The essential question for this unit asks students to think about how a person's attitude about the past and the future affect their actions. Respond to that prompt using information from your previous experiences/observations (50 points) and information from the play, Othello (50 points) - this will require some major critical thinking and the information you provide must be accurate

To study the processes by which past behaviour influences future behaviour, participants were led to believe that without being aware of it, they had expressed either support for or opposition to the institution of comprehensive exams. Judgment and response time data suggested that participants’ perceptions of their past behaviour often influenced their decisions to repeat the behaviour. This influence was partly the result of cognitive activity that influenced participants’ cognitions about specific behavioural consequences and the attitude they based on these cognitions. More generally, however, feedback about past behaviour had a direct effect on participants’ attitudes and ultimate behavioural decisions that were independent of the outcome-specific cognitions. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for biased scanning of memory, dissonance reduction, self-perception, and the use of behaviour as a heuristic.

tree and the cat in the tree

the speech this question is referring to is president kennedy's special message to the congress on urgent national needs, may 25, 1961

kennedy responds in a very direct and concrete way to those thinking that communism is a positive system:

"yet their aggression is more often concealed than open. they have fired no missiles; and their troops are seldom seen. they send arms, agitators, aid, technicians and propaganda to every troubled area. but where fighting is required, it is usually done by others--by guerrillas striking at night, by assassins striking alone--assassins who have taken the lives of four thousand civil officers in the last twelve months in vietnam alone--by subversives and saboteurs and insurrectionists, who in some cases control whole areas inside of independent nations." (kennedy)

president kennedy presents communism as cowardly, as a hidden and treacherous weapon that strikes from the shadows like thieves, he represents the system as not even being capable of showing and open and overt attack or confrontation. to finish up the response, he expresses that the system attacks even a country's idependence and freedom.