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TANG JU YI | 0317735 | PSY | FNBE FEB 0214 | INDIVIDUAL JOURNAL
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TANG JU YI
0317735
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MONDAY 8-11AM GROUP
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY INDIVIDUAL JOURNAL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT (FNBE) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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THE JOURNAL 1
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The topic about “Confirmation Bias” deeply triggered lots of my real life
experience. We love to seek data that supports our beliefs but on the other hand,
disregard data that refute them. In my secondary school life, though I had many
friends, I only mixed around with those who often agreed with me most of the
time. My close friends and I shared the same interest, taste and opinions. This
greatly reduced lots of unnecessary conflicts between us which may lead to
anger and dissatisfactions on both sides. For example, I was a huge fan of
Japanese animated productions and they were the best entertainment during my
boring secondary school life. I like to discuss about various topics on Japanese
anime with my friends, who also enjoyed them. I felt really comfortable around
those who understand and agreed on what I was talking about.
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In contrast, some of my friends were not interested in Japanese anime. As
we seldom share the same interest, we seldom talk to each other; I tend to be
put off by them as I felt quite uncomfortable and unsecured about my views.
Unconsciously, as time passes, our friendship faded. I think it is important to
make friends with people who share the same point of view with me. However, I
do not want this kind of “confirmation bias” to restrict me from mixing around with
people of different personalities and interest. I strongly believe that there are lots
of things I can learn from them.
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Page 2 of 11

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THE JOURNAL 2
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One of the topics the topics that interested me was “Extrinsic motivation”
and “Intrinsic motivation”. “Extrinsic motivation” means we take a certain action in
response to external pressure or obligation, in order to avoid punishment or to
gain a specific reward. “Intrinsic motivation” means we take an action for the
sake of enjoyment. Well, it reminded me of my childhood days, how my father
used to motivate me. When I was a seven, I was a really playful kid and had a
lack of interest in my academic performances. My father was quite worried about
my future, hence he tried to use some rewards to motivate me. He told me that
he would buy me a bicycle if I got good grades. This kind of motivations works for
me. From that day onwards, I studied hard in order to achieve higher marks so
that I could gain my rewards.
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I, from a person who had little initial interest in my studies, turned into a
person who loves to study so much. As time passes, I developed interest in my
studies as my hunger to gain knowledge from books is triggered. Unconsciously,
the external motivators were phased out. My intrinsic interest in books was
generated and I started to enjoy reading. Nowadays, I realised that how powerful
the extrinsic motivators are, in motivating someone; however it should be used
with caution especially with children. In my opinion, I still prefer “intrinsic
motivation” because I think we should do things that we enjoy doing, provided
they are right and legal.
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Page 3 of 11

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THE JOURNAL 3
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The “Illusion of control” is one of the sources of bias in social cognition. It is
the tendency for people to believe that they can control or influence outcomes
that they demonstrably have no influence over. This brought back lots of my
childhood memories. Every time when there is a test, I would always bring my
amulet that was given from my late grandmother. I believed that her prayers are
all inside the amulet and it would bring me some good luck during my test.
Coincidently, I did well in most of the test. However, there were also times where
I was too confident over myself and did not study hard. I brought the amulet but I
still did badly during the test.
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Another time where the illusion of control applied in my daily life is when I
go shopping. Whenever I enter a shop that has a few or no costumers at all, I
realised that there will be more and more people coming into the shop after I
went in. Its sounds really illogic but it does happen frequently. Sometimes, I
would ask myself if I was really that attractive. The two examples above shows
that I have the illusion of control, I thought that an amulet would make my results
better. Besides that,I thought that I could attract and bring costumers to a shop
that has no costumers. However when I grew up, I started to acknowledge that I
had those illusions on control because they happened for too many times and
they seem like I have the power to control. I got good results because of my hard
work and not because of the amulet. I could never control other people coming in
the shop, they were just some coincidence.
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THE JOURNAL 4
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”Post-decision dissonance” means, after we have made a decision, we
will feel dissonance regarding the possibilities of it being wrong. Later on, we will
change our perceptions to reduce this dissonance to make our decision seems
more correct.This “post-decision dissonance” happens to me sometimes. There
was this one time where I decided to buy a computer. I have narrowed down the
brands I would consider to purchase. Eventually, i had to choose between two
brands. I reevaluated them and finally decided to buy a Apple brand computer.
Automatically, I started to enhance the value of the one I chose and at the same
time, devalue rejected options. I even listed out all the disadvantages of the other
brand and started to criticise it.
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Why did this happened? Its because as human beings, we often need
to feel confident about our decisions. After we have made a decision between
two equal options, we would start to worry and wonder if we have made the right
decision. This discomfort causes us to state positive points of our chosen option
and negative points for the rejected option. In my opinion, the “post-decision
dissonance” has disadvantages and advantages .The disadvantages is that we
had to criticise the rejected option, this sees a little mean to it. On the other hand,
the “post-decision dissonance” has its own advantage too. For example, we can
get rid of the discomfort and worries of the decisions we have made and at the
same time enjoy the our chosen decision.
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THE JOURNAL 5
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”Counterfactual thinking” is imagining different outcomes for an event
that has already occurred. It is the time where we wish that something had or had
not happened. There are two types of “counterfactual thinking”, which is upward
counterfactual and downward counterfactual. Both of them happen in my life
quite frequently. An example of upward counterfactual was during my submission
of an assignment. The submission was in the afternoon on next day but I still
slept early, thinking that I could finish it in the morning. Eventually, I could not
finish it in time and had to submit my assignment in an uncompleted state. After
that, I started to think “If only I did not slept early but stay up all night to complete
the assignment, I would have finished it in time!”
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Downward counterfactual happened to me recently. It was a model-making
project. Eventually, my group members and I did not get a satisfying
result because of some lack of design elements. However, I thought to myself “
Though the result is not that good, at least we have worked hard and tried our
best to achieve good grades.” The two incidents show that “counterfactual
thinking” happens to help me cover up trauma or just excuses to avoid facing the
uncomfortable truth. In my point of view, the downward counterfactual is
somehow beneficial to me. This is because I am a positive person and whenever
something negative happens to me, I will always seek for excuses and also find
out the reason of my failure. I will be encouraged and motivated to walk out from
sadness and continue my life. After all, human beings are imperfect and it is okay
to make some mistakes.
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THE JOURNAL 6
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The “self-serving bias” is people’s tendency to attribute positive events
to their own character but negative events to external factors. The reasons
people tend to personalise success is because it helps their esteem level. This
reminded me that one of my classmates in secondary school had a very strong
“self-serving bias”. She is quite a brilliant student in my class and she is always
very proud with her exam results. However, there are lots of times where she did
not do well. She kept on declaring that it was because she unfortunately did not
sleep well and could not concentrate well during the exam. She kept on
protecting her ego so that people still thought that she was smart.
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Another example was about myself when I was still in primary school. It
was my first time entering a piano examination.The examiner asked me a few
questions and wanted me to answer them, however I was too nervous and
cannot hear clearly what he was talking about. Later on after the examination, I
complained to my piano teacher that I cannot hear what the examiner was saying
because he had a strong British accent. From the two examples above, I can see
that human beings often take credit for our won success and deny any
responsibility for failure. There are some advantages and disadvantages. When
people succeed at something and take credit to themselves, it makes them feel
good and they will continue their effort in achieving there goals. The
disadvantages are people with strong “self-serving bias” are not being honest,
they should take credit when they deserve it. In my point of view, the “self-serving
bias” is good if we assume it as a motivator, on the other hand, we will turn into
someone who has low credibility if the “self-serving bias” is too strong.
Page 7 of 11

THE JOURNAL 7
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Another topic that interested me is the “optimistic bias”. The optimistic
bias is bias that causes a person to believe that they are less at risk of
experiencing a negative event compared to the others. I remembered an incident
that has relation with the “optimistic bias”. A few year ago, my cousin was
studying in a University in Penang, She has strong “optimistic bias”, hence she
always thought that she was less likely to be robbed than other people because
of her plain dress and simple life style. However, she was robbed when she was
on her way back home. She said that she was really shocked because she did
not expect that.
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Another incident is about me. It was an examination of the History
subject, the test questions were a little tougher than the previous tests. However I
thought that I might still get good results compared to my other classmates due
to my previous performances in the tests. Eventually, I failed the subject and
some of my classmates got better results than me. I was to confident over myself
and I had looked down on other people. The “optimistic bias” also act as the
overconfidence barrier. It is a believe that our own judgement or control greater
than it truly is. In my opinion, the “optimistic bias” is not too good. It increases the
ego and makes people less alert of their true performances. People also tend to
look down on others when they compare themselves to others.
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Page 8 of 11

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THE JOURNAL 8
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The topic “self-efficacy” attracts my interest because I can easily relate
it to my life. “Self-efficacy” means your belief of one’s ability capability to organise
and execute the courses of action required to manage a certain situation. There
are two types of people, people with high self-efficacy face difficult tasks as
challenges while people with low efficacy face them as barriers in life. In the
course I am studying, there were lots of projects that required us to form groups
and that is how I get to know if my group mates have high or low self-efficacy.
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After observing them for some time, I found out that there are some
people who has extremely high self-efficacy. Whenever one problems arise, they
get highly motivated and would never give up until they accomplish their goal. In
contrast, there are also some people who posses a much lower self-efficacy.
When they face challenges, they would straightly give up because they wanted to
avoid the difficult tasks. As a result, people who posses high self-efficacy, often
perform well and get better grades compared to those who have lo self-efficacy.
In my perspective, I think that having a high self-efficacy is extremely important
because we have to always believe in ourselves that we can deal with various
situations. Self-efficacy plays a significant role in not only how we feel about
ourselves, but also determines whether we can successfully achieve our goals in
life.
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Page 9 of 11

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THE JOURNAL 9
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The “halo effect” is a type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression
of a person influences how we feel and think about his or her character. For
example, one positive attribute will cause us to attribute other positive qualities of
an individual. It is not hard to find the “halo effect” being applied in everyday life. I
have a friend who is a big fan of the K-Pop band, which is EXO. Marketers take
advantage of the halo effect and sell beauty products by letting the EXO
members to advertise their products. Eventually, my friend bought the beauty
products, not because she like the product or she has used it before, it was just
because her idol promoted the product so she thought that the product is good.
Can you even imagine if all EXO fans bought the beauty products, what a big
amount of money the marketers can earn!
Another example of the “halo effect” happened when I was in the
kindergarten many years ago. I had a teacher who was quite old, but she was a
warm and friendly person. She cared about all of the children in the kindergarten
as if they were her grandchildren. That time, my friends and I think that she is a
very kind and funny person. Most of the time, our positive evaluations on an
individual can spread to our perceptions of the product or person. This can also
relate to the importance of having a good first impression. People will think about
positive qualities you have if your first impression to them is good. I strongly
agree that the “halo effect” is important in life because sometimes, it helps to
increase the positive values on how people perceive us, for example during an
interview. It also aids in making certain decisions.
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Page 10 of 11

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THE JOURNAL 10
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The topic on “observational learning” is watching other people engage in
behaviours and repeating those actions. It is also referred to shaping, modelling
and vicarious reinforcement. “Observational learning” happens mostly during our
childhood where we learn to do something by observing our parents and friends
doing it. I remembered when I was still in primary school, I had a classmate who
had a very bad attitude and always spoke obscene language. One day, when he
got scolded by the teacher because he did not do his homework, he started to
defend himself and talk to the teacher rudely, full of bad words. The teacher was
shocked and angry at the same time, she called the boy’s parents to school.
When the boy’s parents arrived, his father slapped the boy’s face in front of
everyone and warned him not to say rude words again.
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From that day onwards, I dare not speak a single rude word in front of
anyone. Though was just an observer who was not involved in the whole
incident, I still learned from the boy’s mistake. I knew that I would get punished if
I speak obscene language. In my opinion, the “ observational learning’ plays an
important role in socialisation process, as I get to learn how to behave and
respond to all kinds of people and situation by observing and learning other
people doing that. I am really grateful that I grew up in a good and healthy
environment with the guide of my parent and teachers. So far until now, I did not
cause much trouble to anyone because I behaved quite well.
Page 11 of 11

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