psycho proj 1

FNBE 02/14 PSY0103 LEE YIH

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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY !!

JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT!!NAME : LEE YIH!

ID : 0318340!

LECTURER :MR. SHANKAR


Chap 1: Social Facilitation vs. Social Loafing!

!

Through this eye opening topic, I got to understand myself better. The lecturer first

started by sharing the example of competitive cyclists’ performance in the present

of others and vice versa. Both this scenarios are contradicting each other which

happen on different occasion. To my surprise I found that social facilitation occurred

to me when I was doing a simple task. One of my daily experience was in the gym

when my friend were watching me, I tried to impress her by doing more than I ever

did. With the presence of others, I felt energised and eager to complete a task

which I’m already good at it. However, social loafing happened when I was doing a

complicated task which I didn’t have enough confidence. I realised that sometimes I

can do better when people aren’t watching me because that made me felt even

stressed and nervous. I remembered there was a experience when I was required

to guide few students to complete a mural painting in high school. The outcome

was bad as I was too worried that the painting wouldn’t be good enough and hence

did not contributed much ideas. Therefore through the learning of this concept, I

learned that in daily life, to encourage people on doing some simple task, I should

present myself around them. For the case of a complicated task, I should reduce

the stress given to them by leaving them alone to proceed with the task.


Confirmation Bias!

!This is an interesting topic which explains why it’s hard to change people’s mind.

The lecturer explained this concept as people accepts informations which support

their view and ignore what’s contrary. I related this to my experience and come into

a realisation that most of the time, I want to be ‘right’ in what I think. Hence, I

always search and accept informations that can act as evidence to support what I

believed in. One of my latest experience was a week ago, I made a decision to buy

myself a Nikon D90 DSLR camera all at once which cost few thousands ringgits.

After buying the camera, to make myself feel good, I started to ask around the

reviews from my friends and only remembered most of the positive comments. By

doing so, it reaffirmed that I had made a correct decision on buying the right

camera. This topic taught me a lesson on never always see what I want to see. I

should be more open minded on accepting both positive and negative opinions

even though this means admitting my view which is proven wrong.


Chap 2 : The Looking Glass Self!

!On this week of lecture, we learned about the concept of how we imagine other

people think of us. When I was being in a surrounding of unfamiliar, I feel

discomfort and insecure when I have no idea how people think of me. The lecturer

then related an example of a student thought himself was a smart student if he was

located in a class full of smart students. To me, this concept plays a very important

role on influencing my self esteem due to the way how I think people perceived me.

Sometimes, I feel confident when I created a positive self image by simply believing

others think me in a positive way and vice versa. One of my experience based on

this concept was about my physical appearance. I used to be wearing spectacles

during high school and I think people judged me as ‘look like a nerd’ when I had my

glasses. Therefore, I felt self-doubting and low self esteem. This made me to be

hardly smiled at people, often creating an image of an ‘arrogant me’ to my friends.

However, I then decided to wear contact lens. As a result, I thought people like me

more for not looking like a nerd anymore. Ever since that, things were changed, I

gained back my confidence to take the initiative move of making friends with my

classmates. After learning this lecture, I realised that all the time it was just my

imagination on how people look at me. I learned to be appreciative on how the way

I were borned.


Self Serving Bias!

!Now this is an interesting topic. The lecturer explained this concept to us as the

tendency of people taking credits for success while blaming others for failures. I

realised that this happened to me sometimes which can affect my attitude quite a

lot. This is because when I blamed others, I would never evaluate myself properly

and hence never able to learn from the mistakes. This concept could be related to

one of my daily experience. Whenever there was a test which the result was good, I

would take the credits by thinking it’s because of my hardworking on studying for

the test. I felt satisfied on myself by telling everyone how much effort I had put in.

However, when the result of a test was bad, I would pushed away the responsibility

on this mistakes. I blamed the teachers for failing at teaching the subject.

Sometimes, I even tell my parents it was because the questions were set tricky this

time. The lecturer explained this scenario as we tend to protect their self-esteem.

During this lecture, I had a flashback for all the experiences on the past. I realised

how much mistakes I had made. By learning this concept, I learned that I should

not always blame others first whenever there is a failure.


Chap 3 : Stereotype!

!On this week lecture, this interesting topic were taught to us. The lecturer explained

stereotype as assumptions made about a group of people based on certain

characteristics they possess. This concept were commonly applied in my daily life

which can bring both advantage and disadvantage. I was told that this happened

because I already had informations about a certain group of people in my mind

based on the previous experience. I related a common experience in my life which

most of people experienced before, which is the racial stereotype. Through news

reported on newspaper about the crimes committed by the foreign workers which

various from raping, snatching, robbing and few more, I have negative stereotype

on the foreign workers. Therefore, whenever I see groups of foreign workers at a

place, I assumed that these people are dangerous. As a habit, I walked quickly

away to avoid being surrounded with the people. Beside from that, I even influence

my friends and family by this stereotype. I constantly tell them how harmful they

could be and would always ask them to leave the place if i see many foreign

workers strolling at the place. This could be pretty unfair to them because not all of

them are bad. They came to our country legally to work because of the poor

economic conditions in their country. I should be appreciative for what they have

contributed in our country.


Chap 4 : First impression!

!I find this week’s lecture to be interesting which could be applied in my future daily

life. The lecturer first started the class by telling us basic informations about two

different peoples. He then showed us two pictures of the face of two men and

asked us who do you think is the serial killer. I determined the sloppy-looked as the

killer because of the negative first impression formed on him. This theory was

oftenly applied in my daily life as well. I remembered there was a student I met from

my university, he was wearing earring on one side, one of his arm was full of

tattoos. I then classified him as rebellious students. Recently, I heard that he had to

retake few subjects because he failed them. I simply believed this is all because of

his rebellious personality made on him without even asking the reason, this is

known as the Halo Effect. After understanding this concept, I realised how much

first impression could affect in our daily life. According to the theory, it is caused by

the primary effect, which is the first impression and recency effect, which is the last

piece of informations we received.


Chap 5 : Classical Conditioning!

!This week’s lecture was something new and interesting to me. The lecture simply

explained it as two stimuli were linked together, forming a new learned response.

The examples of experiments did by Ivan Pavlov on a 9 years old small kid. During

the lecture, I remembered one of the similar experience I had when I was young.

When I was 6 years old, I was sent to a day care centre in a kindergarden. My mum

would usually come fetch me at 6pm in the evening and whenever she walked in

the centre, she brought her car key along. Therefore, an unconditioned stimulus is

formed (the jingling sound of keys) and a conditioned response (my mum showed

up in the kindergarden) is formed. Ever since that, when I heard the jingling sound

of keys on evening at the kindergarden, I felt happy and excited to see my mum

showed up to fetch me home. Even though sometimes it was just some sound from

the neighbour’s house, I still feel happy when I heard the sound. After learning this

concept, I felt amazed to understand this situation happened when I was young.


Post-Decision Dissonance!

!This is a eye opening they taught by the lecturer on that week. I came into

realisation that most of the time, whenever I made an decision, I oftenly changed

my perspective to make the decision seems more attractive. This is to make myself

feel satisfied of what I have decided. I applied this they in my daily life experience,

one of the experience was on purchasing something from a shop. Few days ago, I

went shopping with my friends at a shopping mall. I saw a dress which I really fancy

it and instantly paid to buy the dress without even hesitate. After that, to make

myself feel satisfied of my decision, I went around the shopping mall to look for the

same dress which cost a little more expensive. This is to make me feel that I made

the right decision on buying a cheap dress.


The effect of mood on cognition !

!On this lecture, we were taught about the mood-congruence effect. I realised that

how a situation can varies based on my mood. The lecturer asked us to think about

a good event and all the details. It showed that I can remember all the good details

on the event because I was in a good mood. One of the experience in my life was

on my last year’s birthday, I was very happy and appreciative. Till now, I still can

remember the details of my friends came over my house to throw a surprise party

for me, and I received a car as a gift from my dad. That was my best birthday ever.

Even though some bad things happened on that day such as traffic jam when were

heading for dinner, I still thought it’s a good day because I was in a good mood to

remember on only the good details.


Correspondence Inference Theory!

!This was an interesting topic to explain the process of us making attributions about

other people. On that lecture, the lecturer gave us few examples and asked few

students to give their examples. By understanding the examples, I had flashback to

what happened to my brother few years back where I applied this theory. I

remembered on that day when I came back from school, I received a phone call

from the discipline teacher of my brother’s school regarding he hit a student on the

nose which caused bleeding. I was surprised and full of anger at the same time.

However, I started to calm myself down by asking few questions to myself :

Consensus : Would most of the students in the school fight back in the situation?

Distinctiveness : Would my brother did the same way if he was at home?

Consistency : Have my brother ever hit people when he was in a quarrel with his

friends? Throughout this self questioning, I was cooled down. I called my mother

and solved this problem together with the students who was injured in a harmony

way.

psycho proj 1

Education