NAME: SHAM ZHEN WEN

ID: 0317733

GROUP: MONDAY 4PM – 7PM

SUBJECT: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, FNBE

SUBMISSION DATE: 10TH NOVEMBER 2014

Entries 1: Self Concept

“Who am I?” That is the question that summarize what I understand about this

concept. I further my research about this concept and I learnt that it’s basically how I see

myself, how I value myself and what I would like to be. Be seriously, who am I?... I found

myself somehow very hard to answer this question, maybe I have a negative thought about

myself that I rather keep silence? I think so, I’m pretty concern about how other think about

me, am I too skinny? Am I stupid? After I learnt this chapter, I found out that it’s just how I

value myself by compare with others. I have a pretty low esteem. I should be thinking more

positively.

Entries 2: Social Cognition

Today I learnt about The Optimistic Bias, It is defined as Believing that bad things happened

to other people and that you are more likely to experience positive events in life. This

reminds me how I used to avoid walking home alone from university at night considering

how terrible the crime rate currently is. But that doesn’t become an Issue anymore as I started

walking home from university at night a lot now and yeah, I haven’t got robbed once, so I

stopped caring about my safety.

Entries 3: Self serving bias

Self serving bias is the tendency to judge oneself in a positive manner even when the positive

evaluation is not justified. Learning this reminded me an awkward situation during my

secondary school time. We just started our physics class and I tell my friends how easy this is

going to get, everything seems to be very easy to understand, and I asked my friend how is

this hard, until the first test came, and I got a pretty bad results. Start from that day, in

stopped bragging about anything.

Entries 4: Classical conditioning

Classical conditioning occur when 2 stimuli pair together, they bring out the same respond.

To further my understanding about this concept, I learned the Ivan Pavlov and his Dog

experiment. For this experiment, the dog always salivating whenever Pavlov brings food.

And then, Pavlov rang bell whenever he bring food to the dog. After numerous time doing the

same thing, one day, the dog salivating even Pavlov didn’t bring food, instead he just rang the

bell. The dog thought that there will be food whenever the bell rangs.

This remind me the same thing I experienced during my secondary school life. I used

to interest in History class. Until during form 5, I was taught by a unfamiliar history teacher.

The way she teach is pretty boring and most of the time she just give exercise. She is also bad

tempered, many of the students have been humiliated by her. During that time, I hated the

history classes… or am I?

Entries 5: Stereotype

I grew up in Kuantan, although the population here is mostly Malays, The place I lived is

mostly Chinese community, and I studied chinese primary school. When I was young, I

always thought that Malays are always bad. For example, smoking in a gang near the street

with school uniform – Malays, riding motorcycle in a gang without helmet on and speeding-

Malays. Even my parents also see the Malays as the lazy one. That changes when I was in

secondary school when I have some Malay friends. Although I’m not discriminating

anymore, but we still make some racist jokes. Well, stereotype will always be stereotype.