PSY ASSIGNMENT 1

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN (SABD)
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL & BUILT ENVIRONMENTS (FNBE)
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY - PSY30203 - SEPT2015
ASSIGNMENT 1: JOURNAL
NAME : JOEY LAU XIN JUN
STUDENT ID : 0323965
LECTURE : MR. T.SHANKAR
SESSION : MONDAY 3.30-5.30PM
DATE OF SUBMISSION: 30TH
NOVEMBER2015

2. Entry 1: SOCIAL LOAFING
Many of those important tasks in our life can only be completed as in a group, and many
group tasks are collective tasks that require the pooling of individual members’ input.
Collective work settings are so pervasive and indispensable, it is important to determine
which factors motivate and demotivate individual within these collective contexts. Intuition
might lead to the conclusion that working with others would inspire individuals to maximize
their potential and work harder than usual. However, research on social loafing on the other
hand has revealed that individuals frequently exert less effort on collective tasks than on
individual tasks.
Social Loafing refers to the concept that people exert lesser effort on a task if they are
working in a group compared to when they are working alone. Because all members of the
group are pooling their effort to achieve a common goal, each member contributes lesser than
they would if they were individually responsible. Max Ringelmann, a French agricultural
engineer has conducted an experiment based on this phenomenon. He asked the participants
to pull off a rope both individually and in groups. He then discovered that that when people
were working as part of a group, they made lesser effort to pull the rope than they did while
working individually. A group of researches the replicated the experiment with few small
changes. The first group remained the same as Ringelmann’s original study and contained
small group of participants. The second panel involved using confederates and only one real
participant in each group. The confederates merely pretended to pull the rope. The
researchers found out that the groups with contain all real participants experiences the largest
declines in their performance, suggested that the losses were linked to the motivational
factors rather than the group coordination problems.
Social Loafing actually brings up negative consequences for both the groups and the
individual members in the group. The group progress is affected when there are certain
individuals contribute lesser to the group activities than they usually do in their individual
tasks. It tends to split the group and the fosters a lack of unity. When I was in junior two(age
14), I was about to form a group of 6 to complete a group assignment which was given by the
teacher, I then grouped up with my friends and form a group with six people. However,
problems came up on our team work, although we had 6 people in the group, but there were
only three of us doing all of the works. The other three just pretended like it was non of their
business. I couldn’t say anything to them because we were friends and if I say anything on
them, our friendship might be broken. If something like this happened in a group, resentment
can easily built up between the members who are working hard and the members who
contributes less. This would eventually cause less productivity and more emotional tension to
the group.
J (one of the three who did all of the works) felt unfair cause the others are just relying us
to do all the works. She tried to convince me to tell this to teacher but I refused because this
might broke our friendship and they might be punished. After that, J started to reduce her
workload and even stopped collaborating with us (She might want us to feel her importance).
Then the left two of us tried hard to finish the project without saying anything. There and

3. then, our friendship no longer stayed still. This shows the individual members in groups can
also be affected by social loafing. When there is disparity of effort happens between members
of a group, individual members start to calculate their own effort, comparing to the ones who
contribute less to the group instead of maintaining a standard of excellence towards achieving
the goal. This lowers the level of satisfaction for the tasks in all members in the group and
also may lead to some social effects just like me and my friends.

4. Entry 2: MOTIVATION
Motivation is the desire that gives you a very strong energy or to push you on doing
something. It leads us to greater curiosity and pleasure. It usually occurs when to avoid
punishments or to achieve something. For an example, in order to have the sense of
accomplishment, people will try their best to fight hard for it, this is motivation.
As I was young, ‘Finding Nemo’ used to be one of my favourite cartoons. I had watched
it for several times and there is a scene in it that Marlin thought the diving mask was his only
chance of finding his son (Nemo) and it was dropped by Dory. He was upset because he
thought he had lost the chance.
Marline: Get the mask!! Get it! ... It’s gone! I lost the mask…
Dory: Did you drop it?
Marline: YOU dropped it!! That was my only chance of finding my son and now it’s GONE!
Dory: Hey Mr. Grumpy Gills, when life gets you down, do you wanna know what you’ve
gotta do?
Marline: No, I don’t wanna know…
Dory: (Started to sing) Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming,
swimming… What do we do? We swim! Swim!
Marline: Dory, no singing.
Dory: (Ignored and continued) Ha ha ha… When you want to swim you want to swim.
Marline: Now I’m stuck with that song… Now it’s in my head..
Dory: Sorry…
Actually the song not only stuck in Marline’s head but mine as well. The song was to
encourage Marline to deal with the problems and keep going on, keep swimming. This song
motivated me to overcome the obstacles without giving up.
An unforgettable motivational quote which I’d heard from my primary school teacher
when I was around 11 years old, “Work hard and be proud of what you’d achieved”, this
quote had given me huge motivation whenever I’m doing anything. In the time when I was in
primary six, my friends and I had promised to go for the same secondary school together, we
were needed to prepare for the entrance examination, it wasn’t really hard to pass the exam
but because it is a private school, my mom had set an aim for me that I had to achieve the
scholarship. By that time, I went through all the past year questions and memorized almost
everything from the book and I scored an A1 for the exam and achieved the full scholarship
for three years. When I was 15, there was an examination in my school for every junior 3
students which determine if we will go for either science stream or art and commerce stream.
In order to get into science stream, I studied very hard and then I became the only science
stream student in my family. Same thing happened during my SPM exam, I studied and
memorized very hard for my poorest subject, history. Maybe there’s some problem with my
family members that both of my sisters couldn’t do well in this subject. I didn’t give up on it
and tried my best on memorizing it and miracles start to happen when you give as much
energy as you do on it, eventually I got an A- for it.

5. There is also another time when my team lost in the inter class football competition due to
the unfair rematch. The next year, we decided to take part again in the competition, however
some of our previous members couldn’t come with us together because of some problems, we
took in some new members and practiced a lot to cultivate our tacit mutual, we did some
changes from the previous positions and my position had changed from the defender to the
goal keeper, we got some lesson from the physical education coaches in our school. I learnt to
become a good goal keeper, started from catching the ball to goal kick and many other skills.
We practiced a lot and had some practical competition with the guy team of our class. With
the non-stop practices and our non-giving up spirit, we ended up with the champion prize.
When you fail on doing something, you learn from the mistakes you made and it motivates
you to work even harder.
"Motivation refers to factors that activate, direct, and sustain goal-directed behavior...
Motives are the "whys" of behavior - the needs or wants that drive behavior and explain what
we do. We don't actually observe a motive; rather, we infer that one exists based on the
behavior we observe." (Jeffrey S. Nevid, 2013)

6. Entry 3: STEREOTYPE
We all familiar with stereotype but do we really understand and know how to define it?
Stereotype is actually the fixed way of what you believe among a group of people. It’s like
the way of thinking about the people in which you classify them into specific categories. It is
a picture or idea in many people’s minds about how the members of a certain group look or
act.
An advantage of stereotype is that it reduces the time of you to think or respond to certain
situation as you may have experienced the similar situation before. Stereotype on the other
hand also brings disadvantages. One example of it is that it makes you ignore the differences
between individuals and the group which you have classified them in. Therefore, we might
make mistakes on thinking how an individual person acts. Since stereotype reduces the
amount of thinking we do when meeting new person, it is majorly used to simplify our social
world.
When I was young, through those cartoons I had watched, I used to think that people who
born with a silver spoon in mouth are all educated, intelligent, polite and kind. However I
found out what I thought wasn’t true until I met this guy when I was in primary five, he is
born in an extremely wealthy family. His family owns few hotels and shopping malls and
many others. He is the youngest and the only son in his family, his family showers him with a
lot of pocket money which is the 10 times of mine. Teacher arranged me to sit with him and I
thought I am gonna be good friend with him. BUT, this guy is totally the opposite side of
what I thought, he is rude, unkind and not even intelligent, he is extremely STUPID. All he
knows is that money is powerful that he can buy everything with money, everything includes
friends. He spent every guy around him with foods so that they will be close friend to him
and he even paid someone to finish his homework. He always bully me, make fun of me and
even ask the others not to be friend with me. It was my nightmare while sitting with him, not
only sitting but in the same class with him. He treated me like his dog, ordered me to do
everything he wants me to, drawing on my table or stealing my books whenever he didn’t
bring his, and let me being scolded and punished by teacher. I tried my best to ignore his
existence but he was just like a lingering soul beside me. Teacher always arrange me to sit
beside him, I’ve been sitting with him for almost two years since primary five. Even when I
enter the secondary school, I am still in the same class with him, but he then being transferred
to the international school by his family in the second year of secondary school. Since then, I
have never met him again and because of him, I see everyone who came from extremely
wealthy family as very rude and stupid person.
Things changed again when I came to junior three, I met another silver spoon girl, she is
extremely different from the guy, although she is not really intelligent, she had only 30 marks
in her math exam, but she is a very kind, polite and friendly person. She likes to do what she
likes to and say anything before thinking more than one second. She sometimes might say
something hurt to someone, but she really didn’t mean to be it, she will feel very sorry about
it and will do anything to make the person to forgive her. She has her own dream, although is

7. not good in study, she has a dream to be a chef. She wakes up very early in the morning to
prepare her own breakfast and her lunch. She likes to cook whenever she is free. She always
cook some delicious meal or bake some tasty cake or cookies and share to everyone in the
class. We sat together in class and became very close to each other. Although she is very
wealthy, she doesn’t waste her money on buying luxury things. She then becomes one of my
best friends until now. After knowing her, my stereotype on wealthy people disappears.

8. Entry 4: CONFIRMATION BIAS
People like to believe that their beliefs are come from the years of experience they have.
The reality is that they are susceptible to a tricky problem which is known as the confirmation
bias. While people like to imagine that their beliefs are rational, logical, and objective, the
fact is that their ideas are often based on paying attention to the information that upholds their
ideas and ignoring the information that challenges our existing beliefs. The phrase
“confirmation bias” can be described as a tendency for humans to think more about, and also
favor, information that agrees to their own opinion whether the information is true or false.
There is a program broadcast by Cartoon Network (an American broadcasting channel)
named ‘Oggy and the cockroaches’ which I had watched before in ASTRO. When I first saw
this cartoon program, I thought that it is for those people who have low mentality to watch,
the characters are stupid, the theme song is weird and so on. These are probably because the
main characters of this cartoon program are a cat which doesn’t even look like a cat and three
ugly looking cockroaches (I hate cockroaches a lot). Because of these, I believed that it is a
bad cartoon and had no idea on why kids nowadays like to watch this type of stupid cartoon. I
even scolded my younger brother whenever he is watching this cartoon program, telling me
it’s funny and ask me to watch together with him. But then, I slowly found out that this
cartoon is actually quite funny because of the stupidity of the characters.
Since young, I thought that cartoons are not logic but funny and is only suitable for kids
because most of the adults I knew when I was young don’t really watch cartoon, they might
think it’s childish. Although there are few adults around me who do watch cartoons, I still
thought that cartoons are only for kids, they are just to accompany us, in their mind, they
might feel childish and boring. However, as time marches on, I realize that I am definitely
wrong. Cartoons are not only for kids but also for adults, whenever I watch back the cartoons
that I watch when I was still young, it recalls my childhood memories; cartoons help me
realize that I had lost my childish, creative, and unbiased. It taught us a lot of lesson such as
humanity, moral, love and many others. Besides, cartoons are not only funny, some touching
scene of cartoons may also make you cry. Big Hero 6 is one of the example, there are quite a
lot of scene in Big Hero 6 which had made me cry. The first one is the scene when Tadashi
(Hero’s older brother) rushes into the flames to rescue his university professor, Callaghan
which causes him to die. Those flash backs on Tadashi and Hero’s memories are really
touching. Another scene is when Baymax (a robot which was created by Tadashi, has also
become a friend of Hero which replaces Tadashi and accompanies him) gives up its “life” to
save Hero’s and Callaghan’s daughter’s life. Not only that, sometimes, cartoons may also be
logic. An example of it is the Inside out. This cartoon metaphorizes human’s mind into five
personifications of basic emotions (Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger) come to life. The
emotions live in Headquarters, human's conscious mind, where they influence human's
actions and memories via a control console. The new memories are housed in colored orbs,
which are sent into long term memory at the end of every waking period. The most important

9. memories, known as "core" memories, are housed in a hub in Headquarters and power five
"islands", each of which reflects a different aspect of human's personality.
People tend to believe what they think, they actively seek out data that support their
beliefs and disregard data that refute their beliefs to confirm their previous existing beliefs or
biases. This is what we called confirmation bias.

10. Entry 5: THE BALANCE THEORY
Balance theory is a theory that people tend to prefer elements held in thoughts to be
congruent with their behavior to achieve a balance. It suggests people have a tendency to seek
consonance between their views and the views of others. This theory is proposed by Fritz
Heider (an Austrian psychologist) to show how people develop their relationships with other
people and with things in their environment. It is also known as the “P-O-X” theory in which
P stands for people, O stands for other people and X stands for some stimulus or event. It
stated that a system of liking and disliking relationships is balanced if the product of the
valence of all relationships within the system is positive. For an example, a religious believer
may feel dissonance because their partner does not have the same beliefs as he or she does,
thus motivating the believer to justify or rationalize the incongruence.
I was used to be a fan of Samsung Galaxy Note, I thought that Samsung is a nice brand, it
produces nice design of phones especially the Galaxy Note series (as I like big size phone).
However the celebrity that I like is a fan of Apple, he has a lot of Apple gadgets. Because he
likes Apple, I tend to change myself to like Apple products, I start to use Apple devices and
now I become a fan of Apple as well. In this case, I will be the P, the celebrity that I like will
be the O and the Apple gadgets will be X. I like the celebrity which shows a positive between
P and O, the celebrity likes Apple gadgets which shows positive on O and X, I don’t like
Apple gadgets and this shows a negative on P and X. However, to achieve the psychological
balance, I tend to change myself to like Apple gadgets which change the negative on P and X
to become positive. A balanced P-O-X triangle is formed with three positive relationships.
Now, I find that Apple gadgets are more outstanding than the Samsung gadgets, although
Samsung devices have more functions that Apple devices, I still prefer Apple because Apple
is able to last longer than Samsung, the too many functions of Samsung may lead to the
laggings of the certain device.
Another example of balance theory which happened in my life is that when I came to the
Taylor’s University and met my friends J and R. We always have lunch together, we make
fun and also care about each other. We then became inseparable best friends to each other.
One day, my two best friends J and R had conflicts between each other and fought because of
some reasons. J and R came to me respectively, they expressed their anger to me and these
made feel extremely uncomfortable as I was the middle one between the two of them and had
to choose one between them. Although I agreed on some of the things they said, but I didn’t
feel like “unfriending” each other. Both of them are my best friend and it was pretty hard for
me to choose, I don’t want to lose any of them. In this case, I will be the P, and let J be the O
and R will be the X. I have positive relationships with J and R, this shows the positive on P
and O, and P and X. J has negative relationship with R which shows the negative between O
and X. The P-O-X triangle is formed with two positive and one negative relationships. This
results in an unbalanced state or situation that causes psychological discomfort. Now, J and R
have clarified the misunderstandings and become best friend again. J and R now have the
positive relationship which shows positive between O and X. The balanced P-O-X triangle is
formed with the three positive relationships.

11. If people see a set of cognitive elements as being a system, they will have a preference to
maintain the balance state among these elements. In the other words, if people feel out of
balance, they will have the motivation to restore a balance position.