, Big Body, Endless Potentiality

• ·         I chose to make my image the way I did to show that you should never be ‘big headed’ about anything. I chose to make the shoulders broader for the reason of emphasizing the fact that the head is small. The story relates to the image because even though there is a small head, it shows that there is room for expansion and that there is no reason to be ‘big headed’ and stuck up. They both lend power to each other because the text says there is endless potentiality whereas the image looks limited.

Implicit Bias and Personality Theory

       People tend to believe that personality and bias are irreversible and that they cannot change, but some seem to believe that it is possible. People make their personality what they want it to be because of biases and these tend to shape what we perceive and who we are deep inside. In the NPR Personality Theory podcast, they went to dive deeper into the wonders of personality and discover if it possible to change who you are by going deep inside and rewiring the personality of the person. They say that “we need to believe in a consistency within us and others”, but yet we still have biases that contradict statements like this. In the podcast, they went into a prison (correctional facility), where they talked to an inmate named Dan. In an interview, Dan stated that “it was easier to be no good”, and this shows that even working with topics that are rooted deep within a person, there are still choices that can change and manipulate the outcomes and shape of their personality. The general public has their own opinions on personality and the reversal and driving motives that can and will shape the way they think, and this can tag biases into the mix. Biases can be shaped and molded by the lifestyle and the daily routine of the individual. The Sports Illustrated article titled “Higher Education”, dove into the life of a black Amish man in Ohio. It leans on the biases of the people in the town that had seen him as a stereotypical African American, and less of a person, even though they hadn’t met him and didn’t know much about him. He became the coach of the basketball team in their town and many didn’t believe that he would make a good enough coach, turns out they were wrong and wrong again. The citizens of the town believed that coach, due to stereotypical biases, would be a bad influence on their children and that they shouldn’t associate with him. The reason for the people of the town to give this assumption of coach is that they used their past experiences and their biases on him and gave him a bad wrap. But after coach had been in the town for a while, they began to change their view of him and they altered their biases and they didn’t think badly of him. This shows that people can change their personality and their biases, it just takes time to do so. Coach is a person who was persistent and he didn’t focus on what the citizens of the town thought of him and kept doing what he was doing and pushed through and he eventually became a figure of the town. Coach’s personality would come out in the games that he would be at. In the article, it stated that “coach was too stubborn to call a time-out” and this shows that coach was persistent and he didn’t back down from a challenge and he faced these difficulties face to face. Throughout the article, it showed that people can change their biases and adapt to newer surroundings. Due to coach being a large part of the town, the mistakes that he thought he should be “punished” for, the people “pretended” it away. A person’s personality is the core of who they are and this can transcend into who they believe they are (i.e. male or female). Some people in different cultures feel that being someone you don’t resemble is a “disease”, but in reality it's just who you feel you are. In the NPR podcast: Sissies, it went over how people feel about someone who is gay. One part in the episode, a man said to his son, who was gay, that there was a hospital that could “cure” him. Being gay has a direct correlation towards to your personality because, alike to your personality, it is who you think you are. This also can connect to being transgender. People who think they are what they don’t resemble. This is a part of a person’s personality because it’s who they feel they are.