This document contains a student's journal entries for a social psychology course. The entries discuss various concepts from the course, including how the student developed hygienic behaviors from observing their mother's practices, how the presence of skilled classmates enhanced their drawing performance, and how positive messages can be persuasive by promising good outcomes like the benefits of exercise. The student provides personal examples for concepts like extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, cognitive biases, and influence techniques.

1. Name: Chan Pei Shan
Student ID: 0318350
Group: Monday 4pm – 7pm
Subject and Course: Social Psychology, FNBE
Submission Date: 10th November 2014

2. 21th September 2014, 22:47
Journal One, 1st entry: Social Learning Perspective (Chapter 1)
Social Learning Perspective is when an individual’s behaviour gets influenced
by observing others. This perspective had occurred in my life numerous times, one of
them was a serious factor about being hygienic in our household, and that was
developed from my mother, and since a very young age.
Since the out broke of SARS, the deadly disease that killed millions, my
mother had been practicing a more hygienic lifestyle since then. I still remembered
that my mother was very strict about hygienic matters that even if that practice was
inconvenience, she would still go on with it. A few examples of the practices were
washing her feet before entering the house because the feet is the dirtiest part of our
body, as she told us, and it even went to the extent that she would not touch anything
that was held by many people in public, for example in the malls, travelling on the
escalator, she would not hold the handle as it was held by many people before and we
never know who might touch them.
Even though initially, our whole family thought that she was thinking too much
and should just let the matter go, but as time passed, as I watched my mother being a
“clean freak” for so many years, I eventually developed her hygienic lifestyle together
with my whole family, and it even influenced our relatives too! There were times
nowadays when I was eating with a bunch of friends out in the mall and I would wipe
my utensils nonchalantly, and my
friends would look at me weird, but how
could I changed my behaviour of being
more hygienic easily after watching my
mother doing it for around 11 years?

3. 22th September 2014, 23:12
Journal One, 2nd entry: Social Facilitation (Chapter 1)
Social Facilitation is when one’s performance is enhanced with the presence of
others. Before entering Taylor’s University and taking the Architecture course, I
usually drew on my own just for fun. And normally, I wouldn’t really put a lot of
effort into my drawing, because I was always too lazy to draw a masterpiece and have
to check for any flaws. I wouldn’t try my best because I felt like there was no
competition back then and no need for me to put extra effort into drawing.
When I first got into the course and knowing all my classmates, I wasn’t too
motivated to use extra effort when it comes it drawing because I thought everyone’s
drawing skills wouldn’t be ultimately good upon mine, but it was until when the first
drawing project came and then it was when I found out how good majority of my
classmates were at drawing, and because of that, I was motivated to always do my
best in drawing and designing projects. There were times when I even thought of
taking up drawing classes so my skills could level with my friends.
Because of the presence of my classmates, my performance of drawing and
designing had enhanced, and unlike the old me who wouldn’t care much, the current
me is more motivated to do my best in the class projects.

4. 26th September 2014, 10:57
Journal Two, 1st entry: Extrinsic Motivation (Chapter 2)
Extrinsic Motivation is when one makes an action in response to external
pressure, but doing it could earn themselves a reward or could be a punishment. It is
said to inhibit behaviours if used at the wrong time, but that was not the case for me.
So my father had always been an enthusiastic “jogger”, and he always
encouraged us, his family to jog with him, even though when we did, only he felt the
pleasure of jogging while my mother, brother and I were all feeling like we were
barbequed under the evening hot sun. My father especially asked me to jog more often
with him because I was rather chubby back then. But of course, for a chubby girl to
run was definitely the most painful thing to do.
The chubby me back then has another hobby, which was reading, and I loved
reading a lot. I would really do anything to buy any new books or just borrowing them
from my school.
There was this once when my dad and I were jogging and I barely jogged half
of our routine and I was already giving up because that day was extremely hot and I
felt like a roasted chicken already. But then my father suggested, if I were to jog for
one whole routine and a little more, he would buy 3 more books for me, and then
instantly, I took the challenge and ran all the way, even though by the end point I was
already feeling like I was half-dying.
Then of course in the end, my dad did keep his promise and bought me 3 more
new books the other time we went to a bookstore. And this was how me doing action
that caused extreme pressure but in return I got my reward.

5. 30th September 2014, 19:21
Journal Two, 2nd entry: Intrinsic Motivation (Chapter 2)
Intrinsic Motivation is when one does an action for the sake of enjoyment,
which leads them to be more fully engaged and also to greater curiosity and pleasure.
Unlike the previous entry where jogging or just exercising in general is an intrinsic
motivation of mine, what I usually do for enjoyment is reading and also writing, and
sometimes I would also watch some shows.
Back in high school where classes were usually finished at the same time every
day, I would normally go home and read a book first if I had a book in line waiting for
me to be read. I wouldn’t really read books in my school because it was quite noisy
and because I was easily distracted by noise, I would feel more of annoyed than
pleasure to read.
Sometimes I read not only for the sake of enjoyment, but rather it sometimes
gave me more ideas on my writing. Since I was an enthusiastic writer, I would write
too if I had finished some of my books to read. Even though I read much lesser now
than back when I was in high school, but currently I still enjoys writing as much as
before. From reading novels to some online stories, the genre of my stories were
constantly alternating from action stories to mysteries and even to horror. I was
usually so enjoyed in writing to the point where I would stay up late just to finish a
certain part of my stories.
Last but not least was watching shows. I usually watched comedies because for
one main reason, I loved watching funny things, nonetheless movies or TV shows. I
usually watched movies during the weekend nights when there was nothing to do
because they were enjoyable. Sometimes, I even watched some live show l ike The
Ellen show, those that were humorous.

6. 5th October 2014, 11:37
Journal Three, 1st entry: The Illusion of Control (Chapter 3)
The illusion of control is the perception that uncontrollable events are
somehow controllable. That event of mine happened during an exam.
Last year when my family and I went to Australia, we went to this random
souvenir store and my brother was observing this toy vending machine alike thing
where you insert a coin in and twist a capsule out, but instead of a toy capsule, it gave
us “lucky pebble”. The “lucky pebbles” had different colours and would help provide
luck according to your horoscope colour of the pebble. Mine was a dark purple one.
Despite me not being superstitious person, I actually believed it.
So on my IGCSE exams last year, I studied hard and was still afraid of getting
scores below my expectations, and then to “improve” my luck, I had decided to bring
the “lucky pebble” along so that I could somehow get a high grade for all the exams.
Somehow, the first few exams really went pretty good and smooth, I wasn’t
entirely sure was it my own hard work to study or the boosting of the “lucky stone”,
but on the last third exam, invigilators came and checked on everyone’s pencil cases,
and mine was not entirely transparent, so the invigilator had to check more thoroughly.
When she saw my stone, she held it up and gave it a confusing look, but put it back
into my pencil without questioning me. After she left touching the stone, I felt like the
rest of the exams did not went as good as before. And that had totally got me believing
that my lucky stone had lost all its “lucky power” and leaving me with no luck.

7. 5th October 2014, 23.33
Journal Three, 2nd entry: The Availability Heuristic (Chapter 3)
The availability Heuristic is one’s assessment of how likely is an occurrence
based on an example of an event that can be recalled. This was applied in my life ever
since the earthquake that happened in Japan Fukushima that caused a nuclear disaster.
It was a horrifying and sad incident, and even though I was few years ago, even until
now I still refused to visit Tokyo due to the radiation in their air.
I had visited Japan twice on 2008 and 2010, one was Tokyo while the other
was Hokkaido, respectively. I visited both this places, and I still missed them so much,
and was planning to spend my vacation there again when I am older, because on both
the trips I was quite young.
But the year after I visited Hokkaido, which was 2011, the severe earthquake
happened, and news had spread it was dangerous to visit Japan due to not only their
dangerous earthquake but also the radiation that had spread through streets and
everywhere, especially in Tokyo. From what I heard and read on news, there were
even tourists who went Tokyo for a vacation after that incident and unfortunately
returned with a body carrying mutated cells. What people had warned the most were
young girls who had not have babies to visit there because that will affect their future
kid’s growth.
Of course, I was really afraid of biologically harmful things that disturbed my
own health, so I highly disagreed my family from visiting Japan again even though I
still love Japan and yet to visit there once more maybe 10 years later. But nevertheless
the earthquake or the radiation, both of them were still discouraging me from visiting
Japan.

8. 26th October 2014, 12:39
Journal Four, 1st entry: The Name-Letter Effect (Chapter 5)
The name-letter effect is the tendency of one to show a preference towards
something named with the same letter as our name. In my case, I did have quite some
preference towar ds some objects starting with the letter “p” since my name is Pei Shan.
Since I was a book lover, again as I mentioned before, I had a lot of books on
my bookshelf, and truth was I only favoured a few particular books. Other than those
really interesting books I truly loved, like <The Hunger Games> trilogy by Suzanne
Collins and <Pride and Prejudice> by Jane Austen, a few more books I loved
particularly was <Possessed> by Niki Valentine and <Pharaoh> by David Gibbins,
mostly they were titled with capital “p”. Sometimes I even had the tendency to buy
books titled with a capital “p”.
One more preference was when I was young and had thought of getting myself
an English name instead of people calling me my actual name all the time. Whenever I
asked my family or friends, I particularly asked them to pick o ne starting the letter “p”,
and I once had chosen the name “Paige” due to its starting letter, but in the end I had
decided to stick with my original name.
Another preference I remembered was involving the names of plants. Back in
high school in Biology class we had an assignment relating plants and were to
research for three different plants. I still remembered I particularly chose plants with
capital letter “p” in their scientific names. Even though no one really questioned about
my plants have all “p” as capital letters in their scientific names, but I somehow did
felt special for plants like that.

9. 26 October 2014, 12:56
Journal Four, 2nd entry: Balance Theory (Chapter 5)
Fritz Heider’s balance theory stated that people desire “cognitive consistency”,
meaning that one feel more comfortable with people who share the same attitudes,
called balanced state, than those that does not, unbalanced state.
Since I was more of a shy and quiet child when I was young, I usually spent
time more with quieter people because they made me more comfortable and at least all
quiet people felt more comfortable being just quiet. On the other hand loud and
outgoing people made me nervous just by sitting next to them, because I had to make
extra effort to speak or they would make a wrong impression on me.
But other than being quiet, when I was chatting up with someone, I would be
more comfortable if we were talking about a similar topic we both liked, maybe like
about some books that we both we interested in, or better yet about movies we both
had watched and loved them.
There was one year where I went to Europe for a vacation trip, and in my tour
group, I met this girl who is the same age as me and we became friends fast after a
random chat we had about the trip, and we became quite close due to both our
interests in reading and writing, and also the fact that she was a Hunger Games fan
like me, and it was very easy talking
to her, despite us not even meeting
each other at all, it all happened
during a trip, which was a
coincidence and a very memorable
trip. Even until now, we occasionally
meet up and hang out together, which
was really unusual to have such a
lasting friendship.

10. 1st November 2014, 22:31
Journal Five, 1st entry: Influences Route (Chapter 6)
There are a few influences routes that one will take in order to be persuaded
about a certain matter, and I had 3 experiences of 3 different routes of persuasion.
The first influence route is about the issues we care deeply about are resistant
to persuasion. I had been using an IPhone since four years ago, and kind of being a
bias person, I liked IPhone over other smartphones a lot, and my IPhone was truly like
my life, and honestly it was something I cared a lot about, because my life relied so
much on it. Because I had built such good impression on IPhones, no matter how
much my friends convinced me that Samsung smartphones were much better than
IPhones, I wouldn’t be persuaded.
The second influence route is according to a fear-based appeal, where the
message is designed to have a negative valance in order to prevent some actions. I was
extremely afraid of deaths caused by self-harming human acts and would obey any
messages that encourages us not to try those acts, for example taking drugs and
smoking. Newspapers, websites and radios all had told us how much deaths had been
caused due to these inappropriate acts and that was why I would never attempt to take
drugs or smoke.
The last is positive valence messages, which was the opposite of fear based
appeals. On the other hand, I was also easily persuaded by positive messages that will
produce a good outcome on us. For example whenever I listened to radio and heard
about how exercising is extremely important and sparing a little time in our lives is
worth it, and I, with just a short advertisement like that, would be totally persuaded
and promised myself to exercise more as it meant that I would be more healthy and
lived a longer life.

11. 3rd November 2014, 23:10
Journal Five, 2nd entry: Cialdini’s 6 Weapons of Influence (Chapter 6)
Cialdini had come up with a theory stating that there are 6 weapons of
influencing someone. To relate to my experience I had chosen 3 weapons to explain
that was involved in my life.
The first is reciprocation, meaning people are more persuaded to repay an act to
another person in order to avoid feeling indebted. So I tend to have this feeling quite
often, but also my belief on good things happening to only good people, I would help
people thinking that in the future I deserved to be helped by others as well.
The other is social proof, which is the bandwagon effect, which means people
follow other’s action or thoughts as an indication of what is true or right, and if
majority contradicts to an action, others will believe that action should be true. Since
my brother was a car lover, I kind of get some knowledge of what made a car good.
We talked once about when many people were asked what car do they liked, their
answer would mostly be expensive and flashy cars like Ferrari or Porshe just because
people think these are the cars everyone should like, when there was a much deeper
meaning into knowing what was a good car.
Lastly, liking is also another weapon, that states that we generally say “yes” to
people we like and “no” to people we don’t like. There was this once when I was with
my mother buying some products in a pharmacy that sells daily items as well, and this
salesgirl was standing very freely by the counter and when we asked for her help to
check the stock about a certain product we were looking for, she went into the storage
reluctantly and return with not only an annoyed expression but answered very rudely.
In frustration, we both left the pharmacy without buying anything.