SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN THE DESIGN SCHOOL

FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILT ENVIROMENT (FNBE) AUGUST 2014 INTAKE

Chong Kit Yee

0319748

0900-1100 Monday

Social Psychology [PSYC0103]

27th April 2015

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Journal 1

Social Psychology

Entry 01: Social Facilitation

Social Facilitation can be defined as the tendency for a person to do better when there is a

presence of others or in a group task. Social facilitation also is the idea that you will likely do

better when other people are watching you but you would tend to do less well when you

are alone. For example, a cyclist tend to cycle faster in a competition rather than he is alone

because there are people competing with him.

In my own experience, my family was very emphasis in education. Relatives or maybe we

ourselves will compare the results of education especially in primary and secondary school.

Once you get bad results you will be scolded or even contempt by other relatives. So under

this situation, we were competing with one and another. In this kind of grouping I’ll tend to

work hard and achieve my own target rather than just being less efficiency. I’ll keep on

study and also do more worksheet to make myself better than my other cousins. This shows

the social facilitation in myself, performed better when competing in a group or the

presence of others.

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Journal 1

Social Psychology

Entry 02: Social Loafing

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. In an easier way, social loafing refers to the concept that people are

prone to exert less effort on a task if they are in a group versus when they work alone.

This was the worst experience I ever had, for the first project of Creative Thinking Skills we

had to group ourselves in ten and each of us had to produce a daily object musical

instruments to play together. A few of our group member, they just kept changing their

instruments and always late or even absent for meetings. Every week before the

performance we will meet up once and practice all the songs. They were just slacking,

ignoring the leader or even leaving without telling us. Few hours before the performance,

we only knew what their instrument were and had a full rehearsal. To me, social loafing

conquer when you are doing individual task but not in group task.

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Journal 2

The self

Entry 01: Motivation (Intrinsic and Extrinsic)

A motive is an impulse that causes a person to act. Motivation is an internal process that

makes a person move toward or achieve a goal. Motivation, like intelligence, can’t be

directly observed. Instead, motivation can only be inferred by noting a person’s behaviour.

There is two kind of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. Sometimes people are motivated

when they have satisfied internal needs. Intrinsic people did something for self- fulfilling.

However, sometime people aren’t motivated by internal needs. For example, people

sometime eat even they don’t feel hungry.

Through my own experience and also observation, when I went for my guitar camp I met a

guy who had played guitar for ten years. He started since he was 8 years old. I was

impressed by him I thought he really love guitar so much but actually not. He was forced by

his parents, they told him “after you finished learning guitar I’ll let you learn whatever you

want.” This is the extrinsic motivation that his parent gave to him. When he was playing,

there were no soul in it. He just follow the music notes and without rhythm. To me, I was

really enjoying in the song feeling the rhythm. Every time I finished a song smoothly I felt

satisfied but when it was bad I’ll keep on practise until it was perfect. This is the self-

satisfying for intrinsic motivation.

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Journal 2

The self

Entry 02: Self-serving biases

The common human tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal characteristics, and

one’s failures to factors beyond one’s control. The reason people tend to personalize

success is because it helps their self-esteem levels. Most people demonstrate this behaviour

on a regular basis. It is also human nature to avoid responsibility entirely for mistakes or

problems to make ourselves feel better. For example, a basketball player make a throw and

manages to make a basket during the last few seconds. He attributes this to his skill.

A story that happened one year ago, at my age of 17 when I was learning how to drive. It

was smooth when I was learning practical. Even my tutor said I was good enough to face the

exam and just have to relax and not to panic. However, on the exam day I failed. I was using

different car for the entire exam so at the first stage up to hill I already failed. Until I went

back home, my parents scolded me and I kept on giving excuses like the car’s clutch was

hard, totally different from what I drove during practical. This cognitive bias allows me to

protect my self-esteem and absolve themselves from personal responsibility by blaming

outside forces for failures and absolve themselves from personal responsibility.

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Journal 3

Social Cognition

Entry 01: Self- fulfilling Prophecy

A sociologist named Robert K. Merton created self- fulfilling prophecy in 1948 to describe 'a

false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the originally false

conception come true.' In other words, the prediction we make at the start of something

affects our behaviour in such a way that we make that prediction happen. For instance,

when teachers treat middle-class students as if they will do better than lower-class students,

the middle-class students tend to perform better and achieve more than they otherwise

would.

Have you ever think or believed that you wouldn’t be good before started a new job or

given task? I do tried this before in my secondary school. In the last year of my secondary

school life, I was the president of Chinese Society. Before that, I’m not a very active and old

member of the society. I don’t understand why my seniors chose me to handle this great

responsibility. At first, I thought I won’t do it well because I didn’t know much about the

society so I just did all the job by slacking and started to shirk my job to others committee.

Due to my self-fulfilling prophecy, the first event of our society was ruined. All of the

committee and I were being scolded by the teacher in charge. A negative self-fulfilling

prophecy will established a bad schema to others and also affect yourself. While a positive

self-fulfilling keep motivates you.

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Journal 3

Social Cognition

Entry 02: Stereotyping

Stereotypes are beliefs about people based on their membership in a particular group.

Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral. Stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or

occupation are common in many societies. Stereotype cause you assume that all member in

a group share the common features. For example, people may stereotype women as

shopaholic, love to cook so on and so forth.

In Malaysia there’s a common stereotype which is racial stereotype. One day, I happened an

accident in Sunway area. This happened because of the Indian driver did an illegal U-turn

and hit my car. Once I saw he was an Indian my brain told me he must be a gangster or

maybe a bad guy. Which my stereotype occurs. When he offered me to go to his workshop I

was afraid of it and I just exchange my phone number with him. After I backed home, my

mother was mumbling if this number was fake or get cheated how can I find him and get

reparation from him. (Racial stereotype occurs again)

The day after, the Indian call me how can he paid the reparation fees to me I was shocked. I

thought he would just hit and run. At last, he paid the exact amount of my reparation fees.

This stereotypes always seem to favour the race of the holder and belittle other races. It is

probably true to say that every ethnic group has racial stereotypes of other groups.

However, is not eventually all the member of a group share the common characteristic.

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Journal 4

Social Perception

Entry 01: The Halo Effect

The halo effect is a type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person

influences how we feel and think about his or her character. Essentially, your overall

impression of a person ("He is nice!") impacts your evaluations of that person's specific

traits ("He is also smart!"). This effect causes people to be biased in their judgments by

transferring their feelings about one attribute of something to other, unrelated, attributes.

For example, our overall impressions to a celebrity is attractive, likeable and successful. So

we also tend to see them as intelligent, friendly and so on.

As you read above, the halo effect can influence how teachers treat students, but it can also

impact how students perceive teachers. In one study, researchers found that when an

instructor was viewed as warm and friendly, students also rated him as more attractive,

appealing, and likeable. As my experience, I’m one of the talkative students in my class and

always skip classes. However, when I was in mathematics class I was silent and focus on

what teacher teaching. In this case, my mathematics teacher thought I was clever and

created a good impressions of me. This is one of the Halo Effect occurs in my experience.

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Journal 4

Social Perception

Entry 02: Confirmation Bias

A confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favouring information that

confirms previously existing beliefs or biases. We will actively seek out data that support our

belief even in the face of contradictory data. For example, people who support or oppose a

particular issue will not only seek information that supports their beliefs, they will also

interpret news stories in a way that upholds their existing ideas and remember things in a

way that also reinforces these attitudes.

I was opposed to homosexual marriage, and would like to stop being close to someone who

was homosexual. I firmly belief that god created men and women is to get marry and breed

for the next generation. While homosexual was totally against of god’s guidance. I

specifically think sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex as among the

forbidden acts. A boy or girl who discovers homosexual feelings should realize that, like

other interests and feelings, it may be only a passing phase that will fade away in time.

Meanwhile, he or she should avoid becoming obsessed with the feelings or indulging in any

kind of sexual activity.

But in this era, homosexual was slowly being accepted in some country and homosexual

marriage was allowed in America. I think I would be this confirmation bias victim for my

entire life because to me homosexual marriage was still against the god’s guidance and the

natural phenomena.

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Journal 5

Attitudes

Entry 01: Observational Learning

Observational learning is sometimes also referred to as shaping, modelling, and vicarious

reinforcement. While it can take place at any point in life, it tends to be the most common

during childhood as children learn from the authority figures and peers in their lives. It also

plays an important role in the socialization process, as children learn how to behave and

respond to others by observing how their parents and other caregivers interact with each

other and with other people. For example, a group of children play hide and seek but one

child has never played before and is not sure what to do. After observing the other children

play, she quickly learns the basic rules of the game and joins in.

As we always said “Like father like son.” Most of the children learnt their attitude and also

behaviour from their parents. During my part time job, I as a primary students’ tuition

teacher, one of my student was eventually same as his father. His father was a business man

so was very polite and humble in any way. As to his son, every time he saw me he must

greet me and also when I praised his results were good he would be very humble like his

father. Even their accent, behaviour, attitude were same. I think this is because of my

students admire of his father and want to be like him. That’s why observational learning

occurs.

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Journal 5

Attitudes

Entry 02: Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments

for behaviour. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behaviour

and a consequence for that behaviour. In a simplest way, operant conditioning is using

reinforcement or punishment to strengthen or weaken a particular behaviour. For example,

a child may be told they will lose recess privileges if they talk out of turn in class. This

potential for punishment may lead to a decrease in disruptive behaviours.

I remember when I was young my mother wanted me to learnt mental arithmetic. I would

need to memorise the whole multiplication table (1*1 =1, 1*2=2….) to carry on the next

level. So my mother ordered me to memorise each of it and recited in front of her. Once I

had wrong I had to redo again and also copy the whole multiplication table. I’m afraid of

doing again so every time before I recited I would learn by heart. This is because of operant

conditioning, learning through punishments that I afraid of.

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