Psycho Journal Assignment

1. FNBE 02/14 PSY0103 LEE YIH
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SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY !
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JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT!
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NAME : LEE YIH!
ID : 0318340!
LECTURER :MR. SHANKAR

2. FNBE 02/14 PSY0103 LEE YIH
Chap 1: Social Facilitation vs. Social Loafing!
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Through this eye opening topic, I got to understand myself better. The lecturer first
started by sharing the example of competitive cyclists’ performance in the present
of others and vice versa. Both this scenarios are contradicting each other which
happen on different occasion. To my surprise I found that social facilitation occurred
to me when I was doing a simple task. One of my daily experience was in the gym
when my friend were watching me, I tried to impress her by doing more than I ever
did. With the presence of others, I felt energised and eager to complete a task
which I’m already good at it. However, social loafing happened when I was doing a
complicated task which I didn’t have enough confidence. I realised that sometimes I
can do better when people aren’t watching me because that made me felt even
stressed and nervous. I remembered there was a experience when I was required
to guide few students to complete a mural painting in high school. The outcome
was bad as I was too worried that the painting wouldn’t be good enough and hence
did not contributed much ideas. Therefore through the learning of this concept, I
learned that in daily life, to encourage people on doing some simple task, I should
present myself around them. For the case of a complicated task, I should reduce
the stress given to them by leaving them alone to proceed with the task.

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Confirmation Bias!
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This is an interesting topic which explains why it’s hard to change people’s mind.
The lecturer explained this concept as people accepts informations which support
their view and ignore what’s contrary. I related this to my experience and come into
a realisation that most of the time, I want to be ‘right’ in what I think. Hence, I
always search and accept informations that can act as evidence to support what I
believed in. One of my latest experience was a week ago, I made a decision to buy
myself a Nikon D90 DSLR camera all at once which cost few thousands ringgits.
After buying the camera, to make myself feel good, I started to ask around the
reviews from my friends and only remembered most of the positive comments. By
doing so, it reaffirmed that I had made a correct decision on buying the right
camera. This topic taught me a lesson on never always see what I want to see. I
should be more open minded on accepting both positive and negative opinions
even though this means admitting my view which is proven wrong.

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Chap 2 : The Looking Glass Self!
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On this week of lecture, we learned about the concept of how we imagine other
people think of us. When I was being in a surrounding of unfamiliar, I feel
discomfort and insecure when I have no idea how people think of me. The lecturer
then related an example of a student thought himself was a smart student if he was
located in a class full of smart students. To me, this concept plays a very important
role on influencing my self esteem due to the way how I think people perceived me.
Sometimes, I feel confident when I created a positive self image by simply believing
others think me in a positive way and vice versa. One of my experience based on
this concept was about my physical appearance. I used to be wearing spectacles
during high school and I think people judged me as ‘look like a nerd’ when I had my
glasses. Therefore, I felt self-doubting and low self esteem. This made me to be
hardly smiled at people, often creating an image of an ‘arrogant me’ to my friends.
However, I then decided to wear contact lens. As a result, I thought people like me
more for not looking like a nerd anymore. Ever since that, things were changed, I
gained back my confidence to take the initiative move of making friends with my
classmates. After learning this lecture, I realised that all the time it was just my
imagination on how people look at me. I learned to be appreciative on how the way
I were borned.

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Self Serving Bias!
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Now this is an interesting topic. The lecturer explained this concept to us as the
tendency of people taking credits for success while blaming others for failures. I
realised that this happened to me sometimes which can affect my attitude quite a
lot. This is because when I blamed others, I would never evaluate myself properly
and hence never able to learn from the mistakes. This concept could be related to
one of my daily experience. Whenever there was a test which the result was good, I
would take the credits by thinking it’s because of my hardworking on studying for
the test. I felt satisfied on myself by telling everyone how much effort I had put in.
However, when the result of a test was bad, I would pushed away the responsibility
on this mistakes. I blamed the teachers for failing at teaching the subject.
Sometimes, I even tell my parents it was because the questions were set tricky this
time. The lecturer explained this scenario as we tend to protect their self-esteem.
During this lecture, I had a flashback for all the experiences on the past. I realised
how much mistakes I had made. By learning this concept, I learned that I should
not always blame others first whenever there is a failure.

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Chap 3 : Stereotype!
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On this week lecture, this interesting topic were taught to us. The lecturer explained
stereotype as assumptions made about a group of people based on certain
characteristics they possess. This concept were commonly applied in my daily life
which can bring both advantage and disadvantage. I was told that this happened
because I already had informations about a certain group of people in my mind
based on the previous experience. I related a common experience in my life which
most of people experienced before, which is the racial stereotype. Through news
reported on newspaper about the crimes committed by the foreign workers which
various from raping, snatching, robbing and few more, I have negative stereotype
on the foreign workers. Therefore, whenever I see groups of foreign workers at a
place, I assumed that these people are dangerous. As a habit, I walked quickly
away to avoid being surrounded with the people. Beside from that, I even influence
my friends and family by this stereotype. I constantly tell them how harmful they
could be and would always ask them to leave the place if i see many foreign
workers strolling at the place. This could be pretty unfair to them because not all of
them are bad. They came to our country legally to work because of the poor
economic conditions in their country. I should be appreciative for what they have
contributed in our country.

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Chap 4 : First impression!
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I find this week’s lecture to be interesting which could be applied in my future daily
life. The lecturer first started the class by telling us basic informations about two
different peoples. He then showed us two pictures of the face of two men and
asked us who do you think is the serial killer. I determined the sloppy-looked as the
killer because of the negative first impression formed on him. This theory was
oftenly applied in my daily life as well. I remembered there was a student I met from
my university, he was wearing earring on one side, one of his arm was full of
tattoos. I then classified him as rebellious students. Recently, I heard that he had to
retake few subjects because he failed them. I simply believed this is all because of
his rebellious personality made on him without even asking the reason, this is
known as the Halo Effect. After understanding this concept, I realised how much
first impression could affect in our daily life. According to the theory, it is caused by
the primary effect, which is the first impression and recency effect, which is the last
piece of informations we received.

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Chap 5 : Classical Conditioning!
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This week’s lecture was something new and interesting to me. The lecture simply
explained it as two stimuli were linked together, forming a new learned response.
The examples of experiments did by Ivan Pavlov on a 9 years old small kid. During
the lecture, I remembered one of the similar experience I had when I was young.
When I was 6 years old, I was sent to a day care centre in a kindergarden. My mum
would usually come fetch me at 6pm in the evening and whenever she walked in
the centre, she brought her car key along. Therefore, an unconditioned stimulus is
formed (the jingling sound of keys) and a conditioned response (my mum showed
up in the kindergarden) is formed. Ever since that, when I heard the jingling sound
of keys on evening at the kindergarden, I felt happy and excited to see my mum
showed up to fetch me home. Even though sometimes it was just some sound from
the neighbour’s house, I still feel happy when I heard the sound. After learning this
concept, I felt amazed to understand this situation happened when I was young.

9. FNBE 02/14 PSY0103 LEE YIH
Post-Decision Dissonance!
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This is a eye opening they taught by the lecturer on that week. I came into
realisation that most of the time, whenever I made an decision, I oftenly changed
my perspective to make the decision seems more attractive. This is to make myself
feel satisfied of what I have decided. I applied this they in my daily life experience,
one of the experience was on purchasing something from a shop. Few days ago, I
went shopping with my friends at a shopping mall. I saw a dress which I really fancy
it and instantly paid to buy the dress without even hesitate. After that, to make
myself feel satisfied of my decision, I went around the shopping mall to look for the
same dress which cost a little more expensive. This is to make me feel that I made
the right decision on buying a cheap dress.

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The effect of mood on cognition !
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On this lecture, we were taught about the mood-congruence effect. I realised that
how a situation can varies based on my mood. The lecturer asked us to think about
a good event and all the details. It showed that I can remember all the good details
on the event because I was in a good mood. One of the experience in my life was
on my last year’s birthday, I was very happy and appreciative. Till now, I still can
remember the details of my friends came over my house to throw a surprise party
for me, and I received a car as a gift from my dad. That was my best birthday ever.
Even though some bad things happened on that day such as traffic jam when were
heading for dinner, I still thought it’s a good day because I was in a good mood to
remember on only the good details.

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Correspondence Inference Theory!
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This was an interesting topic to explain the process of us making attributions about
other people. On that lecture, the lecturer gave us few examples and asked few
students to give their examples. By understanding the examples, I had flashback to
what happened to my brother few years back where I applied this theory. I
remembered on that day when I came back from school, I received a phone call
from the discipline teacher of my brother’s school regarding he hit a student on the
nose which caused bleeding. I was surprised and full of anger at the same time.
However, I started to calm myself down by asking few questions to myself :
Consensus : Would most of the students in the school fight back in the situation?
Distinctiveness : Would my brother did the same way if he was at home?
Consistency : Have my brother ever hit people when he was in a quarrel with his
friends? Throughout this self questioning, I was cooled down. I called my mother
and solved this problem together with the students who was injured in a harmony
way.