Reflection

1. Name : Nurafiqah Bte Hj Zariful
Student ID Number : 0321196
Group : Monday 4pm – 6pm
Subject : Social Psychology
Submission Date : 27th April

2. Social Interaction, 18th April
The first lecture started off by introducing what the subject is about. What is
Social Psychology? From what I understand from the lecture, this subject is about
exploring or trying to understand individual’s behavior based on the current
situation they are experiencing. According to slides, there are three types of
interest and they are Social perception, Social influence and Social interactions. I
have learnt that social perception is about forming an impression of others based
on available information, means that the person have been judged based on what
people see from social networks for example, their behavior on taking selfies or
captions on Instagram or Facebook, the way they dress up and many more. Social
influence is the process by which one’s thoughts and actions are affected by
others, to be honest I am a bit confused on this. From what I thought it might be
is that individuals can get influence from their friends’ behavior. From example
of one goof friend of mine during primary, she was about to be elected to join
netball team but her best friend has no interest at all in football so she decided to
change his interest in football to something that they can do together.
Social interaction defines the relationship between two or more individuals.
According to this interest, it can give a lot of different example. Basically, it is
about relationships of two or a group of many friends. I have also learnt that
individuals can achieve or perform better than usual when competing with others
rather than doing it alone. Individuals tend to give more energy in the presence of
others, as they are afraid that they would get lower marks when compare to the.
Basically when competing with others, it challenged them to achieve more.
However, the opposite of this can also happened when a group task is given.
Individuals tend to make less effort of their energy since the task was given to a
group of more than one person to do. If this were given as an individual task, they
would work their butt of to achieve their goals on their own. These two concepts
are called Social Facilitation and Social Loafing. I’m sure everyone can relate
these two concepts especially in doing individual tests or group assignments. I
personally would work as hard as I can to achieve more on my test or individual

3. assignments. And when it comes to group tasks, I would feel a bit more relaxed in
doing the works, as the marks will be judged in a group performances, I just have
to do some of the work that have been divided. I don’t know why is that, but in a
group you just feel like doing what you need to do. While in individual you tend
to put “more” than what you should do. This reminds me of a friend that have
been in a group with me twice, it was frustrating to see that he was not
cooperating with the members at all. He was always late or even worst, didn’t
even come to every meeting. He only started doing his task two days before the
submission. But when I noticed in doing individual work, he worked hard on it,
he even chose not to sleep to achieve what he able to do best. In the end he
achieved more than any of his members.
Giving the example on clothes, when one clothes is trending, 9 out of 10 people
would choose to own it. When all the cool kids are wearing the clothe from ‘this
store’, they tend to buy it from the specific store to fit in with the crowd. This
happens all the time when one type of clothing is trending especially to women.
The current trend, for example, is Monochrome style (black and white clothes), it
was obviously seen from the photos I’ve seen in instagram or tumblr or any other
photography social networks, almost all people are posing with their so called
currently-trending monochrome style.

4. Self Concept, 19th April
The second lecture discusses on how we see ourselves, what type of person we
see ourselves as, looking at our feelings and many more. Basically, it is about
studying ourselves & it is a very important part in psychology. Before studying
other people in the field of social psychology, we need to study ourselves, because
we live with ourselves 24/7, no one else knows who we really are except for
ourselves. I now know there is actually a difference between “I” and “me” from
the theories of two psychologists, both with a different concept. It had me
confused in the first few explanations, I mean of course, who would expect that
these two pronouns have differences when they actually have the same meaning.
I do get what James concept meant; the “I” represents what we think about
ourselves from what we see from our behaviors. For example, “I think this dress
is too tight, I look fat wearing it.” While “me” represents what you feel you are
capable of, what others see you as. People can easily judge your behavior from
available information and by this it means from social network that we have
regularly use to express feelings and post selfies.
I’ve also learned that we and I certainly can relate, cannot factually explain our
behaviors, as we tend to deny being influenced my media, parental influence or
other influence. Hence we cannot predict both behavior & feeling, I always
predict I would finish work days before submission, but would always mispredict
I wouldn’t procrastinate, which I eventually would do. I have also experience how
I miscalculated feelings when I thought something funny, would be insulting to
some. Another major part of the lecture of Self Serving Bias, which as I observes,
is when someone thinks they are the perfect humans, taking pride and credit for
success while blaming other factors for failure that completely doesn’t involve
them. Self-serving bias can be found everywhere and we would not know if it
might be the people we never expected or even ourselves, since we tend to
mispredict behaviors.

5. I can definitely relate when the lecturer explained about distinctiveness. I
myself have that kind of behavior. I would act differently in front of my parents
than I act in front of my friends. You tend to be more crazier when you’re
surrounded with your close friend and when you’re in front of your parents you
tend to be shy, well behaved and controlled.
We also learnt about social comparison, when you compare your situation is
better when others are suffering the situation. We enhance our self-esteem by
feeling that we are better than other people. This happens almost everyday I
failed my exam. I’m sure most parents also would do this. Every time I flunked
my test my parents would compare to a successful daughter of her sister. She
would asked to do better, or followed what my cousin was doing. Or if I did not
give any effort in cleaning the house when we have guest, my parents would
compare to my other cousin without a maid that they can help clean or cook for
their guest every time we came. My mom would always say “Why cant you be
hard-working like them?” Too me by social comparing it could decrease the effort
in improving at some point. You tend to feel down about yourself, that you were
not as good as you expected when compare to others. Especially when parents or
cousins compare big exam’s mark such as O’level exam with your siblings, I’ve
experience this last year when my brothers just got their O’level results, I only
managed to get 6 O’s while both of my brothers have achieved 7 O’s and 9 O’s,
and my parent’s first reaction was “What have you got before?” This can also be
called self-discrepancy theory that compares different internalized standards and
analyzes how we are affected by the gaps between them.

6. Persuasion, 26th April
Persuasion could also mean the same as Social influence; it defines as attempts
to influence others’ attitudes or behaviors. When you think about persuasion,
what comes to mind is some people might think of advertising messages that urge
viewers to buy a particular product, while others might think of a candidate
trying to convince voters to rather choose him rather than the other. People may
be persuaded in different ways. When we do not know how to behave or can’t
define about ourselves, we tend to choose to copy other peoples’ behavior,
especially to new and advertising. There are two different ways to persuasion and
they are central route and the peripheral route. The central route involves the
argument or the content of a message. I have a friend who previously have
addicted smoking weed (currently trying to quit), it was all started when he and
his brother was being scolded by their parents to not go out at night. All they
want was to had fun, seemed like the way their parents act does not work for
them at all, they became more stress because of it and started to do things they
shouldn’t. So they chose to follow their friends addictive just to get out of the
stress they suffered at home. The way their parents send the message to them was
not helpful as the message was only have made them stress.
When we think of persuasion, negative example are often the first to come to
mind, but persuasion can also be used as positive. Public service campaigns that
allow people to recycle and quit smoking are one good example. Take my country
for example, the Sultan have created a law where smoking is prohibited in
virtually all enclosed public places and workplaces, on sidewalks and all means
transport, whoever refuse to follow the law, offenders will be facing a fine of up to
$1,000 Brunei dollar. He even banned the import of any tobacco product to the
country. These actions are great examples or persuasion used to improve people’s
lives.
According to my experience, my parents have always never agreed on me
having a boyfriend. They give advice almost everyday to convince me that they

7. were always right. At first I tend to not listen to them and just give a go, but one
day when they found out about it, they advice me more detailed giving me the
chance if I were to follow what they have motivate me, they would provide me a
better future education, and once I have done my study, I can follow my own
choice. I can say that this was a positive force of persuasion as they were giving
me rewards for listening to them.

8. Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination, 25th April
This lecture digs deeper into attitudes, such as the 3 components, looking at
examples such as racism, sexism and ageism to further understanding them.
We looked at how people are affected by a stimulus and how they respond to
the stimulus in a positive or negative way.
Stereotypes and prejudice have a pervasive and often pernicious influence
on our responses to others, and also in some case on out own behaviors too.
As taking racism, sexism and ageism to a real life example, it could usually be
found in wars. But take this semester for example, we as Taylor’s University’s
student represents a lot of international students that consists of Black,
Chinese and Malays. A semester ago the students was well mixed with each
other. But despite our best intentions, we end up making friends only with
people who are similar to us and perhaps even avoiding people whom we see
as different from each other. It can obviously be seen that, a group of race or
religion are in the same group, not mixing with different race or religion.
Discrimination is a major societal problem because it is so pervasive, takes so
many forms, and has such negative effects on so many people.
We also learnt about social learning where parents are the most influenced
source of information. What I have noticed in real life example, mostly from
my relatives, if the father is a smoker, his son or it can be daughter in some
cases, are likely to become a smoker too and even more addictive than their
father (the person who they have influenced to).
In conclusion, I’ve learned how a group can change people in a positive or
negative way and that people can behave in an unexpected way. We like some
people and we dislike others, this is natural, but we should not let a people’s
skin color, gender, age, religion, or ethnic background make these
determinations for us.

9. Prosocial Behavior, 25th Arpril
In Chapter 8 we learned about prosocial behavior. Why we help and why we
don’t. It talked about how we help others can benefit us, a positive actions we
tend to hope we can do those who needed. There are two differences in this
behavior, egoistic model and altruistic model. Egoistic model explains when we
tend to help others for the sake of own benefits only, not thinks about others
benefit. It focuses on rewards that self received. One thing that most people
nowadays has in common. While altruistic model is the opposite of egoistic
model, it is when we help others for selfless reasons, not receiving benefit in
return. It involves the unselfish concern for other people, doing things simply out
of a desire to help, not because you feel obligated to out of duty, loyalty or
religious reasons. This model can be found in everyday act, from people helping
you to open the door as you walk outside the grocery store, people who gives 1
Ringgit to homeless man who sit along the street hoping for enough money to eat
everyday.
The lecturer had explained about bystanders, which is when people are less likely
to help others when they are in groups because they believe others would help or
because they don’t want to take responsibility of a bystander. The more people on
the event, the lesser of help they will get. If it was not an emergency, then nothing
was to be done about it because nobody sees it as a problem. Mood effects social
behaviors when the person that needed help happens to be attractive, help can be
done when you are in a positive mood while when you’re in a negative mood, you
tend to choose not to help. And you also more likely to help to people that have
same kind as yours for example same race, same school or same religion. This
reminds me of a friend who totally ignored one of our members just because he
has different race than hers. We also learnt about cost benefit analysis, if you
were going to help someone what cost benefit do you get, if there is a less cost and
more benefit then more likely people would help.

10. About altruistic model, it reflects a lot to my dad. Years ago before my
grandfather passed away, he would visit his farther almost everyday, he even
stayed until midnight if he needed to. He remembered every schedule of when his
father needed to take medicine. He sometimes would forgot about his meals just
because of taking care of his father. It was a very good example to his children at
the moment, taking care of your loved ones once you have the chance. It may not
give you any reward, but you will gain respect from others.