Critical Summaries Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Critical Summaries - Essay Example Ariely describes how they conducted a study in Berkeley College in order to understand the reaction of college students in regard to sexual emotions. It seems that the major part of the article contains original information Ariely himself; it presents information on the experiments conducted in Berkeley College among bright students in order to facilitate the understanding of sexual arousal on decision making. However, the Ariely refers to some secondary materials that discuss issues related to the topic in the article. For instance, he quotes a book by Robert Louise Stevenson, The Fine Bogy Tale. Other secondary sources quoted in the article are Macbeth by Shakespeare and Oedipus by Sophocles (Ariely 2008). Consequently, the article goes further and provides a summary of the study results from Berkeley College, which indicated that most participants of the study have twice higher chances of engaging in odd sexual encounters when aroused. In addition, the study revealed that 25% more students would make decisions to engage in unprotected sex when aroused than when in the cold state (Ariely 2008). These results seem to have been included in the article to provide further insights into the effects of arousal on decision making. The introductory section of this article begins with a general discussion regarding the operation of the human cognitive system and how various individual systems influence its operations. It seems that it is based on a perspective of previous neurological studies that have been conducted to provide an insight into how the human cognitive system functions. In addition, it appears that Bechara, Damasio & Damasio used some secondary information from previously published materials to write the article: he refers to the works of Goldman et al. (1992), Milner and Petrides (1985), and Fuster (1990). It seems that they were interested in providing proof that the article was based on reporting a scientific study. This is indicated by