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Page 1: Journal (psycho)

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN

FOUNDATION IN NATURE AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Social Psychology (PSY30203)

Individual Journal

Name : Lee Xin Ying

Student ID : 0322432

Instructor : Shankar Thiruchelvam

Tutorial Session : Monday (3.30pm-5.30pm)

Submission Date : 30th November 2015

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Entry 1 : Social Influence

Social influence occurs when one's emotions, opinions, or behaviours are affected by others, intentionally or unintentionally.  These other people may include family members, salesmen, advertisers, public relations experts, or even media celebrities like Big Bird. Social influence takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales and marketing. Social influence can have positive or negative effect on people.

Before these things happen, I always thought I am a good girl for friends and teachers, and also a good daughter for my lovely parents. I help someone who need help, especially my friends and teachers. I always help my mother to do every housework and I seldom talk back to my parents. But after this two of the worst

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matter happened, I start to blame and reflect on myself, because I have no obedient and deceive to my parents.

When I was 13 years old, my parents thought that I was already became a teenager, so they start to remind me do not ride in the car with someone who has been drinking. I agreed and accepted their idea and view at that moment. They also always advice me do not fall in love with somebody too earlier, I need to take care of my performance in school and result as good as possible.

25th April 2012

Still remember the year when I was 15 years old, I started my first love with the boy who in the next class. He is my classmate, Grace’s friend. We met each other through Grace. In the beginning, we had our lunch together in school every day. We stay back after school every Friday to finish our homework together. Gradually, I found that I had a little bit favourable impression to this boy. He also started to find me in my class when there was no teacher, we became best friend and kept no secrets from each other. He told me how he feel in November of that year. When I decided to reject him because of my parents’ advice, Grace instigated me tried to start a relationship with him, because he is a good person and I will have a new life full of happiness. I considered a few days and got an answer. Maybe Dad and Mom have an excessive worry for this kind of matter, maybe I can try once? After that, we came together and he requested me to have a movie with him in the weekend a few weeks later. I did not intend to let my parents know the reason I went out because they will get mad. Suddenly, I had an idea appeared in my mind. I will always go out with Grace to do homework together, so I lied to my mother I went out for doing homework with Grace. Luckily, mother had no aware any unusual for me that day. I went to cinema and dated with him in a happy mood. Unfortunately, when

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the movie was over, we met my neighbour, Mr Lee and his family. Oh my God! That is the only words appeared in my mind. I realised that my relationship cannot be hide, I started to imagine what will happen after I went back to home. I had no enough courage to face my parents. Through introspection, I realised that I did something wrong. When I reached home, I made a confession to my parents. Surprisingly, they had no get mad, they forgave me and I promised to them I will become friend with that guy again.

1st January 2015

After I finished the SPM, all the SPM candidates need to wait for 3 months to get their SPM result. At that period of time, I went to work in a shopping mall in my hometown. I was making friends with the other employee. We became familiar after a few weeks. It’s Friday night, party night. We were celebrating Poh Nee’s birthday. They were drinking together but I refused to drink. When the party finished, Poh Nee get in the car with Bryan. They had been drinking. They asked me if I wanted a ride. I replied “no” because of parents’ advice. They assured me Bryan driving only had three beers and that was not far away from my house. They assured me, I will be safe. I started to think again maybe my parents over reacting, three beers do not mean drunk and he did not look drunk. After that, I hop in the car! After a few days, I saw a news, that was about drink driving. A man had been drinking and he drove in a car was crashed with a lorry. Unfortunately, the man was died in the accident. Although I reached home safety on Friday night, but I realised I was wrong and I must be honest to my parents about what happen in that night. I swear to them I will not effect on my behaviour from others again.

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Entry 2 : Social Comparison

The Social Comparison Theory was developed by social psychologist Leon Festinger. There are two versions of this theory. The old one states that members of a particular group would want to be parallel with each other because a uniform agreement must be made so that the group is able to come up with a common decision. On the other hand, the revised theory states that an individual need to solicit information from a group of people to confirm or re-assess his or her abilities. In the social comparison theory, it is not only that the individual needs a group of people to affirm his abilities but also to realize up to what extent he can use these particular abilities and eventually validate other people’s opinion. As a result, we are constantly making self and other evaluations across a variety of domain. For example, attractiveness, wealth, intelligence, and success. Most of us have the social skills and impulse control to keep our envy and social comparisons quiet but our true feelings may come out in subtle ways.

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There are two types of social comparisons, upward and downward social comparisons. Individuals make upward comparisons, whether consciously or subconsciously, when they compare themselves with an individual or comparison group that they perceive as superior or better than themselves in order to improve their views of self or to create a more positive perception of their personal reality. Downward social comparison is a defensive tendency that is used as a means of self-evaluation. When a person looks to another individual or group that they consider to be worse off than themselves in order to feel better about their self or personal situation, they are making a downward social comparison. Either upward or downward type of comparison is highly influenced by the level of a person’s motivation. When a person is highly motivated, he tends to assume himself as better or equal to the best individual and this suggests an upward comparison. Downward comparison is the exact opposite. When a person is unhappy and unmotivated, he usually compares downward to self-enhance to make himself feel better.

4th January 2007

I was a team member of basketball club when I educated in my primary school. Every student need to choose a society when they start their Year 4. I have a lot of interest for playing basketball, so I resolutely chose the society of basketball with my friends together. There was the first week in Year 4, we were very excited because finally we can join the society we really like. On Wednesday, we stay back after class to participate the activity of our own society. When I reached the basketball court, I saw the seniors practiced together happily. Suddenly, they made my blood tingle! Under the instruction of leader of basketball society, we started to warm up and learnt the basic of pass the basketball neatly to another. After a few weeks, we started to learn about the techniques to make a goal. Since the

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Wednesday of Week 1 in Year 4, I never absence to participate in the training and playing processes. After all the training, we got a medal in the match in the end of Year 5. After finished the match, consultant teacher saw my strength and finally, the consultant teacher chose me to be the vice leader when I was in Year 6. Although I was the most powerful team member in the girl group, but my target was exceeded the ability of the most powerful person in the boy group. I went to the basketball court every Saturday to do exercise and improve my skill. I always invite him to have a shot or dribble competition with me. Although after a period of time, I was still not really better than him, but I found that my skill had a great leap forward.

19th March 2014

I have the experience about downward social comparison all the time. Every time after the examination, students will do the same action after teacher released the exam result. Regardless of I was in Form 1, Form 2 or already in Form 5, this kind of comparison our results with the other classmate is never ever end. When I was Form 5, I always got the good result in my class in two subjects, there were Mathematic and Additional Mathematic. Because of I never get the result better than Mei Tsen, who always got the highest mark in my class, so I gave up to compare with her. I started to compare my results with other classmate. The moment I expected the most after the examination was teacher released the Mathematic and Additional Mathematic results. When I got the marks higher than other classmate, my self-esteem enhanced. I felt good when I was better than other classmates.

Entry 3 : Stereotype

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Stereotyping is when you judge a group of people who are different from you based on your own or others opinions or encounters. In social psychology, a stereotype is a thought that can be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality.

The principles of social psychology, including the ABCs—affect, behaviour, and cognition. They apply to the study of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. The cognitive component in our perceptions of group members is the stereotype—the positive or negative beliefs that we hold about the characteristics of social group. In addition to our stereotypes, we may also develop prejudice —an unjustifiable negative attitude toward an outgroup or toward the members of that outgroup. Prejudice can take the form of disliking, anger, fear, disgust, discomfort, and even hatred. The kind of affective states that can lead to behaviour such as the gay bashing you just read about. Our stereotypes and our prejudices are problematic because they may create discrimination—unjustified negative behaviours toward members of outgroups based on their group membership. Although violence against members of outgroups is fortunately rare, stereotypes, prejudice, and

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discrimination nevertheless influence people’s lives in a variety of ways. Stereotypes influence our academic performance, the careers that we chose to follow, our experiences at work, and the amount that we are paid for the work that we do.

One disadvantage is that it makes us ignore differences between individuals. Therefore, we think things about people that might not be true. The use of stereotypes is a major way in which we simplify our social world, since they reduce the amount of processing. For example, thinking. We have to do when we meet a new person. By stereotyping we infer that a person has a whole range of characteristics and abilities that we assume all members of that group have. Stereotypes lead to social categorization, which is one of the reasons for prejudice attitudes which leads to in-groups and out-groups.

I heard and met a few of racial stereotyping before in my life and even sometimes I will also be a racist as well. Often, somebody will say, Blacks are poor, ghetto, uncivilized, always angry at white, uneducated, lazy, welfare abusers or violent. They also think that most of the Black women are single-mother and loud women. We can always see this kind of rumours through internet. For me, these rumours are unfair to the Blacks.

30th May 2015

I was a Leo Club member since Form 3. I served as a project director in 2013 and 2014. In the middle of last year, I went to Singapore with Leo Club of my secondary school. We had a 3 days 2 nights forum in National University of Singapore. There had 12 persons represented my secondary school to attend this event. Almost all of the Lions and Leo member around the Malaysia and Singapore attended this forum. There were a few Australians also attended. We had a dinner together in the first day. Luckily, I had the

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chance to meet and chat with the Lions, Leo member from other school and the Australians. Between our conversation, I felt that the Australians thought most of the Asians know martial arts. Because of Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu movies, that have given rise to the false impression that all Asians know martial arts. One of the Lion from Penang told them, in reality, Asian kids also spend a good deal of their time playing X-Box and Play Station like everyone else. Although martial arts can help us to strong body, but not all the Asians know this art.

21st March 2013

My secondary school has more than 80% of Chinese and less than 20% of Malay and Indian. Because of my school has the most people are Chinese, I can always hear our teachers said “You are a Chinese, why your Mathematic so poor? Why you can’t get an A? You see that Amirul (Malay) also can got A in this exam. You should get a better result than him!” I heard this kind of words almost after every exam. Most of the people especially our teacher thought that Chinese’s Mathematic are better than Malay, but I resolutely opposed to this idea, because my Malay friends, some of them also have a good basic even better result than others and they knew a lot of Mathematic concept. Sometimes in life, I also can hear some aunty or uncle said there was a Malay grocer gave a change wrongly to them. They thought that this matter happen is because Malay are poor in Mathematic. But in fact, I also will meet the problem of Chinese or Indian grocer change the money wrongly to me occasionally. So, this is also unfair to the Malay.

Entry 4 : Self-Serving Bias

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The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to our internal or personal factors, and negative outcomes to situational or external factors. Self-serving bias also appears when people compare themselves with others. For on subjective and socially desirable dimensions, most people see themselves as better than the average person. Compared with people in general, most people see themselves as more ethical, more competent at their job, friendlier, more intelligent, better looking, less prejudiced, healthier, and even more insightful and less biased in their self-assessments.

Self-serving bias works in 4 differences way, attributing one’s success to ability and effort, failure to luck and things external, comparing oneself favourably to others, unrealistic optimism and false consensus. I had the experiences of attributing one’s success to ability

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and effort, failure to luck and things external and false consensus. I also met the person who is unrealistic optimism.

9th May 2006

Since I was in primary school, I always got a good result in my Mathematic subject. I felt so proud to this because teachers will praise me after examination. My friends will always ask me the Mathematic questions they cannot solve, and of course, I can solve it almost every time. I thought that the reasons of I can get the better result than others and can solve any Mathematic questions regardless of the question is difficult or easy are because I have the talent in Mathematic and I always do the exercises harder than others.

2nd July 2012

Under a chance coincidence, I gave a speech in the assembly in my secondary school. That was a serious title of my speech because it related to global warming issue. I did many research and pointed out all the reason that caused global warming in my speech. When I was giving my speech, I felt that my fellow friends under the stage concentrated on my speech, my self-esteem was enhanced and I had more confidence at the moment. After I finished the speech, the principal praised me because I did it awesome and shook hands with me, the audiences applaud to me. I thought that all people agree with my opinion that the global warming will threaten our future. But in fact, maybe not all the people agree on it.

11st May 2015

In FNBE semester 1, we needed to write a process essay for

English assignment 1. Although lecturer explained to us the format and skill in writing a process essay, in the beginning, I wrote it in a

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wrong way. After my friend reminded me, I just realised I wrote the format and content wrongly, and then I started to rewrite an essay. After a few weeks of submission, we knew our essay result. I got B+ in this essay and before this, my English was very poor. For me, B+ was a good result in English, so I attribute it to my own awesomeness, not for the reminder of my friend. On the other hand, I still remember when I got the D in history in secondary school, I will think that is because I was very unlucky, because the exam was unfair and the questions were too difficult, so that I got a bad result. I will not think that is because I have no study hard this subject before examination.

26th September 2015

I have a sworn sister, I met her ten years ago when she participated a programme in her university. A lot of university students came to our village to do some activity such as cleaning the garden and beautify the school. They had to live in the villager’s house until the activity finish. By coincidence, she lived in my house for this 8 days 7 night, we became closely within the days. That year, she was 18 years old only. She already had a boyfriend and he also participated this programme. She also introduced her boyfriend to us. This year, they are 28 years old. They get married in September. My family and I attended their wedding in Melaka. I felt so happy because she found a man who treats her like a princess. But, before the wedding start, my sworn sister’s mother asked her, almost 50% of marriages fail, how can you know he will love you forever and ever? A few seconds later, she said :” Even though 50% of marriages fail, or maybe exceed 50% will fail, I still believe and know mine will be enduring joy.” Her parents shed tears in silence. I felt this is the love of all the parents to their son or daughter.

Entry 5 : Cognitive Dissonance Theory

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Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. This theory starts from the idea that we seek consistency in our beliefs and attitudes in any situation where two cognitions are inconsistent. According to Leon Festinger, we hold many cognitions about the world and ourselves. When they clash, a discrepancy is evoked, resulting in a state of tension known as cognitive dissonance. As the experience of dissonance is unpleasant, we are motivated to reduce or eliminate it, and achieve consonance

5th July 2014Last year, because of my youngest sister desired to have a

birthday party, so my parents decided to prepare a special birthday party for her in our house. We intended to invite our relatives, neighbours and a lot of my youngest sister’s friend to celebrate together with her. I helped my parents to construct the guest list, and then sent out the invitations two weeks before the party day. The menu of that day was prepared by my mother and I. We were done every preparation work before one week. In the afternoon of the party day, my father and my eldest brother started to decorate

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the living room and the front yard with colourful balloons. At the same time, my mother and I went to the store. We started to prepare the ingredients and cooked for hours together. Meanwhile, my youngest sister was looking forward and feeling happy for the party. All in anticipation of how pleasant the conversation, fun of the party and people would be. But the anticipation always differences to the reality. Even though it was nearly the time for party to start, but nobody reached. Most of the guests arrived late in the evening, the conversations also were forced. As for the food was slightly overcooked by the time all of our guests arrived. There was a little bit crowded in the yard and the game my father prepared to the children did not work because they had no interest to play the game. The beverages were not enough near the end of the party. The anticipation and excitement of the great time I was going to have are discordant with my observation of the party. The pieces do not fit. I was upset and had a sense of loss, partly because the party did not go well, I wanted to give my sister a perfect and memorable party, but also because of the inconsistency between my expectation and my experience for the party. So that, I am suffering from the uncomfortable and unpleasant state of cognitive dissonance.

21st November 2015I am a scholar in my university, I need to participate a lot of

activity to finish my scholar hours, so that I can apply again the scholarship if my CGPA in foundation has reached the target. This day, I participated a convocation day in my university. I was in charge of help to sell the Alumni T-shirt to the visitors and also alumni. I needed to reach university at 7.15am and help the staff to move the 5 boxfuls of T-shirt to our booth. We did not have any boy to help us so that was a little bit difficult for us to move them to the booth, and the worst thing were, the trolley was disabled and there was quite hot at the booth. In the afternoon, one of the scholar went away for a while. I knew she was going to smoke unintentionally. While we were busy for selling the T-shirt, the scholar went away to smoke again. In my mind, smoking is harmful to our health, because it will

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cause lung cancer, affect our heart and blood health and maybe also will cause pregnancy problem. I felt so curious and did not understand why the person who smokes do not aware for these disadvantages of smoking. Because this was a whole day event, sometimes nobody came to buy T-shirt so I had chat with the scholar. I asked her a question. Why you started to smoke? It is harmful, right? After she answered me, I knew that even though she knew smoking is bad and will cause a lot of diseases for her health, but she still enjoys smoking and she thought the chances of her health suffering are not as serious as some would make out. So, continuing to smoke is, after all, consistent with her ideas about smoking. One of my friend told me before, when the people feel the pressure, they will start to smoke also. After that, I try to think she started to smoke is because she has a lot of pressure in her life or maybe her course.

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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN

FOUNDATION IN NATURE AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Social Psychology (PSY30203)

Individual Journal

Name : Lee Xin Ying

Student ID : 0322432

Instructor : Shankar Thiruchelvam

Tutorial Session : Monday (5.30pm-7.30pm)

Submission Date : 30th November 2015