Report

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY GROUP (WEDNESDAY)

CHAN PIN QI 0314676

DANAR JOVIAN ADITYA VADYA PUTRA 0314575

CHIA SUE YI0315334

JOHNSON CHAN0314527

SEAN CHUA JIU XIN0314025

FOUNDATION IN NATURAL, BUILT &

ENVIRONMENT

APRIL INTAKE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The members of the team would like to express their deepest

appreciation to all those who provided us the possibility to complete this

report. A special gratitude we give to our lecturer, Ms. Chia Yee Pang,

whose contribution in stimulating suggestions and encouragement,

helped us to coordinate our project especially in writing this report.

Special thanks to the LRT security for the approval to take the video in

the train to conduct our research. Last but not the least, many thanks for

the people who had participated in our research. We couldn’t do it if it

weren’t them.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……………………………………………………………………..…2

ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………4

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...5

METHOD………………………………………………………………………………..6 - 7

RESULTS………………………………………………………………………………..8 - 14

DISCUSSION………………………………………………………………………..15 - 17

APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………..18 - 19

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………...20 - 21

ABSTRACT

As Malaysia’s population becomes increasingly more diverse ethnically

and culturally, the opportunities for individuals of differing racial

backgrounds and ethnic groups to mix interracially when engaging in

romantic relationships increases as well. The purpose of this study was

to compare people’s perceptions of couples engaged in interracial

romantic relationships compared to college students’ perceptions of

couples engaged in romantic relations with individuals of the same racial

heritage. The research was conducted in Taylor’s University Lakeside

Campus as well on the LRT train, using the students of Taylor’s

University and the commuters of LRT. The purpose of this research is to

make a comparative examination of attitudes and perceptions concerning

interracial dating. In total, 100 students completed the Interracial

Relationship Questionnaire, an instrument designed to assess attitudes

toward interracial dating. Results indicate that most of the participants

are at the age of 19-24. Most of the Chinese, Indians and other races,

they have an open minded thinking about interracial relationships as

well as their parents. For the Malays, most of them don’t mind having a

relationship with other races, but the problem comes with their parents

as three out of five of them would not agree with interracial relationship.

INTRODUCTION

Malaysia is a melting pot of cultures and our society is very fluid. So

interracial relationships are not uncommon, yet we still possess a somewhat

contemptuous attitude towards it. Some of the people in Malaysia that are

having an interracial relationship often experience intense struggles and

obstacles throughout their relationship simply because one side of the family

or the other disagrees with the idea of having a different race for a partner.

Malaysia, historically, has been a nation of immigrants, most of them are

from India and China. They were brought here by the British during Britain's

colonization as a workforce/labour. Most of the Indians they work on a

rubber tapping industry where as the Chinese they work in the mining

industry. Of course, the mining industry earns more revenue that the rubber

tapping industry, which in consequence in a better standard of living for the

Chinese than the Indians.

But as the year goes by, many people in Malaysia regardless of what their

race are starting to earn more money. This results in a growing parental

openness to diverse populations came increased opportunities for their

children socially to interact with people of racial and ethnic backgrounds

beyond their own.

Openness to interracial relationships varies among generations. Generally,

the older generations have been more opposed to interracial relationship

while the younger generations have tended to view interracial relationship as

a normal thing.

In this study, we explore what are other people's perception on other races

than their own. We also were interested in knowing what is the student's view

in interracial relationship as well as the openness of their parents of having a

relationship with another race other than their own.

METHOD

Participants

One hundred participants with different ages enrolled in this Psychology

course at private institution in Petaling Jaya (Taylor University). We

administered a self-report survey instrument created by the authors to

record the students’ and their opinion on interracially relationships.

Questionnaires with participant’s completed responses were used for the

study. One hundred sets were usable for the research study. The

response rate was 99%. Reason that every questionnaires were useable

in this survey. As a result, 57 male and 43 female participants were part

of the completed study.

Procedure

Participants were given the questionnaires to complete during recess. To

ensure the privacy, participants did not need to write their name on

survey forms. After collecting the completed questionnaires from the

participants, we started to calculate the numbers of questionnaires that

we had collected. Then, we started to categorize the questionnaires into

genders and races to let us examined the result easily. We analyzed and

collected data from the questionnaires. The data and results were

recorded in the table that we made for our report. Besides, we had our

own survey based on this topic by observing and recording the behavior

of passengers (different races and genders) in LRT. Every actions of the

passengers were recorded. Moreover, we watched the videos that we

recorded and chose some of them which were related to our survey out.

Design

Hypothesis : Attractiveness depends on similarity and proximity

Independent variable : Gender and races

Dependent variable : Rate of attractiveness

Material

Examiners had prepared 100 questionnaires for participants. The general

questionnaire constructs for every participant were identical. Beyond

basic demographic information, all were asked to provide the opinions

and acceptance on different genders and races. They needed to answer

every question sincerely to ensure the result collected were accurate and

easy to analyze. The racial categories included Malay, Chinese, Indian

and others. Besides, they would answer what kind of partner from

different races which country they prefer to become their partner.

Furthermore, they were required to answer the questions on acceptance

between different genders and races.

Besides, the examiners used a lot of technical equipment to carry out the

experiment in LRT. DSLR camera, digital camera and camera tripod

were used in the experiment. Some of the examiners used cameras to

record the behavior of the passengers, while some of them observed the

action passengers and took notes. The data were collected and arranged

after the experiment.

Result

A survey of similarity and proximity happened during Interracial

Relation between a man and woman cohabitation, sexual relations,

marriage, or interbreeding involving persons of different races.

However, this was also a survey based on people choices preferred

partners e.g. country, races, religion, skin color.

Below showed the races member of Taylor’s involved in the survey.

Number of different gender involved.

Race Total Amount Chinese 73

Malay 8

Indian 5

Others 6

Female

40

Male

51

Figures

Age

≤18

19-24

25-29

35-39

≥40

Figure 1. Average age of participants involved in this survey is teenagers

between 19-24 years old.

status

single

in relationship

married

other

Figure 2. Status of participants involved in this survey.

Figure 3. Percentage of races in participants’ friends

0 10 20 30 40 50

White

Yellow

Light

Brown

Dark

Brown

Others

Indian

Malay

Chinese

Figure 4. Preference of skin color by the participants

s

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Chinese Malay Indian Other

South East Asia

Asia

Europe

North America

South Ameica

Others

Figure 5. Preference of country in choosing partner

Figure 6.

Questions Chinese Malay Indian Others

Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No

Would you choose other races

as partner 44 29 4 1 6 2 6 0

Do the parents agree with

interracial relationship? 51 22 2 3 7 1 5 1

Do you feel comfort with other

races?

59 14 3 2 8 0 6 0

Discussion

The research findings confirmed the hypothesis is accepted which the

attractiveness depends on similarity, proximity and familiarity. Items

that are similar to each other tend to be grouped together. It happened to

people as well. A basic requirement for forming a relationship is

similarity, proximity and familiarity. For example, those superstars in

the TV shows will not possible building up relationship with us. There’s

no chance for us to be close enough with them (no proximity), therefore

they will still remain as our idol, not friends. Having more chances to

interact with each other will build up familiarity and lead to friendship

or intimate relationship according to the mere exposure effect (Robert B.

Zajonc, 1968) which states that the more we are exposed to a stimulus,

whether it is a sound, picture or person, the more positively we will rate

that stimulus. Therefore people will choose the one who are similar,

familiar and close to them in building up relationship.

The experiment carried out in the LRT confirmed the hypothesis is

accepted. Passengers who were entering the LRT tended to choose the

seats beside the people who similar to them such as same races and same

gender. A hidden attraction will be formed between those people who

were similar to each other, as they felt more secure while sitting with the

same gender or same race. Among 109 participants taken part in the

survey, 60% of the participants were found to choose seats near the

people who share similarity, proximity and familiarity. Passengers who

are different gender would hesitate a while whether wants to sit with a

guy or not. The results showed majority of them will choose to sit with

same gender or sit with the other gender then move to other seats when

empty seats are available. However, due to the crowd in the LRT, some

people would not bother whom to sit with just to want a seat and get

some rest. There’s another reason why the people do not want to sit with

people beside as they were letting seats for those who need such as old

ladies and small kids. However, there’s small portion of people who did

not care about the similarity, familiarity and proximity that sit with other

gender or races but only 40% of them.

A survey of people point of view towards other races is taken out among

members in Taylor’s. The finding showed the majority of students have

friends of same races except the foreigners. Due to the incident

happened 13of May, the locals lost confidence in other races and leads

to the separation of each other. Since they had been hurt by each other

before, it’s hard to recover the scars. Therefore, friends of the locals’

majority are same race. However, for foreigners, they made friends with

same races people and also different races people equally. One of the

reasons may because they had already used to live with the people from

other races as they stayed abroad.

The survey also involved which country’s people tended to attract

people most. A result showed Asian country tends to attract most of the

participants, as most of our participants were Chinese. Chinese attracted

by Asian countries’ people. The hypothesis is accepted. For races beside

from Chinese, most Malay were attracted by the people from South East

Asia and Asian. Malay seldom chose Europe and other country as their

ideal partner’s country. This may be caused by the conflict happened

between the Christian and the Islam. Prejudice involved in this survey.

People also tended to be attracted by those who had the same color skin

with them.

The findings showed the Chinese mostly prefer their partner to have

yellow skin color. Their second choice would be white color for their

partner’s ideal skin color. The Malay, Indian and the foreigners would

choose skin color skin of light brown as same as their own skin color.

Dark brown skin color seemed to be looked down by the majority of the

participants as only small portion of them chose this. This may be

caused by the America Slaves rule which setting the Blacks as the lower

standard citizens.

According to the Steven Duck (1992) theory, he explained the

tenderness of people towards similarity, proximity and familiarity was

because of seeing the world in the same way as someone else make it

easier to interact with them. Therefore, everyone in the world contained

a bit of racism deep inside the heart. The hypothesis was accepted.

Light Brown: Malay, foreigner, Indian

Yellow : Chinese

White: Chinese

The survey above showed that people of certain skin

color tend to find those who are from same color.

Appendix

Appendix 1.a

Age Amount of Participant

< 18 8

19 - 24 77

25 - 29 4

29 - 34 0

35 - 39 1

> 40 2

100

Appendix 1.b

Gender Amount of Participant

Male 57

Female 43

100

Appendix 1.c

Status Amount of Participant

Single 68

In relationship 28

Married 3

Others 1

100

Appendix 1.d

Race Amount of Participant

Malay 76

Chinese 10

Indian 5

Others 9

100

Appendix 2.a

Race

Question

Malay Chinese Indian Others

Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No

1. Would you choose other

races as your partner?

4 1 46 30 8 2 9 0

2. Do the parents agree

interracial relationship?

2 3 52 24 9 1 8 1

3. Do you feel comfort

while people from others

country?

3 2 62 14 10 0 9 0

Appendix 2.b

Race

Country


South East Asia 3 23 2 1

Asia 3 43 2 5

Europe 1 22 4 4

North America 1 17 3 1

South America 1 3 6 0

Others: 0 5 1 3

Appendix 2.c

Race

Skin color


White 1 28 3 2

Yellow 1 46 2 3

Light Brown 4 18 7 3

Dark brown 1 2 0 0

Appendix 2.d

Races

Friend race


95% same race 3 47 3 2

50% same race 1 25 4 3

25% same race 1 1 3 4

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