journals that include social psychology theories. FNBE.

1.
Name : Tan Ming Howe
Student ID : 0320199
Session : Monday 2:00pm­4.00pm
Submission Date : 27th April 2015

2. 6​th​
APRIL 2015
Journal 01 : Social Cognition
Entry 01 : schemas
Piaget theorized that humans go through specific stages of cognitive development and
intellectual progression. His main game was asking ‘How does knowledge grow?’ He
proposed that as we grow and struggle to make sense of our experiences, we create
schemas or mental frameworks that help interpret information for ease of understanding
information.
Schemas are like concepts, ranging from physical things like dogs, bee’s hats to abstract
ideas like relationships and treason. And we’re constantly striving for cognitive equilibrium, or
harmony, between our thoughts processes and our environments, which is always giving us
new things to think about and adjust to. Piaget proposed that we adapt to new experiences
through two processes that are closely related – assimilation and accommodation. When we
assimilate new experiences, we interpret them in terms of existing schemas.
So if a toddler has never seen a dog but sees
the first car, he might call that cat a dog. He wants
to fit it within his understanding. But with
more interactions in the world, our mind expand
to conform, or adjust to new experiences. Before
you know it, that kid realizes that cats aren’t
dogs, and he is adjusts her schema. From
there, he’ll be able to tell the difference in traits
between Grumpy Cat and Scooby­Doo in no time.
But our knowledge base grows in ways that are
much more complex than just those two steps,
and Piaget knew that.
Piaget went on to develop a four stage theory of cognitive development that describes how
we learn in different phases of our lives. He called stage one the sensorimotor stage, which of
course begins at birth and continues on to about age two. This is the time when babies feel
the world through their five senses touching, grabbing, looking and hearing and but of course
putting weird things in their mouth. From what I can tell though, mostly just putting things in
their mouth. Younger babies may get scared around strangers, have to see something to

3. know it exists and seem to live only in the present. This makes them very easy to manipulate,
if you’re into that sort of thing.
Conclusively, schemas are important for us to recognize the world around us, as it is
extremely helpful is clearing the grey lines.

4. 8​th​
April 2015
Journal 02 : Social Perception
Entry 01: The Attribution Process
Theoretically speaking, the attribution process is where by people use past
experiences to create implications about the causes of actions made or
coincidental events. Simply put, this is how we go about inferring actions (our own
and those of others). For example, if you take an exam and you do well but a
friend of yours fails, you might assume that you did great because you are smart
and studied hard but your friend failed because he partied all night and didn't study
at all. In this case, you "attributed" your success to an internal attribution (you're
smart) but "attributed" your friend's behavior to an external attribution (partied all
night).
We attribute things in
different contexts as
well, for example,
you’re driving down the
freeway, it’s rush hour and
you can’t help but glance to
the left and notice drivers
speeding down the
emergency lane comes in
and swoops right in front of you and all you wanna do is get home to your couch
open a bottle a beer and chill in front of your TV and now these bugger’s are giving
you a hard time from achieving your life’s goal. You’re immediate reaction is most
likely to think is : “THIS CHAO LAN HAI CHEATER MOTHER NEVER TEACH
HOW TO DRIVE YOU THINK IT’S YOUR FATHER’S ROAD AH?!”.

5. But what do we really know of these unknown drivers really. They might be in a
hurry to get to the airport and catch a flight to see his long lost mother, or maybe
the guy is just rushing home because he suddenly remembered he left his kettle
on the stove and forgot to switch off the gas, the possibilities are endless.
Interestingly this is known as attributiion error. When we carry out an action we
favor ourselves of our decision and think that we have a good reason for doing
said thing, that guy over there now yeah there’s your problem. If everyone was like
me, this world would’nt be as bad as it is now. And that’s not always the case, we
must always remain mindful of the behavior of others and our own.

6. 12​th​
April 2015
Journal 03 : Attitudes
Entry 01 : Classical Conditioning
Doesn’t the name Ivan Pavlov rings a bell? Get it? Alright bad joke moving on, his work being
contributed towards the foundation of the behaviorist school of thought mainly focused on
external observable behaviors and not
unobservable internal mental
processes. So allow me just to
elaborate upon dear Pavlov’s
discovery, while feeding his dog,
Pavlov noticed that the dog would
salivate at a mere whiff of the food,
and that because all that drooling was
becoming annoying to him. And he
wondered if the salivation was a
cause of nature or nurture? So he first got out some meat and when he presented the meat to
the dog he would pair it with a neutral stimuli (things that didn’t make the dog drool) such as a
bell. After a while of repeating the experiment the dog started to drool just by the sound of a
bell alone without any juicy steaks lying around.
We ourselves are classically conditioned whether we know it or not, for example, red yellow
and green all used to just be colours of the rainbow, not only until we had motor vehicles up
and running on the roads have we gave meaning to these colours, red means stop green
means go and in most countries yellow means slow down but in Malaysia yellow means
speed up. Or another example would be classrooms, in our Asian cultures it is a normal
occurrence to be punished for supplying the wrong answers and because of this we are only
classically conditioned to supply the right answers whether we like it or not or face the wrath
of the “rotan”. Or this could also work the other way around. Teacher’s could create a positive
classroom environment by helping students overcome anxiety by pairing anxiety­provoking
situations, such as performing in front of their fellow classmates, the experience places the
students out of their comfort zones and helps learn new associations, instead of feeling

7. anxious and tense all the while through, people could be conditioned to be relaxed cool calm
and collected.

8. 15​th​
April 2015
Journal 04 : Social Psychology
Entry 01 : Confirmation Bias
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in
a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually
chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the
Gray Alien Theory.
The truth is far more frightening ­ Nobody is in control. ​ ​The world is rudderless.” ― ​Alan
Moore
Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias which of course involves favoring our personal
beliefs rather than of others. For example, imagine this person carries a belief that fat people
generally eat more than skinny people. Whenever this person encounters a fat person that
eats a lot they back it up supporting their belief system in their head. This individual might
even search for more supporting acts by fat people to further strengthen his belief, while
discarding those fat people who eat little. Back in the 60’s there were a bunch of experiments
conducted on the tendency of people being confirmation bias. Unfortunately, being
confirmation bias may be our blind eye unable to look at the big picture and even influence
the choices we make, this in turn leads to lousy decision making skills.
Here are some examples of confirmation bias in action, let’s
say it’s election month and you’re going through some
articles of the politicians and John over there is from your own
hometown and you go like wow that’s cool, you read on and
find out that he likes cats too and you go like aw man this
dude is awesome. And you start to read on some articles of
his opponent Jerome, oh crap he’s black! Not cool dude,
and he’s a dog lover. Although Jerome might actually
be the better candidate to run for office, you don’t give Jerome
the chance to even prove himself since you’re too blinded
by being bias. Or in another situation, let’s say Mohammad is a practice of Islam his faith is
deeply rooted and should never be questioned, Mohammed searches for a job, he finds one

9. but the employer is Christian. The Christian employer is not very fond with malays as they are
known to be associated with extremism, thus the Christian employer would prefer only looking
at Christian candidates.
In conclusion, we are all pretty much terrible people, but if everyone Is terrible then no one is.

10. 23​th​
April 2015
Journal 05 : Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination
Entry 01 : Racism
Racism is basically the belief that every member of that particular race possess traits
exclusive to that race, for example, all chinese are good at maths, have squinty eyes and love
to gamble. All malay’s are rich, a terrorist and are as crooked as the politicians. All Indian’s
are con­man, have a drinking problem and have large tummy’s. No offence intended, but to
be frank these are just some of the less intrusive words laid out in our minds.
Some amount of racism is around us whether we like it or not, whether it’s going to a counter
and ordering food or applying for a scholarship. People will always opt for their more
familiar/comfortable choice. But it’s not just amongst us Malaysians, The US have too been
struggling with the same issues, the rate of black people are convicted of felony to white
people are staggering, the reports too show policeman pull over more black people than white
although the chances of finding any drugs or anything that is illegal is pretty much have the
same success rate.
Racial discrimination is a harsh and worrying
mindset. I myself was a victim of racial
discrimination, while serving my time in the
national service camp, I shared a dorm with 12
other guys, 8 of them were Iban, 3 of them
were Malay, and 1 was Chinese. Needless to
say we (chinese) were bullied, constantly.
Imagine three months of your life where all you’re
stuck in a shit hole and to make things worst the
people around you don’t even know the reason
why the moon changes faces. They called us
terrible things, physically assaulted us, constantly
wanting to pick fights, and constant irrational immature behavior. It was a dark time for me.

11. I didn’t want my terrible experience in National Service to disrupt my perception of other racial
entities though, so I forgave them. But sometimes its hard to forget the terrible events that
occurred. And being born in a multi­racial country really changes your perception about the
people around you, growing up in this multi­cultural background is not only eye­opening but a
beautiful experience none the less, we could look towards any other country and none as
colourful as the faces of people we have in this nation, I could turn to the left and Mak Cik is
cooking some nasi lemak, turn to the right and my Macha is making Roti Canai’s, turn to the
back and Uncle Leong is already there steaming some pau’s, Malaysia is such a beautiful
place, don’t let a few rotten apples ruin the whole basket. I want to love Malaysia, but its hard.