I have learned about the prisoner’s dilemma and all of the other dilemmas listed a myriad of times weather it be in econ or political science classes. I think that the biggest thing that always stand out to me is the fact that cooperation and compromise will always make both of the parties involved in the dilemma better off, yet it is never the Nash equilibrium. I think that this has to do in part with the lack of communication, but I think that this says so much about our society as a whole. I think that we have become so self-involved that we do not compromise on anything anymore. For example, politics have become so polarized and one side will not hear the other sides point of view at all, when in reality if both sides were to work together out government would be able to function a lot more effectively. This brings in what Fisher was talking about with negotiations and promises, and how rewards are the best way to set up a negotiation. I think that if the congress people knew the rewards that the entire nation would benefit from cooperation on their part, there is a possibility that there could be less polarization.

After reading Flanigan’s article “Three Arguments Against Prescription Requirements” I did not know what to think. I agree completely that a doctor has no right to force someone to go with a specific treatment path or medicine, but I am having a really hard time with her argument about how people should have the right to choose what medicine they are going to take. I think that this could lead to a myriad of problems because people do not know as much about the medicines that they could be taking compared to the doctors. Becoming a doctor takes years of schooling and training for a reason, I do not think that people should just be able to say I think I will take this medicine for their medical problem because they do not know the risks or effectiveness of the drug. I think that people do deserve to have the freedom to choose which path they take for treatment, but I think that medicine choice is something that should be left with the medical professional.

I took the age IAT test and I was not surprised by my results. I got that I have a “moderate automatic preference for young people over old people”. I do not find this surprising because I had a feeling going into taking this test that I would have a preference to young people over old people. I do not think that I respect old people any less than I do young people, in fact, I think that it is the opposite for me. What is interesting to me is the fact that I moderately prefer young people, because the majority of people who took this test strongly prefer young people. I think that I just resonate more with young people and when having to do the fast responses I recognized the young people faster. I think that one reason as to why I prefer young people over old people is the fact that I am just not as exposed to older people in my everyday life. I think that the IAT tests are so interesting because you really do not know what your results are going to be beforehand, because it all comes down to how your brain categorizes the things you are looking at based off of previous experiences and exposure.

It has always been very apparent to me that women experience hardships due to the stereotypes that people place on them. However, I did not realize how much the stereotype threats impact women’s performance in the workplace and especially in leadership roles. I was surprised to hear that “stereotype threat tends to have the most deleterious effects on those for whom the stereotype is the most self- relevant and on those who are motivated to perform well” because I would have thought that women who are motivated to perform better would not be as impacted (Hoyt & Murphy 393). I found this very interesting because I did not realize how important breaking the stereotype would be to a woman who wants to succeed in breaking it, making her hyper aware of what others are thinking about her. I think that my biggest takeaway from these readings about stereotypes is the fact that when people are reminded of the stereotype that people could have about them, they are much more likely to fall into that stereotype. I think that there needs to be a lot done in regard to eliminating stereotypes in our culture, especially with my research project being about the Equal Rights Amendment and how it has gone on for too long that women are not recognized in the Constitution for having the same rights as men.

I found that the CTAA reading was very interesting because of all of the different forms of mapping moral arguments. I did not really know what consequentialism, universalism, deontic, or aretaic argument forms were, let alone the differences each had in evaluating if an action was morally good or bad. I found that the deontic moral arguments were most interesting especially in regards to lying because as an intrinsic feature lying is bad, so therefore H should not do A. I find the idea that an argument based off of intrinsic features is fascinating because it really is not dealing with the consequences of an action, it is if the action is good or bad in itself. I think that this reading really gave a great new way to look at moral arguments, especially because Warren did not really give us any way to evaluate moral arguments.