Name : Low Wing ChunStudent ID : 0323315Subject : PSY30203 – Social PsychologyTime Slot : 3:30pm – 5:30pmLecturer : Shankar Thiruchelvam

Entry 1 : (Chapter 1) Social Loafing & Social Facilitation

November 28 2015, 3:19PM

Social loafing describes the tendency of individuals to put forth less effort when they are part of a group. Because all members of the group are pooling their effort to achieve a common goal, each member of the group contributes less than they would if they were individually responsible. For example, a group of people were asked to move a heavy log to somewhere. Say for example there were six of them and they were all very strong people. While the log was being moved by them one of them never actually helped. All he did was just putting his hand underneath the log and not exerting any strength to provide support. But from the perspectives of someone else who sees them moving the log, they all look like they’re doing work. So instead of assuming responsibility for certain tasks, he or she might just think that one of the other group members will take care of it.

Also another experience that took place this year as you know architecture are consisted mostly with group assignments. On the first semester I was not close to anybody and obviously do not know who would be a good member to work with. I joined to a group with people that I feel comfortable with and hoped for everything else to go well. This was when social loafing came in. It was my first presentation assignment in college. We were given a brief and asked to create slides with information related to what the brief asked. It sounded easy as it was just creating slides and doing presentations but when you have to do a project that was meant for five person alone then it would be difficult as hell. I was lucky to have one member helping me through everything while the others just neglected their responsibilities and proceeded to leave me to do everything for them.

Social facilitation can be easily defined as and individual doing something better with the presence of others than alone. For example, a sprinter who trains with a timer alone all the time might achieve the same result but when he were to train with a training partner he would perform better and run faster and even faster if he was sprinting with audience.

When i was in my second year of high school i loved playing basketball. I would skip classes just to sneak out to the basketball court to practice. (of course i got caught and got sent into the discipline office but I did it again not long later) I was in love with basketball at that time but i had a problem. I am terrible at shooting. During all my practice matches with my friends i never scored more than ten before. It was always under five or five.

Like every other government schools we would have a Sports Day every year and this is when all the athletes comes out to show what they do best. This year my friends invited me to sign up for the basketball team to represent our house to compete with other houses. I was hesitant at first but my friends were all in with me. Ever since the try outs we practiced as much as we could so that we could win the champion title for our house. Training sessions were going well but i still had the same problem, it seemed impossible for me to score. We were running out of time and so am I. I did not have enough time to improve so we had to give me another spot so that the better shooters could score easily.

On the actual day, we made sure we had enough rest and get enough warm up before the match started. We were the first to go against the other house. After all the handshakes and greetings we moved to our respective positions. My blood was pumping and every thing seemed to slow down around me. When the whistle went off, everything else suddenly disappeared. All my eyes could focus on was the ball and the players in the court. Soon i had the ball with me and just as i was going to pass the ball to the shooter, he was then marked by three opponents and i couldn’t pass it to him. They were gesturing me to take the shot as I was clear from any blocks. Without wasting much time, my arms straightened, my wrist flicked and the ball was sent into the air flying its way to the hoop. “Swoosh!” I got the first point of the match and everyone was dumbfounded, I was so happy but to later realize that was my only score that day. Social Facilitation do happens.

Entry 2 : (Chapter 2) Self-Serving Biases November 28 2015, 1:26AM The self-serving bias is one’s tendency to attribute positive events to their own character but attribute negative events to external factors. It is a common type of cognitive bias that has been extensively studied in social psychology. For example, you joined a dancing competition and you won the champion. You attribute it to yourself claiming that you have the skills to win. That is attributing positive events to one’s character. Another example, you joined a dancing competition and you lost. You blame the deejay for bad music, the floor is slippery or the other contestants are way too strong. You attribute these to the external factors and not yourself. This is attributing negative events to external factors. I have a huge love for dancing, (seeing that I am talking about the time now) I practiced every night if I got the chance to right after hectic classes. I would feel like a pile of poop if I skipped a day of training knowing that I had the time to. This guilt was a result of me being ignorant and arrogant 2 years ago. I was in high school and girls in that time are crazy for boys who could just rock a few moves so I took up lessons to impress people and show off. As I looked ridiculous dancing back then, I only showed it to my own friends for suggestions to improve and they mocked and teased me every time they see me showing some moves. (We don’t keep in contact anymore and I never really liked them) I took all the humiliations and criticizes in and instead of hating them, I turned them into my motivation. I spent hours daily just to practice as I was so determined and desperate to prove them wrong. (I have ego problems before I came to college) Fast forward to few months later, I improved a bunch, progress was expeditious but I was not sure. I waited for the Carnival Day (or known as Hari Koko among us Malaysians) as for our school we would have people dancing in the circle towards the end of the day. The atmosphere was tense, crowd was wild, but not for long. Knowing that the dancers would run out of things to do in the circle as they do not practice or take up classes, I waited until they were confused and panicking. As the atmosphere was dying down, I went in and proceeded to do my thing. The crowd love it, cheers were heard, students and teachers were smiling, that was when I got the

assurance that I was good in dancing. (or so I thought) My friends started praising me after that day, people in the school acknowledged of me, and my confidence was hiking. It soon became a huge ego for me. I stopped training as frequent and slacked as I always give myself excuses not to practice. One day my instructor suggested me to search for competitions to join to test out myself. (I think he noticed something wrong with me at that time) Thinking of how good I am, I did and I registered all the competitions I could find, all at once. Days passed and I did nothing to prepare for all the jams, (known as competitions for dancing) not even thinking about how I should counter other contestants. The dates for all the jams are only a few days or a couple weeks apart. I went to the venue with full confidence, entering them, and refused to join any cyphers (a time where people/dancers create a circle have fun sharing moves together) as I feel I would allow other contestants to have a chance to counter me in the battle (the actual competition) later. For the first competition, it was only opened to amateurs and I got into the finals close to winning. Being the fool I am, I took all the credits for my own skills and continue to think that I am the best. (seeing that the champion had more experiences than me) The next few jams proved me wrong, each and every one of it. I had no chance to proceed to anywhere near quarterfinals or even passing the auditions. Still being the arrogant idiot, I blamed everything except myself for losing. I did not bother to think about what was wrong and I was angry. I continued searching for more but all of them ended awfully with me getting the same result, losing. Then it finally hit me, that I was the root of all problems. I spent months feeling ashamed and I quit dancing for nearly a year only focusing on my academics and sports. Time flew by, I passed SPM, entered Taylor’s and I joined people from various places. I started seeing things differently and I returned to dancing which got me here now being more passionate than ever for it. That was the end of my experience with the Self-Serving Bias.

Entry 3 : (Chapter 3) StereotypingNovember 28 2015, 2:30AM A stereotype is a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people without having complete or accurate evidence or knowledge about that group or class of people. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality. For example, when I ask you to think of a teacher, what do they look like? How are their behaviors? Now when the word janitor is brought up, do they still look the same as the teachers that were in your head before? Or are they different? Do they behave the same? What language do they speak? Not so same isn’t? Stereotyping has its own advantage and disadvantage. One advantage is that it enables us to respond to situations rapidly because we may have had experienced something similar before. One disadvantage is that it makes us ignore the differences between each individuals, therefore we think things about people that might not be true at all. For example, assuming people with tattoos are people who has bad character.

I had several experiences with stereotyping. One of the event that impacted me the most was when I was at a family reunion with my other cousins, uncles and aunt. Elders in my family are more towards the old-fashioned, conservative thinking resulting it to be more difficult for them to accept new experiences. It was the time when we were all gathered in the small yet warm house after having our weekly family dinner. The night was chilly, moon was bright and laughter could be heard every once in a while from that paltry house. But then came my worst day of the week. As I train a lot, (from my entry 1 I explained about my hobby) I get bruises all over my arms and knees sometimes. One of my aunt noticed and commented on them about how awful and painful they looked. (my aunts love to exaggerate) Hearing this, my dad who works oversea only comes back once every few weeks was the next to notice it. He never really liked me to concentrate so much in dancing, he do not show it but I knew. People from the dancing scene had fancy hair colours, tattoos and piercings all over the body and they looked weird to people. My dad was worried that I would end up like them, but not all of us look like that. And even if they do, most of them that suits the characteristics I mentioned above are a whole lot nicer than those I met in suits or driving big cars who are just plain cocky. Back to the story, his face definitely did not look as bright as when we were chit-chatting before. My dad knew how much I love dancing, knowing his own son he understands that it was impossible to stop me from doing what I love, he sort of advised me to take it easy on things for so that I do not interfere my academics. I gave him my word that I would never neglect my studies and he agreed. Just when we were done talking, this aunt of mine joined in. (they LOVED to gossip. They never let go the chance to bull crap) At first they sounded like they were trying to help me get rid of those bruises to allow them to recover faster, then it gradually transformed into advising me to be careful, (at this moment I still thought they were just being caring) then it escalated to something terrible. There it was, stereotyping happening in the house. They were criticizing people involved in dance scenes and making fun of how they look like when they dance. What pissed me off the most was that they do not understand a single thing about hip hop yet they judged the scene. Dancing is art too, but you don’t see people judging Picasso’s art piece when they don’t understand what he message he was trying to convey. I tried explaining every information that was wrong that came out of their mouth, but I guess you just can’t change what people wants to believe in even the reality shows otherwise. I was angry, disappointed and sad that I have family member who thinks that way. (my brother is involved in hip hop and my parents understand so this was not aimed at them) The shameful thing was my cousins who were younger or around my age did not judge, instead they asked questions in order to understand more about what I spent most of my time doing. It pains me to see the elders to be so stubborn. Maybe it was because of the generation gap, or we come from different eras. But stereotyping was never cool.

Entry 4 : (Chapter 4) The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

November 29 2015, 2:51PM A self-fulfilling prophecy is when a person unknowingly allows a prediction to come true, due to the fact that he or she expects it to come true. In other words, an expectation about a certain individual or subject, such as a person or event, can affect our behavior towards that subject which causes the prediction towards the subject to be true. For instance, if somebody always calls you weak, eventually you would think that “oh screw it I don’t even have to try I am weak” mentality and you would slowly developed a weak mindset. In the other way round if you were to be called hardworking all the time, you would feel wrong if you slack as you want to fulfill what others see you as. This goes back to few months ago, when I first enrolled into Taylor’s. I was a quiet person who doesn’t really favor having conversation. I have slight anxiety when in public and I do not perform well in public speaking. I was shy and if I have questions I wouldn’t bother to ask because it feels like I need a college degree for that. On my first day of orientation, I woke up and prepared way too early for the day as this was going to be my first day in college. I was nervous, palms are sweaty, feet are cold and my mind wasn’t thinking straight. My mom dropped off me and left me there for myself to explore. Knowing that I would not survive if I stayed silent as college is a lot different from high school. Once I got there, I immediately started talking to people introducing and exchanging contact numbers. To be clear, I have never done something like this in my life before. I was surprised by the sudden change of my personality but I knew it was all acting. And so the first week went by, I’ve made friends and some of us still hangout together until now. When the actual semester started, I begin to work with other students. What surprised me the most was when they called me an extrovert while we were talking about ourselves. They see me as someone who was rather outgoing than a shy boy. They would never believe it when I told them I couldn’t even speak to strangers as I was the one who started the conversation with most of my friends. As the semester slowly progresses, I mixed with other groups of people and most of them said the same thing. It wasn’t long for me to notice that I have become a talkative person. I kept making terrible pun jokes whenever I am around my friends and they got so annoyed by me all the time. (in a good and friendly way, no hate) Another experience from this self-fulfilling prophecy was between my family. I would see my dad as a person I was never close to as he was at work all the time and I barely see him. When he was at home he was always disciplining me so we did not have much time to get together. As time passes I slowly formed a mindset that me and my dad was not close. Every time when I was with my dad, it sort of felt like I am not close to him. And because of that he doesn’t really understand about me and knows what I do on a daily basis. But all these was a result of my mindset so I did not share my experiences of story with him, just my mother. It feels weird because it felt like we were once close but not anymore. It is even worse for us now as he works overseas and only comes back once in a while. Talking about my dad, I have an elder brother 2 years older than me. Although we came out from the same place but me and him we are a total opposite of everything. He loves noodles, I hate them ; he likes fancy clothes, I prefer something neat ; he loves having hairstyles that covers the fringe, I prefer to have none, I could go on for so much more if we were to list out all the things that we both do not have in common. But we are very close to each other. My parents would call us the yin and yang. They always say that my brother was quiet and I was more of a

outgoing person. (this was after I enrolled in Taylor’s) And so my brother always stays at home and even the subject that he studies does not require of human interaction while I took up architecture. Well I guess that is all for self-fulfilling prophecy.

Entry 5 : (Chapter 7) RacismNovember 29 2015, 5:28PM Racism is a discrimination directed at a specific racial group. Everyone knows what racism is and it had been on earth for years having dark and ugly histories. It happens around the whole world and is still happening right now. Even though it is not as obvious as it seems, it still exists. Racism has cause millions of death. Some of the major ones would be the racial issue of black and white differences in the United States ; the genocide of Jewish by Adolf Hitler ; The 513 incident that took place in Malaysia. Racism has never brought advantage to society but only tons of disadvantages. People hurt and kill each other just because they speak different languages or they have the different same colour. I myself am a Chinese Malaysian, and I was exposed to an environment that contains more people of my same race and they mostly speak Chinese or English. I was still very young so I never thought of the importance of the Malay language as people around me do not use that language very often. As I grew older and begin going out alone, I realized I had more exposure to people of other races. I had to understand their culture and language there are so many restrictions or I would prefer to call it difference in religious beliefs. I tried to memorize the dos and don’ts of each race so that I would not offend any of them. The first time I spoken to a Malay classmate was horrible. She could speak fluent Malay and I had trouble trying to say something simple. But it sure was fun learning from each other. When I got into the sports team for the tug of war, I met this Indian friend in the same house as mine. He was down to earth and cool about anything, we talked a lot as we have to train together so we got closer. The best part was when we taught each other vulgar of our own language so that if the next time someone was swearing at us we would know. (or for some other reasons) Living in Malaysia is fun, we have multi races here and we get to speak more than one language. But then things changed. Crime rates are hiking, politics begin creating racial issues among Malaysians, there were even protests against a race. This happened to me a while ago when me and my friends had to travel to the city center to interview an architect for our assignment. My group consists of Malays and Chinese. In order to get the full experience we decided to go there by public transport together as some of the members are not from Kuala Lumpur. Everything was fine when we were in the bus, discussing about where to have lunch later and what questions to ask for the interview. We had a great time but it was tiring and hot at the same time. We got into the train and waited for our station. We were really enjoying the experience as everyone was all smiles on that day then something caught my attention. There was this lady (I would prefer not to point out her race) kept glaring at us with a disgusted look. I was the only one who noticed as my friends were not paying attention. I didn’t want to create any trouble or

ruin the mood of my group as I was worried it might affect the interview later. I ignored the lady and continued chatting with my friends but she just wouldn’t stop giving me these looks. A moment passed and the lady finally stood up and walked nearer to us so that she could exit from the train at the next station. It was pretty awkward for me as she was standing so near and I had to try my best to not glare back at her rude behavior. When the train stopped, she made her way out through to exit and I could hear something coming out from her mouth. I am not sure whether it was targeted at me and my friends or someone else but it goes something like “cina bodoh”. (stupid Chinese) I turned my head at her, she wasn’t looking at us but she quickly exited from the train. Whether if that was for us or not, this lady just made a racist statement to someone who did not do anything to offend her. And it sickens me to see people who judge others just because we have different cultures. I missed the time when I could see people of different races being together. I wish society would be more like how Petronas advertisements are.