Assignment 1: Psychology Journal

1. Entry 1: Confirmation Bias
September 20 2015
Yesterday, late night, at the early hours of the morning. I was laying down on my bed
staring blankly at 36 paper stars on the ceiling. It was a Saturday night and Saturday
nights are supposed to be lively. I was scrolling my Instagram and my timeline was
flooded with pictures of friends at social gathering, partying and travelling. I was
poverty-stricken as it was already the halfway of the month. Feeling as poor as a
church mouse, I had no choice but to remain at home. On the spur of the moment, I
received a text message from my best friend, Najmi who was going through a
monotonous night as well. He told me to put on something comfortable and he was
going to pick me up in 15 minutes. I spring out of bed and put on my sweater and
jeans. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed to find out what Najmi had in my mind for
the night. Once he arrived, I get on the car and Najmi asked ‘Are you ready to meet
my friends on the other side?’ and at that very instant it clicked to my mind that we
are going ghost hunting and to be sincere I was slightly daunted to find out about the
supernatural even though I have never encountered them before, as mother had
always told me to never interfere and mess around with the supernatural, but not
under any circumstances would I admit that I am intimidated, especially admitting to
Najmi, my narcissism took over and I mask a happy face and said ‘Let’s go!’ Najmi
was grinning from ear to ear happy with my riposte. Me and Najmi had always burn
in curiosity to find out about the existence of the supernatural so we drove off to a
preoccupied house in Shah Alam itself; the house that we went had made a name for
itself for being haunted. The house was previously the deceased Mona Fandey’s
house. Mona Fandey was an occultist back in the 90′s, and reportedly using the black
arts to help many politicians accomplishing power. She was put to death in 2001 for

2. dismembering and partially skinning the politician Mazlan Idris in 1993 while
performing a ritual to grant him with power. During her capital punishment, she
declared “I will never die,” and her house we came to visit supposedly tormented due
to the black arts that she carried out there. As we reached the house, Najmi open his
car boot and took out an Ouija board in which we bought from EBay a few weeks
back. The board was engraved with letters, numbers, ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘yes’ and
‘no’. I had always been agnostic about the other-worldly and I am not easily inclined
to old folks tale and other people’s ghost experience, not until I eyewitness for
myself. So today I braced myself to find out. We climbed up the rusted gates which
are chained, clearly we are trespassing and that gave me a kick of thrill, we walked
through the unwelcoming garden of the house which offered an eerie glimpse. The
garden was covered with junk and long grass. We entered the house and explored the
bungalow which was left to rot. The living room was filled with clutter, furniture
were wrecked and there are holes on the roof and walls. We settled at the living room,
We sat on the floor, with our knees touching and placed the Ouija Board on our
knees. We then placed our hands on the planchette, which was the movable indicator.
Najmi started of the ritual by summoning any spirit in the house by saying ‘Hello, is
there any spirits dwells in this house?” There were no reply at first but we did not
gave up and Najmi asked again and suddenly the planchette moves slowly to the
‘Yes’ symbol. Najmi looked at me with horror. He then asked, ‘Are you a good
spirit?” and the planchette moves very quickly to the ‘No’ symbol. We were supposed
to say goodbye if this were to happen but Najmi continue on playing and asked ‘we
need proof’ and the planchette stops moving. We waited for a while and suddenly
Najmi was acting abnormal, he chocked and slammed the Ouija Board and then he
started muttering foreign language that I couldn’t understand and suddenly he passed

3. out. After two minutes, he became conscious and told me that a spirit had just
possessed him. I was worried but at the same time, I know it was an act of
exaggeration because a ghost or a spirit did not move the planchette but instead I
moved it. What I learned from what happened is when we were to go ghost hunting
we have detach ourselves from confirmation bias in order to perform a paranormal
activity. Confirmation bias is when you see something because you want to see it, not
necessarily because the evidence fits or is concrete. You look for evidence to fit a
theory, rather than fitting a theory to the evidence. A prime example of confirmation
bias is belief in the supernatural; when you already want to believe in ghosts, it's easy
to interpret a negative emotion by acting out like you are possessed, but instead the
cause of it all was just a fake moving planchette.
Above is a picture of me and Najmi at the main entrance of the haunted house. This
picture shows a poor attempt of me masking a smile.

4. Entry 2: Motivation.
September 27 2015.
I woke up before the usual time today, without having the need to hit my alarm’s
snooze button. It was Friday morning and my body, mind and spirit was
metaphorically screaming ‘Hooray’! I don’t have college classes on Friday morning
so I am able to join the Yoga class every Friday morning. I stretched and without
procrastinating I hit the shower, brushed my teeth and put on my yoga attire. I tied my
hair in a bun, had a light breakfast that consisted of mueslis, bananas and strawberries,
grabbed my yoga mat and made my way to the yoga class two rows away from home.
I was the earliest to reach there. Mr. Dhillip, the yoga guru said ‘Good Morning, early
as usual Farah’ I replied gleefully ‘Good morning, Mr Dhillip. Of course I’m here
early. I am always exhilarated and pumped up when I’m doing yoga’. 20 minutes
later, our yoga class started. We started of with doing deep breathings and warm ups.
We then proceed to do the Surya Namaskar or also know as the Sun Salutation which
is a stretching exercise which energize the body as we stretch and strengthen all the
major muscles. Later on we perform other yoga asanas. I was obsessed with yoga and
how it made me feel. The hour seems fleeting and it goes by much meteoric. Yoga
doesn't just scoop up my spirits. It basically perk up my life. It open my eyes to the
fundamental quality of who I am or at least someone I’d love to be, and therein I find
peace. Therein I find happiness. Doing yoga is an intrinsic motivation for me. After
the yoga class is over, I walked back home like a cat that has got it’s cream. I had
assignments that needed my attention but knowing that I still have time, I went back
to bed and set my alarm clock to wake me up four hours later. At 3p.m the alarm
clock rang, I hit the snooze button, and after 10 minutes later the alarm rang again, I
dragged my feet to do my assignments. I postponed my prearranged action when the

5. TV was showing ‘Mad Max’. After the movie, I realized that I should start doing my
assignments. As I was going to start my assignment, I was in a tight corner to pen
down my ideas for my English Journal essay that was assigned for our English
subject. I then start to doubt myself, ‘Do I really want to finish up my assignment’
No. Then I question myself again, ‘Do I need to finish up my assignment’ Yes. ‘Why
do I have to finish up my assignment’ because if I don’t my parents’ will be in
towering rage at me for getting low-grade results. I regard with distaste when I have
to do my assignments but it is an obligation for me to complete it because if I don’t I
would fall short of my parents’ expectations. What motivates me to complete my
assignment was thinking about the pain in the brain it would cause me if I do not pass
my assignments and having my parents’ sending flea to my ear. This kind of
motivation is called the Extrinsic Motivation, after a few hours later; I managed to
finish up my English journal assignment. Motivations lead me to do yoga and to
complete my assignment. Motivation is divided into two, which are Intrinsic and
Extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is when I am motivated by internal factors.
Intrinsic motivation pushes me to do things just for the fun of it, or because I believe
it is a good or right thing to do. An intrinsically motivated person will choose to do an
act if they feel that they will enjoy doing the task. In my case, I enjoy doing yoga
because it makes me happy thus I do it. Extrinsic motivation refers to behavior that is
driven by external rewards such as money, fame, grades, and praise. This type of
motivation arises from outside the individual, as opposed to intrinsic motivation,
which originates inside of the individual. In my case, the reason I complete my
assignments are because of the external factor which are to obtain good grades and
avoid punishment from my parents’.

6. Above is a picture of Mr. Dhillip while he is performing the basha breathing.

7. Entry Three: Self Fulfilling Prophecy
October 1 2015
I am writing this as I a wrapped up a vacation in Penang where I got to spend time
with two girls who could not be more contrasting from each other. This made me
awake my mind of a recurring concept that I had learned in Social Psychology class.
That is the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I went to Penang with two of my
girlfriends, Sam and Nadine. Both of them are working at the cruise and I only get to
see them once every five months. Sam was way much more older than Nadine and me
as she turned 30 this year, while Nadine’s in her early twenties as me. We stayed
there for five days and we had a great time there by hanging out at the beach, getting
our skin tanned under the sun, we went food hunting, night-market shopping, we went
sightseeing and also we went partying. On the last day of our stay in Penang, The
three of us spent our day at a party at Randall’s house, in which both of them had
never met before, Randall’s my old friend whom I haven’t met for years and
Randall’s party was predominated with a younger crowd. The crowds were at their
early twenties. In this setting, if people knew nothing else about Sam and Nadine,
they would expect Sam to be downright out of place and feel alienated. She may
suggest an image of a lone woman, looking for companionship at an ineligible place.
On the other hand, you would expect Nadine to be more in tune with the crowd at the
party. In actual reality, both of them are at each other’s side of the coin. You see, Sam
was filled with aplomb, easy to get along with and basically a hail-fellow-well-met
person. Sam had a positive vibe on everything and everyone around her. Nadine on
the other hand was very reserved, she had scruples about blending in with the crowd
and very self-doubting; she kept going on about how ill at ease she felt. So at the
party, Sam was amusing herself and people around her, being engaged in

8. conversation, laughing with everyone around her, and drawing the attention of the
guests. People at the party really had a preference for Sam for her fun attitude. Nadine
remained as a wall-flower and went to a great degree, unnoticed, except by me. I
attempted to loosen her up a few times but was left with the impression that she was
kind of socially awkward and difficult to blend with. So Sam, who was socially
accepted by the younger people at the party, should have been the odd one out but she
turned out as the life of the party that everyone wanted to be around simply because
she believed herself to be youthful and fun, so and acted in the spirit of it. Meanwhile,
Nadine who should have been well coordinated in but believed herself to be the
idiosyncratic and odd one ended up being exactly that. Once the vacation came to an
end, I was left alone without my two girlfriends. I felt a little awkward going around
by myself. Particularly when it came to partying and shopping. But I challenged
myself to go out and be lively anyway. After all, I was not about to waste my life
being self contained. A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or
indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to
positive feedback between belief and behavior. Basically, whatever we think as
ourselves, it would shape the reality. What I learned from this Self-fulfilling prophecy
is that if you think that you are too old, set against, or that the environment is not your
comfort zone, you will continue to demonstrate the truth of it as long as you act in
accordance with that belief.

9. Entry Four: Stereotyping
October 8 2015
I deal with people who stereotype me a lot on daily basis. People expecting me to
become who they picture me to be, people who tend to misinterpret the image that I
am trying to portray and it seriously annoying. Today mark the date of the day I get
stereotyped so much. It started off as a normal day, I met my friend Zhafry who I
haven’t met for the past two months and I was really gingered up to see him. We met
up at COSANS, a coffee shop in Subang Jaya. As we reached there, the first thing
Zhaf said to me was ‘Hey! Woah! You look like you lose a lot of weight!” After
taking in the order, I took out my money and wanted to pay for my coffee, Zhaf
pushed and refused to let me pay and say ‘It’s not a gentleman thing to do to let a
female friend pay for her drink’ I was never comfortable of this stereotype idea of
man having to pay for as I can afford to pay by myself and I explained to him that It
wasn’t necessary and I don’t expect man to pay for me when we go out. So we just sat
down and talked after taking our orders, we talked about what we had been missing
for the last two months, catching up and then the conversation went deep and Zhaf
decided to ask me if I was taking drugs and if I had any problems that contributed to
my weight loss. I was shocked when he stereotyped me as a drug addict just because I
lose weight. Smoking or yoga would have contributed to my weight loss but I had
never took drugs in my life and I was a little upset that he thought of me in a way.
After the meeting with Zhaf, I drove home and found a few cars parked at the porch
of my house. My relatives were there and I thought to myself ‘Awesome! A great day
to deal with more stereotypes!” As I made my way inside the house, I greet my family
members and one of my aunties asked me ‘your dress looks nice and your makeup is

10. super on point. Are you out for a date and flirting anyone?” ‘No’ I answered politely.
She definitely rubbed me the wrong way with the way she stereotyped me thinking
that I am dressing nicely and wear make up just to impress a love interest. I really
choose to look acceptably good because it gives me a felicitous feeling and it had
nothing to do with impressing anyone else. I sat down at the table as a courtesy to
entertain the guest of the house. Then another auntie pop up with another tasteless
question, ‘When are you getting married?” I irked and answered ‘Never’ even though
I just wanted to ruffle her feathers, trying to be provocative. All of my relatives look
at me ill at ease, and asked me ‘Why? Did you got your heartbroken? Are you
lesbian? What leaded to this misfortune?” I gave a firm look and answered ‘Not all
woman’s priority in life is to get married’ I felt like I was over the moon for
expressing my answer and they backfire me and asked ‘Don’t you want to settle down
and have kids of your own someday?” I answered ‘No. Not really. Babies are
annoying and not every woman loves children besides I have other things I had in
mind for the future’. After that, they pretty much remained tongue-tied. I can see that
they are sunk in gloom with the remark that I made but for me it was not a big deal
and it was just a perseverance effect in which their schema are formed and to them
woman should be married and it’s hard for them to accept and let go of the fact
opposing to it. I tried to escape the awkward situation and made my way to the TV
room to watch a basketball game that was about to start. The TV room was apparently
dominated with my male cousins and they were surprised that I am interested in
watching basketball. One of my male cousins spoke his mind by saying that girls
knew nothing of basketball and the only reason I was watching it was because I
thought the players were hot. Having enough of getting stereotyped and labeled for
the day, I threw the television remote control on my cousin’s face without expecting

11. another stereotyped remark from him asking me if I was on my menstrual period. I
had never believe in the pre menstrual syndrome and men would usually stereotyped
woman who are bad-tempered and furious are having their premenstrual syndrome.
What happened today, mainly focused on people’s stereotype on how a woman
should behave and what to expect from a woman. For instance, expecting a woman to
know how to cook and thinking that woman are bad at playing video games. I have to
say that stereotyping is inaccurate and it is wrong to generalize woman as every
woman has a way of her own. Stereotype means assuming all members of a group
share some common feature.

12. Entry Five: Observational Learning
October 12 2015
I was cleaning my room tonight, and I stumbled upon myself an old box that I kept all
my sentimental stuff, which I called the memory box. I kept all of my stuff that I
don’t have the heart to throw in the box. In there, I saw a picture of me and my
boyfriend five years back and it brought back memories and I realized that a lot had
changed in five years and it was unanticipated on how things have changed. I am
grateful that I was brought up by a very lovely family, both mum and dad are very
devoted to towards each other after all the years of being together, we have been
raised to respect one another in the family equally. Dad still practices and continues
to take mum out for movie dates, and he would still buy my mother flowers and
gifts. Mother on the other hand, would bake for my dad as my dad is a sweet tooth
and he takes fond of cakes and sweet goods, every weekend. My siblings, and me
learned that this is the way my parents show their love to each other and my
brother, Fareez would reflect back the actions that is showed from my father to
portray his love to his girlfriend by buying gifts and flowers and taking her to the
movies. He would see her every once in three days. Observational learning causes
this behavior. Fareez would watch my dad who is playing the role model and he
would repeat his actions. In my case, I have been together with my boyfriend for five
years and he has a different way of showing his love to me. Back on the earlier days
we were together, most of the time he was busy at work and he was unable to
spend a lot of time with me. His behavior sometimes eats my heart out and it made

13. me lacked of certainty whether he really loved me and if he had other love
involvement with someone else. I had been made to understand that he had other
commitments like paying his car loan and paying his study loans so he rarely bought
me flowers or gifts as he have much more important things to use his money. His
parents are divorced and he lives with his father. I assumed that the reason why he
is not as cheerful as I am most of the time is because he adopted an attitude from
his father which is also a behavior caused by observational learning. Occasionally, he
would take me out for dinner and we would watch movies as well but sometimes I
expect him to treat me more like how my dad would treat me. At times, I feel that
when he lacks give me attention and doesn’t live up to my expectation, I feel like he
doesn’t love me. I would bake for him to show my love for him but he doesn’t
respond to the way I expect him to do. I began to be mindful of our different family
background, his commitments and he may be stress over work. I accepted the fact
that every one has a different way of expressing themselves and I began to get a grip
of the relationship. I still continued to do small things for him for instance; baked for
him cupcakes at times and at times I would buy him gifts and send him love notes. I
did not expect anything in return and I feel happy being with him. As years goes by, I
realized that he started to change. He began to prioritize me and make time for me
more often, even though I already accepted him the way he was and his lifestyle.
Occasionally, he would buy me flowers and when he had extra time we would even
go on a vacation together. I believed that the reason he started to change is because
he had learned a different way to express his love for me. He learned it from the way
I treated him and he began to feel comfortable at doing it. Observational learning is
basically watching others engage in behaviors and then repeating those action.

14. Observational learning can also explain how we acquire attitudes, fears, opinions or
specific behavior.