HW 56 - Interviews & Survey Question

Part 1:

1. What is your definition of friends?

2. Do you make friends with others based on how they look?

3. What evokes you to talk to other people before knowing them in the first place?

4. Do you often make friends with others for your own benefit? If yes, will you blacklist/ lower your friends’ importance on your list of friends when he/she refused to do what you ask? Or vice versa, where if they offer more, you will tempt to treat them better?

5. What is the first, top requirement that all your friends need to have in order to become your friend?

6. What kinds of people have the first priority to become your friend?

Part 2:

1.What is your definition of friends?

Friend is someone who is willing to share their happiness and sorrow with me, and also willing to listen to my own.

2. Do you make friends with others based on how they look?

To be honest, yes. Because if I don’t know someone, I can only know them by how they look. If they look comfortable to me, then is easier to talk to them and be able conform into the relationship.

3.What evokes you to talk to other people before knowing them in the first place?

Curiosity and I like to meet people. So I can just walk up to them and talk to anyone, is part of my social skill.

4.Do you often make friends with others for your own benefit? If yes, will you blacklist/ lower your friends’ importance on your list of friends when he/she refused to do what you ask? Or vice versa, where if they offer more, you will tempt to treat them better?

Not really. I respect others and if they don’t want to do it, I respect their choice. I won’t get mad or treat them differently just because they don’t want to do something.

5.What is the first, top requirement that all your friends need to have in order to become your friend?

In order to be my friends, I expect them to know me well enough.

6.What kinds of people have the first priority to become your friend?

Someone who is nice and has similar personality as me.
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1.What is your definition of friends?

Friends are someone who has the same “channel” as me, such as similar interests and personality. Also is someone who cares or look out for each other.

2.Do you make friends with others based on how they look?

Yes, because when you don’t know someone, you must depend on how they look in order to form relationships with them.

3.What evokes you to talk to other people before knowing them in the first place?

Before knowing them, I based my intuition to talk to the others. Often times I based on people’s first impressions, and their actions. People usually are friendly and polite when you first met them, so is easy to just talk to them and get to know each other.

4.Do you often make friends with others for your own benefit? If yes, will you blacklist/ lower your friends’ importance on your list of friends when he/she refused to do what you ask? Or vice versa, where if they offer more, you will tempt to treat them better?

No, at some level everybody is taking benefits from their friends to make themselves happy and I am totally aware of this. But if I call them my “friends”, then I will just accept who they are. If I get mad, it sounds like I treat them as “tools”, and not human. I respect my friends, and no matter what they do or how they act, unless is something very serious and big, I won’t get disappointed or mad or even lower their importance on my list. I totally respect my friends and their personality, and I know them from who they really are so no surprise or higher expectations on my friends.

5.What is the first, top requirement that all your friends need to have in order to become your friend?

I think all my friends needs to have similar type of upbringing from their parents. Like basic manners and respect for each others. For me, it is important that they have a high sense of moral, and act “normally”. Or else, it is hard to get along with others who has totally different upbringing from some other culture that I am not familiar with.

6.What kinds of people have the first priority to become your friend?

Talkative and friendly people.
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1.What is your definition of friends?

My definition of friends is someone who will always be there when you need them.

2. Do you make friends with others based on how they look?

Yes and No. If you meant how they dress up themselves, then no. But if you are talking about how they look in terms of the first impression that they offer to the other, then yes. Because meeting strangers is difficult to break the wall into conversations, so it is extremely important that the person that you are talking to makes you comfortable.

3. What evokes you to talk to other people before knowing them in the first place?

I depend on the situation. If you are talking about random strangers on the street, then is easy to talk to them because you will not see them again. But if you are talking about forming a relationship with that person, then I will talk to them based on how I think of that person although I am often not the one who talk to the others first.

4. Do you often make friends with others for your own benefit? If yes, will you blacklist/ lower your friends’ importance on your list of friends when he/she refused to do what you ask? Or vice versa, where if they offer more, you will tempt to treat them better?

Yes. Making friends with others will lead you to have expectations on others. I guess this is the basic for relationships. If someone who is very nice and they are willing to give to make you happy, of course you will treat that person better than the one who does not put too much attention on you. I think in friends, there are different levels and the one that you are willing to offer to him/her and vice versa will be your best friend. Talking about benefits, we are benefiting each other, but not in a way that I am “using” them.

5. What is the first, top requirement that all your friends need to have in order to become your friend?

Friendly and smart with common sense, so they will understand what I am talking about with the same pace as me.

7.What kinds of people have the first priority to become your friend?

Talkative, funny, and nice.

Part 3:

Looking at the answers from the three interviews, I am not surprise that most people look for different things from the others in specific. However, what is interesting is that out of all the interviews from three people, they are all looking for someone to build their identity with them. It almost seems as forming a relationship with people that you don’t know transforming to the next stage of becoming acquaintance is to share similar identity of each other to bond. This helps me in terms of focusing on my research question, “What is the primary factor do people concern about between interpersonal relationships of becoming acquaintances?” because the interview shows that the primary factor that most people are concern about is similarity on each other. It could be a tiny little thing about that person in terms of the first impressions that others offer, but throughout the interviews it shows people often find things to relate to the others before they bond to form a relationship. Such as one interview saying his friends need to have the “same channel” as him, this totally proves the importance of sharing commonalities among each other between interpersonal relationships. As talking about any sort of relationships, people always seek for things to relate to the others before having a relationship showing the needs of others to form our own identity.

Part 4:

I choose people to be my friends based on their appearance.

HW 55 - Independent Research Question/Topic

Part 1:

Research Question: What is the primary factor that people concern between interpersonal relationships of becoming friends?

Part 2:

Richard,

Your research question is “What are our needs that we attempt to satisfy through varies relationships?” First of all, I think you should make it more specific, and just choose one type of relationships as the four categories that we did in class on the paper (family, friends, frequent interactions, mediated relations) . So in that way, you can narrow down your topic and just focus on researching one type of relationship. If I were to revise your question, I might change it to “what are our expectations on others that we attempt to satisfy ourselves through relationship with friends (or friendship)?” I think by this way, you can look at criteria of being a friend, and what we often attempt to expect on others to offer to satisfy ourselves.

Hope this helps,
Bao Lin

Hi Aja,

Your research question is “What Distinguishes Friends From Family (And Vice Versa)At what point does a Friend become family? What is that tipping point?” I think your topic is interesting, but if I were to revise the question to make it more specific, I would change it to “How do the boundaries between friends and family intersect through interpersonal relationships?” So by this way, you can research expectations that people have on their family and friends, and see what criteria do both of these relationship shares. By comparing these two relationships, you can distinguish the difference and start to see how each relationship collides with each other.

Hope this helps,
Bao Lin

Part 3:

Revised Question: What is the primary factor do people concern about between interpersonal relationships of becoming acquaintances?

This article is basically about how to meet the right people, so they can influence you in your life and you will sharpen your own identity. This writer demonstrates it as “if you want to be a winner, then meet winners. If you want to be successful, then meet successful people.” He is suggesting that in order to meet the right person or as for future plan to be your close friends, you need to meet someone that you can relate to. Such as having similar interests, similar identities as a whole despite the influence are good or bad. As long as you can relate to this person, you can learn from each other and strengthen who you really are as an individual. Connects this to the topic that I am researching, I agreed with this article’s point of view. In meeting new people or strangers, it is always easier to meet someone who has similar interests as you to build up conversations to know more about each other. As talking about relationships especially acquaintance, I believe most of us do evaluate others’ similarities to themselves such as the way others dress to start the relationship as a way to connect.

Latumahina, Donald. “Grow Yourself by Meeting People and Reading Books”. Life Optimizer. 10 February, 2007. Web. 12 May, 2010. <http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2007/02/10/grow-yourself-by-meeting-people-and-reading-books/>

This is a website that provides the excerpts from the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie and complied by Richard Anthony. It basically summarizes the importance key facts from the book in a list of telling the reader how to get others to like you in a way to win friends. As from the author, he suggests that if you “genuinely interested in other people” and conform others’ will as a whole, others will like you. But the importance of doing the tasks that he listed is that you have to do it sincerely with appreciation, not flatter. By talking about topics that others like, agreeing with others or not arguing over or criticize, and make others feel they are importance, it will make you a great deal of meeting new people. Throughout this excerpt from Carnegie, it suggests that the primary factor that people concern is how much other “respects” them as a person. Using the word “respect” although the author didn’t really use it throughout his book, I mean the basic understanding of each other as common sense of how to treat others. The key is to make others feel that you do care about them and you are interest in what they are interested at. This source is quiet useful in understanding the connections between each other in relationships, and what others care and how you should act in meeting others if you do want to meet new friends.

Anthony, Richard. “How to Win Friends and Influence People – Excerpts from Dale Carnegie’s Inspiring Book”. Web. 12 May, 2010. < http://ecclesia.org/truth/friends.html>

This is a statistic done by E. Ho and M.Kochen on acquaintanceship and interpersonal trust, and it is basically focused on China and Hong Kong on how people perceived can affect the number of acquaintance that they have in life. They also looked at many other different variables and factors such as competition level, networking, and development of the relationships. However, focusing on my topic, I am only looking at the results of what people concern when they are meeting strangers in making a relationship with acquaintance. This report shows that what most people are concern is whether others are meeting them for advantage or is just to help or just to meet new friends. Such as in big cities or industrialized places, like Hong Kong, people perceived most of the people as selfish instead of trustworthy, which will affect the amount of acquaintance that they have. This concludes that the importance of trust between people is an important start to form connections through interpersonal relationships. This statistic report is helpful for my topic because it reveals that the primary factor that most people who live in the city are concern about is trust. Because cities are always view as competitive surroundings, it shows others’ perceptions on others could affect the amount of acquaintance that they meet. The report also suggests the significance of the topic, that if people tend to trust others more, they can build up their networks and develop the relationships to friendships or other further relationships. So perception of other is the key variable of affecting how much acquaintance you meet.

Ho, Edric and Kochen, Manfred. “Perceived Acquaintanceship and Interpersonal Trust: The case of Hong Kong and China”. University of Michigan. 1987. Web. 12 May, 2010. < http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26687/1/0000234.pdf>

This is a research done by students from Columbia University on “Segregation in Social Networks based on Acquaintanceship and Trust”. Although it did not fully focused on my topic on the primary factor that people concerned in building relationships with acquaintance, it does connects to the previous statistic research looking at American’s perceptions. But this research instead of focusing on trust, it also talks about race, religious, political views, and other variables that could affect people’s process of building networks with others. One of the powerful statements that I found in this long research paper was “About a quarter of Americans trust fewer than 10 individuals, and these American typically have relatively few acquaintances as well”. This did not only support the previous source about trust, it also supports that perceptions is an important concept in building relationships with each other. One’s perceptions on others based on their race, religious, political views…etc., all these things that a person can judge based on others could affect their number of acquaintance. It shows that the primary factor that people are concern is other’s act or performance as a person. If you provide a comfortable characteristics towards others will help you to earn trust from others, which will make it easier to form acquaintanceships through interpersonal relationships. Although this long research did not quiet help, it does discuss the importance of human perceptions on others could affect the amount of acquaintance that you have.

Diprete A., Thomas. Gelman, Andrew. McCornick, Tyler. Teitler, Julien. Zheng, Tian. “Segregation in Social Networks based on Acquaintanceship and Trust”. Columbia University. 12 January, 2010. Web. 12 May, 2010. < http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/phily01122010.pdf>

HW 54 - Myers-Briggs & Big Five Test

Part 1:

Regarding on the usefulness of the results doing both tests, I would say it is helpful in a way that makes me pause and think about my personality. But simultaneously, I do expect some of the results that I will get based on looking and answering some of the questions. Taking these tests could be very easy, but sometimes trying to be honest about myself, it is hard to pick the answer between inaccurate and accurate. I would say I do know myself well enough and doing both tests do support my perspective of looking at myself. I am totally aware of how I act and what my personality is depending on my actions. However, to rate the usefulness of these tests, I will say is around 70% helpful in a way that approves that I know myself well enough.

Looking at my results, I would also say they are not definite and is changing depending on the situation. Although overall, I don’t think I will change much even though I am aware of some of my weakness in terms of my personality, I think these results are too systematic. It almost seem as if you do x, you will get y. Also during the process of taking these tests, I pause a lot. This is because I act differently in front of different people. In the public with lots of people that I don’t know, I might seen quiet and introverted. However, my family or closed friends will never described me as that because I feel comfortable being with them. So taking these tests might not often be useful taking my situation as an example. Moreover, I find personality is one of the hardest things to change or to breakthrough, because people have been carrying their own comfortably for a long period of time though taking the test is helpful in a way that helps me to be aware of my own persona.

Part 2:

My first assumption was that whoever’s result is similar to another; it would be easier for them to become friends due to their similar personality. But as I thought further, even though my friends have not take the tests, I can kind of assume what her scores or letters will be based on how she /he acts. This means I know my answers will be pretty different from my friends although this is just a prediction. I realize the importance of this test between interpersonal relationships is not to get the similar results, but use what each other get to help them or yourself to understand each other better. I think when people understand others and accept their personality of who they are, it will help lower the friction between each other because they know that’s who you and have accepted who you are as a friend/partner/spouse. More importantly, people act differently in front of different people, so it is hard to guess or judge the other person’s real personality because these things constantly change in my opinion.

HW 53 - Survey Analysis

Part 1:

Took the survey.

Part 2:

While taking this survey, I have two feelings towards it. One is the result does not matter, why should I take it. Since all the answers are anonymous, people can put random choices, and therefore even though I did it, is hard to judge or analyze based on the results. People might not even take it seriously, which it makes me ask myself what’s the point of doing it other than it is just a random survey that is long and annoying. But another feeling that I have while taking this survey is taking a little risk of sharing my privacy and trusting the results do matter. Some of the questions are interesting, and it didn’t really bother me overall. But some of the questions that I feel it went over the line even though it is anonymous are the sexuality part of the survey. Since I try to do the survey with a serious manner, answering those questions are a bit uncomfortable even though my answer is anonymous.

I did put some thought into the survey, and I thought they are quite interesting to analyze as a whole if everybody take them seriously. I enjoy taking the family and friends part of the survey, because I have been dealing with these relationships the most in my life right now. But I did not do the short answer questions in this survey, and I think the reason why is pretty obvious to most of the others. Overall, taking the survey makes me pause and think a lot, because lots of them have to do with rating the others. It starts to get me into thinking how I should rate the importance of the others and is hard to come up with the exact answers doing the survey. Especially talking about relationships with the other is always hard to come up with the exact/definite choice, because they are situational and constantly evolving every second.

Part 3:

Looking at the results of the survey, some of the categories are hard to draw conclusion of. So I would pick family and friendship to analyze the results. While looking at the family results, I am surprise that 42.3% of the people trust their family, 44.2% of the people values family, 42.3% as their family values them, 44.2% chose the choice “members of your family look out for and take care of each other”, but yet for the category “you have more than 20 minute of ‘face time’ per day with a caring adult” is 25.0% no, not usually, not often. Looking at it as a whole, I feel that I am similar to the other 51 person who took the survey. But I am surprise that the highest percentage of people saying they value their family do not have more than 20 minute of face time per day with their adults. This is strange, and I guess this have to do with the inability of young adults talking to people who are older than them such as their parents. Perhaps we should learn how to communicate and have a healthy family with our family members in class because based on the results; it seems people do love their family a lot with trust.

As connecting to friends, 35.3% chooses “friends come before family”. Also 30.8% says their parents know who they really are which is similar to 34% of people saying their friends know them. If family and friends do know who you really are, why people still prefer friends more than family? It is because they are taking friends as their own benefit, but not for family? 32.7% agree that their friends are just entertainment, something to do, people to hang out with. This seems most people treat friends as almost an object in own perspective, which I am not surprise because some of my answer choices are very different from most of the people for this category. This is interesting, and I start to wonder is that what friends really are? Or if there’s gender difference, do girls look at friends differently from guys? Other than the difference that I did not choose friends come before family, most of my answers are pretty similar to the class, and I am surprise that we are all similar for most of the results. I guess this is because of our age and we are from the same school, same class?

Part 4:

I don’t really know how to compare the survey that we did to the processional ones (2007 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey), and I personally like our own surveys better. However, trying to compare these two surveys, one of the similarities that I found was the topic concerning whether teens are “sexually active” or not. Both surveys reveal that teens are often sexually active at a young age. But one of the major differences between these two surveys is that once the survey is taken by more population, it shows that more kids have taken drugs or alcohol. As comparing to our own quick survey, the percentage of not using illegal drugs is pretty high. But in general, is hard to compare the surveys, because ours is easy and simple, but the professional ones drew conclusion and specifically concerning on certain issues on teens.

HW 52 - Theories of Human Relationships

Talking about relationships, I think this is the essential reason why people complain that they are not free. We are all puppets and the people who get to hold some of the strings also. We constantly try to control the others, make others to be the one you want them to be, so they satisfy you in some way. As human, we are playing these two roles back and forth every day. You might clean you room for your mom to satisfy her, or you might want your friend to do something for you. This back and forth relationship is the starting point where people are connected with each other. But before we hit the realization of being control by the others, we avoid seeing or not even aware that these strings exist. But once we are tired of it and notice it exists, we leave and soon move on to the others to be control by others again.

This might sound that we are just treating others like tools, and I know we are conscious about this because we constantly avoid doing that. But there are times that relationship between each other can be pure also, which is why we do not see these strings as being control, but as a way to be connected or bond with the others. Your boss might want you to do something for them, and you won’t really feel that they are “controlling” you, but you think that is natural because they are paying you. That is the time when you are aware that you are a puppet, but it did not challenge your self-esteem. But there are relationships like friends or families that you are dealing with the ones that you love. So you will do things for them to make them happy although you might not get the same response back all the time as the boss will pay you every month. However, you don’t complain because of the boundaries that you set up when you are connecting with this person. Therefore, when you get into an argument with your family or friends, is either you cross the boundaries or you sense the others are “over-controlling” you.

As for me, I have a very good relationship with my family except for my father. I used to be very close with all other four family members, but as I grew up, both me and dad distance each other a lot. While saying that I am a person who values family A LOT, more than friends, I do hate them some of the times too. Especially during the time when we are moving over the summer, I just want to leave them and live by myself. But when things get resolve, we went back to be a “happy family”. The very hard times dealing with family is when you know that you can’t leave them no matter what. Even saying some bad things about them, you felt the sense of guilt, because they are part of your family, which means the one who will be connecting with you until the minute you die regardless you live with him/her or not.

In my family, I don’t know why and how I bond with my brother so well. But we are close in a way that I can almost share everything with him except for some privacy. He is a person who felt very strong about respecting others privacy, so the first thing dealing with him, is to respect him and accept his personality of being the way he is. Of course, we always have arguments between each other and stop talking to each other for the shortest, a week, or the longest a month. But we always going back together, which I think is strange but natural because he is part of my family. What is so strange about having good relationship with someone that you have so many fights with, is that the pain stays regardless you forgive him/her or not. I did have a very big fight with my brother before, and I will never forgive him no matter what talking back to that situation even though we are close with each other now and after.

Talking in that manner, relationships are strange to me. He did hurt me internally, and I will never forgive for what he did back then although letting it go might seem to be the answer. However, putting that aside, I like him as a whole, which is why I think we are still close with each other. We can talk about life for a day, and I would say we are so open-minded when we are talking most of times. What is so stupid about this is that we never fight among each other because of ourselves, but the others. Mostly, the fuse to this bomb is his friends. It is always about him protecting his friends, the end of the story. I know this always happen, but I do forgive sometimes. I guess the reason why people sometimes can still stay be close with others is that every person has good qualities, and dealing with relationship is to accept the bad and the good. As for me, I think I can still stay close with him is because we are families, not friends. It is not someone that you can just leave alone, and not deal with. To the most, is hard to find someone who understands you and do feel passionate to talk with you about life, about everything. He is my friend, he is my brother, he is a stranger, and he is my enemy.

I don’t like talking about relationships, because they constantly evolve. Once you write them down, it seems to be so definite which is totally the opposite talking about relationships. You can hate this person at this moment; you say you love him/her the next day. Is always hard to describe relationships because they are so complicated, and is definitely one of my strongest weaknesses – dealing with people. People are always strange in my perspective, I don’t understand what is behind this, and I view human as the most complex living things in the universe ever. While saying sometimes I don’t talk to my brother for certain amount of time when we get into fights, this never happen to me between me and my sister or my mother. Isn’t this strange? All I can think of is that it has to do with people’s personality, and is always hard to change people’s character. In order to keep the relationship, is always about accepting and tolerate the others.

Talking about friendship is the thing that I always have been tried to avoid talking about. Not only had it confused me in a way that I don’t know how to rate the importance of the others, people are always obsess with “best” friends. When I hear people saying “we are best friends”, I avoid accepting this because it felt like they have higher expectations on you, which is what I hate. I never learn this term until I came to the U.S., because ever since I was in China, I just hang out with people, and whoever that I hang out and talk to, I consider them my good friends. But once I came to the U.S., I realize people are so obsess with “best friends”. All the people that I am close to since middle school; always like to play these terms. To be honest, I don’t know what they mean when they say this. But talking about my own experience, whoever labels me as their best friends are sad, because I always end up stepping away and keep a long distance from them. Not getting into personal, but I am super sensitive about this term, and it drives me crazy.

I don’t know if this has to be with my personality or whatever that is, but people who are close to me as friends, always want to “have” me. My friend would make jokes saying she is going to be move to get my attention and my emotional response, and some of my friends would do tones of crazy things to draw my attention. Some would even fight over my other friend, to just “have me” as her friend. To me, I always view friends as a very pure relationship, which are simply the people that you can relate to and having fun with you throughout experiences that we both share. But most of the people that I met are always over the line. They either have expectations from you or they want you to be certain way, this always drives me sick! I used to be a nice and friendly person who makes friends with everybody, but ever since I experience all these craziness about friendships, I turn myself down. I am totally passive about meeting new people now a day, because it takes up so much energy to be others “favorite”.

Why can’t friendships be a little bit simpler? Why can’t good friends be more than two? Ever since I have more than two friends around me, one will get so jealous because of lack of attention. I used to see friends as a pure relationship where bunch of people are caring about each other, and treat others with equal amount of attention. But most of the friendships that I made in the U.S. are totally different. People like to fight you over to win your friend that you did not even intentionally trying to get into the fight to “have” that friend but just having a good relationship with the others, or people like to give you difficult choice whereas you are stuck in the situation of choosing either one. I even met friends who would do crazy things to hurt my other friend. I personally hate friends who create dramas, and most of the ones that I met are like that. Therefore, I am super picky when I pick friends, and I only consider certain people as my “friends”, which I will put them in my category of family. Same to the one that I love, they all fall into my family category, meaning no matter what, we are connected FOREVER.

Sharing some of the experience about friends, I am very curious about the definition of friends. Not only it is my weakness, I want to understand this more so I can form better relationships with the others. Can we put friends as our family members? So in that way no matter what, we will always learn how to accept each other’s good/bad without escape? Another benefit of putting your friend into the family category is that you need to follow the rule that “you need to be with them no matter what”, meaning there’s no exit in this relationship. You need to learn how to deal with the others, and they will always stick with you. But as friends or lovers, one thing that is better than family is that you get to choose, and you get to leave them if you don’t like them. Which it raised up a complex question: should we only keep the same boundary for all people so we don’t have to play these little games in relationships?

Talking about other people, as I said it is strange. I might rate someone that I don’t even know as more important than some of my friends. The one that are close to you might not be the most important person, and the one that are far away from you might be the one that you can relate to the most. So my question is, how do we rate the others? Do we rate them because they are important to you in a way that they ease tour life? Should we rate them because they make you happier than the others? Should we rate them in terms of your own benefit or advantage? HOW SHOULD WE RATE OTHER PEOPLE’S IMPORTANCE?

We leave someone because we don't want to be control, but yet, we move on to look for someone else to control us. Why's that?