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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING & DESIGN
Foundation of Natural Build Environment (FNBE)
Name: Joshua Lee Yee Kai
Student Id: 0315820
Group/Session: Monday (4pm-7pm)
Subject: Social Psychology PSYC0103
Course: FNBE (July 2013 intake)
Lecturer: Shankar Thiruchelvam

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24th
Febuary 2014
Self-concept
Self-concept is explained as what we think of ourselves and self-esteem is explained as
what we feel about ourselves. The “self” is a tool used to associate or communicate with our
society. Self-concept is explained as what we think of ourselves and it can categorize a person as
“I” and “Me”. “I” is the one with contact with people. Therefore it is used as a catalyst to deal
with people in the real world. Then, “Me” is the thought of one, it is cognitive. The “Me”
regulates the “I” to behave a socially acceptable behavior. From what I learnt about this is, the
“Me” could be me thinking of how disgusting it is to smell the stench of fart from a friend,
however the “I” projects a calm behavior suggesting it is natural and normal and saying
otherwise from the “Me”. This regulation will help prevent social conflicts. Also, the “Me” could

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be thinking of how I dislike this person’s attitude but then the “I” shows no sign of me disliking
the person. One example that I can really relate to this concept would be I dislike a guy from my
course named Egbert. Though I do not like Egbert’s annoying and childish attitude, but I still
choose to maintain my friendship with him and avoid further conflicts by not picking on his
annoying attitude. By doing so, I not only get to maintain my friendship with him but also avoid
the chance of hurting his feelings. At times, the “Me” could be thinking about how
uncomfortable I feel whenever I am with Egbert but the “I” projects a calm behavior whenever I
am in contact with Egbert.
This also explains that the “self” can be used to self-regulate an individual. I have also
learnt that the self that can self-regulate is a mature self, for example, if I am angry, what I can
do with the anger? How is the anger helping me to achieve my goals? Therefore, by being able to
regulate and control the anger, then one can be considered a mature self. On the contrary, “Me”
is a material self, a mature self and is able to self-regulate. I remember when I was a young chap,
I used to throw tantrum whenever I don’t get to buy the latest Ultraman and power-ranger’s toy.
But when I grew older, I soon learned the value of money and how my parents worked hard
towards earning the money. Thus, over time, the “Me” grew matured and the “Me” is able to
regulate the “I” in thoughts, actions and from worldly greed. With that, I learned to save money,
appreciate my parents, to understand the financial issues within the family and also to control
myself from throwing unnecessary tantrums.

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24th
Febuary 2014
Self-Concept
Self-concept can also be broken down to self-schema, self-efficacy and physiological influences. For the
first part, self-schema, we hold beliefs about our identity. For example, all this while I am alive, I have
always had the self-schema of myself being talkative and bubbly. I enjoy talking with people and I am
quite sociable among people as well. Sometimes people find me fun and energetic to be around with. At
the same time, I also hold a self-schema of myself as a handsome guy. I felt that most girls are attracted
to me and are shy to respond to my talkativeness. I could be wrong but this is what I have built up for
my self-efficacy. It could perhaps also be that the girls that I associated with are shy in nature and
doesn’t respond much in return. This factor could also be due to a certain degree of the parents raising
the child up and also the education system the child went through when they were younger and were
taught to listen attentively and respond with few words and answer straight to the point. Or another
theory I could say is that the girls that I associate with are careful and doesn’t share much with strangers
like me. Or they could have a schema that handsome guys like me are dangerous and cunning. Still with
all this happening, it doesn’t change my self-schema on how I view myself as a handsome guy.
Moving on to the second part, which is the self-efficacy. The self-efficacy is your belief in your own
ability to achieve a certain goal. For example, when I was younger, I have always thought of myself as
being a very and super brilliant guy. I had always thought that whatever hard questions in Chemistry and
Biology that was thrown to me, could be done if I studied hard enough. Albert Bandura (1977) explained
self-efficacy as high self-efficacy and low self-efficacy. Simply put it, people with high self-efficacy see
difficult task as challenges. In contrast, people with low self-efficacy see difficult task as something to be
avoided. From my past experiences, I had a high self-efficacy in solving the difficult Chemistry mystery
and studied really hard for it without giving up. I even went all the way for tuition classes to improve my

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understanding of Chemistry. At the same time, even though I had a high self-efficacy in studying
Chemistry, I never had the same for Biology. I had a low self-efficacy in studying biology. Biology never
interests me and is plain boring in my opinion. In my form 5 year, I dropped Biology subject as I view it
as difficult, hard to remember the facts, and plain boring. These examples would have demonstrated
both my high self-efficacy and low self-efficacy in performing a task.
Finally, the self-concept is also very much influenced by the physiological influences. For example I
remember once falling down in primary school and broke my left arm. After removing the cast or
bandage from my left arm after a month, I fell down that week and broke my left arm again. Because of
all the traumatized events that took place to my left arm, I have always felt that it was weaker than my
right arm. Because of these traumatizing experiences, it has very much influenced how I view my left
arm as a weak arm and not being able to perform as well as my right arm. Due to this very reason of
having my left arm broke twice, it has also influenced me by thinking that I am not as strong as most
guys that didn’t break their arm before would generally be. I could be wrong as well, perhaps I should
start lifting some weights and training my left arm to be as strong as it should.

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3rd
March 2014
Schema
Schema was explained as a mental framework on ones’ experiences. For example,
whenever you enter a male toilet, one will expect to see tissue papers, hand dryer, mirrors, sink,
urinal and so on. Last year around March the 20th
, I was in one of Melbourne’s restaurant. After
tasting and eating Kangaroo’s meat for the first time, I decided to go to the loo. I was in
complete shock as I entered the unisex toilet for the first time. Initially I was shocked as I saw
some women coming out of the toilet and also thought I was in the wrong toilet. At the same
time, not seeing any urinals makes me wonder even more. The worst thing I saw in the toilet was
a used condom. Anyways, seeing a female inside the toilet and no urinals around just challenge

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and pauses my mind for a moment. Because of this experience, I developed a new schema on
unisex toilets, which is rather unpleasant and uncomfortable at times. Another example would
be, whenever you hear the word “apple”, you might either be thinking about the apple company
that manufactured apple products or the real apple from the tree that is juicy and delicious. Mr
Shankar stated that schema could also be activated or triggered through smells, a person and so
on. For example, if you have a bad experience with a person before, whenever you see that
person, that person becomes a schema driven memory that triggers the anger in you. I have gone
through certain bad experiences working with some people which caused me to not wanting to
work with them in future projects. At the same time, during the time of working with my group
mates, some of them didn’t contribute much to the project. This resulted in me classifying and
branding them as lazy people. Therefore, whenever I have future projects, a schema driven
memory is triggered in me reminding me of my past experiences with the previous group mates,
resulting in me avoiding them as my group mates.
Besides that, whenever I walked in a KFC restaurant, it will remind me of my younger days
when I used to hang out with my uncle. It brings the happy memories and moments back to when
I was a young boy. Therefore what I learnt also is that schema can make one person feel a
positive and happy feeling.

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3rd
March 2014
Schema
Another good example of schema is stereotyping. These are all scenarios of schema
driven memories. From my understanding on schema, whatever that we experience in the past
will shape our schema about things. For example, after working with people that didn’t
contribute much to a project, I created a stereotype towards them as lazy people. I remember
working once with Egbert and Bryan Lum, the two 16 years old then. They were quite lazy in my
opinion and didn’t really contribute much other than complaining how “perfect” if should have
been. During meetings, they didn’t turn up or were talking to other people and playing with their
card of deck. In the beginning I was alright but it soon got to my nerves and I began to despise
their behavior. These resulted in me creating a schema on them by stereotyping them as
annoying and lazy.
On the other hand, schema is also known as a cognitive structure that is used to identify
and process information, it operates like a mental index file where each index card represents a
different category of information. For example, whenever I think of a car, things like steering
wheels, 2 or 4 doors, gear and so on comes to mind. That was the information that was stored in
my mind whenever I thought of a car. In the meantime, it may not necessarily be true, because
the formula 1 car does not comes with a door.

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Besides that, whenever I thought of hackers, an imaginary image of someone bypassing
through securities, stealing information, and all sort of things associated with bad and evil comes
to mind. Although, a hacker may not be necessarily be bad. This is because hacking itself is a
skill required by computer programmers.
I remember always having thoughts that a hacker could be hacking my computer whenever I
switched it on. When I was younger, malicious viruses and malwares are always bloating around
my parent’s computer. It frightens me to even touch the computer as I was afraid the viruses in
the computer would alter my parent’s working documents in the computer. This is because my
father has been scolding me for playing games in his computer and resulting in his computer not
working the way it was previously.

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1st
May 2014
Mental Representation
Mr Shankar started his topic on The Self: Who am I and how other individual sees me.
He first went about explaining the meaning of self-concept. Based on the lecturers’ definition of
self-concept, it is a mental representation or overall sense of “you” which includes the various
beliefs the individual hold about one self. It is also how an individual describe him or herself. To
add on, it may also be thought of as a collection of self-schema. Based from my understanding, if
a girl is constantly being praised as a pretty girl, soon enough she will develop a mental
representation and self-schema of herself as a pretty girl.
Mental representation is a subjective reality, an object or an event or a person is neutral, it
has no meaning, if you do a mental representation, the object has got a reality. This basically
means, through our experiences from accumulated events on a particular subject, will shape our
thinking and thoughts about that subject in the way it is to us. For example, because of my past

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experiences of using bottles for storing and drinking water whenever I am thirsty, my brain will
interpret a bottle of water as a thirst quencher. Another life example I experienced would be
because of my past experiences of being constantly canned when I was younger in Lick Hung
Chinese primary school, my brain will interpret that Lick Hung Chinese primary school as a
torturing and stressful place to study in. This also will lead me to not wanting to return to that
school as I have a negative mental representation of Lick Hung primary school. Besides that, I
remember once having forced to answer a mathematic question in front of the whole class. Being
a student with a bad grade in mathematics when I was younger, it was kind of like a life
threatening situation when I was forced to answer the question. This is because failing to answer
it correctly would mean having to face the stroke of the teacher and few more hours of extra
tuition classes. Therefore, I have built a mental representation of fear when being challenged to
do a mathematic question even till date.

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1st
May 2014
Mental Representation
I had always had a mental representation of myself as a smart guy, cheerful guy and a good
looking person. How did I get myself to think that I am smart? The reason could be because
many people like my relatives always say that I am a smart guy. Besides my relatives, my
mother’s friend will always say that I am smart looking person. At times, in school, my friends
will also say that I look smart. Maybe because I am wearing a spectacle and look a little nerdy
which resulted in people labelling me as smart?
On the other hand, I also had a mental representation of myself as a cheerful guy that could cheer
people’s day up. My mother used to say that I have a cheerful personality that could brighten up
the family’s day. Besides that, my good friend’s loves inviting me to gatherings and they always
praise me for being a cheerful person.
Moreover, I had a mental representation of myself being a good looking person. Ever since I was
young, my grandmother, my mother’s friend, my relatives, my school teachers and even some of
my friends used to say that I was good looking. Because of this very reason, I developed a
mental representation of myself as being a good looking person. This surely has also impacted
my self-esteem.

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1st
May 2014
Halo Effect
Beautiful people like movie stars can make a good impression rather quickly. It is also
followed by a positive qualities being attributed to them. For example, a movie star that is
beautiful is also viewed with other positive qualities being attributed to them like generous, a
great singer and so on which may or may not be true. In contrary, a rapist will be viewed and
attributed with negative qualities like pervert, mentally retarded and so on.
I would like to explore on the Halo Effect and how it might have affected me. The halo
effect is a cognitive bias that influences our view on someone and attributing other positive or
negative qualities with that individual. For example, whenever a pretty girl passes by my sight in
university, I attribute all sort of positive qualities on her like gentleness, compassionate, joyous
and so on. Also whenever I see a girl that dresses openly like wearing a low cut top, I will
attribute her with qualities like slutty, bitchy, mean girl, clubbing girl and so on. On the other

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hand, Halo effect also affected how I chose my friends. For example, when I first met Egbert, I
already had the impression and perception of him being childish, selfish, self-centered, attention
seeker and impatient. Therefore, I chose to avoid him at all cost. The friend that I chose to seek
out is someone that is respectful, caring and generally comfortable to be with.
The halo effect surely can affect the way we think whether or not we are aware of it. I
also remembered the days in high school when my friends labelled me as a rich kid just because I
looked smart, handsome and speak quite well. On the other hand, the halo effect also affected me
in areas like my grades in university. For example, because of Mr Joe’s perception of how
capable the girl’s groups were, he graded them with an A+ over my group’s work. Mr Joe is
acting on the halo effect he had upon the girl’s group as being more hardworking, dedicated and
committed. This brings about injustice and unfairness especially in the grading of project grades
by certain lecturers that tend to favor girls over boys. Because of this very reason, the halo effect
is also taking place in my mind on my views of Mr Joe as an unfair, bias, injustice and a pervert
lecturer.

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1st
May 2014
Halo Effect
I remember when I was younger, one my mother’s friend, Aunty Christine used to praise
me as a cute and good looking boy. She also associated and said that I am a talented smart boy
that could draw really well. Even though my drawings at that time could and may not even be as
good as the average kids. This is what we call the halo effect taking place either consciously or
unconsciously to my mother’s friend. Still, this could have been for the better. Because, the
praise that Aunty Christine gave me of being able to draw fairly well, has led me to improve
myself even further to impress them far greater. Moreover, Aunty Christine used to praise me as
being a smart boy too. When I was younger and back in primary school, I had always been the
boy with the lowest scores in most subjects in class. This reason may or may not be associated
with my IQ levels and intelligence, but more so to the language barrier I am facing in school.
Being a boy that was brought up in an English speaking home environment and sent to study in a
Chinese primary school will definitely hinder me from getting the best results among peers in my
class. But all in all, the point is that Aunty Christine praised me for being a talented smart boy
even though she didn’t know much about how I performed academically in school. Perhaps she
heard it through word of mouth from my mother or perhaps she just want to impress my mother
by praising her son. However due to the praise given by Aunty Christine, it kept a pressure on
me to perform greater and I had developed better drawing skills and become the Joshua today.
So I would say that the Halo Effect itself had impacted my life in one way or another.

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7th
May 2014
Confirmation Bias
Schema was explained as a mental framework on one’s experiences and consist certain
problem. We are going on discussing with the trouble regarding schemas, which is the confirmation bias.
The confirmation bias refers to the tendency to selectively search for and consider information that
confirms one’s belief. Like evolution, creationism and so on is a confirmation bias. For example, the
belief in millions of years which are presented in magazines, mass media, school’s textbooks may bring
up people with the mindset that the earth is really that old (which may or may not be true and couldn’t
yet be 100% proven) is an example of confirmation bias. I also hold up a confirmation bias by agreeing
to everything the bible states as a well-documented history. At the same time, I believe that God is real,
He exists and that He formed the earth and created every living thing. Therefore, even though the
newspaper, media, textbooks and many people have tried to convince me on the Darwin’s theory, I
rejected the idea and only believed in my beliefs. No matter how much “scientific” research and data

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that has tried to prove the non-existent of God, I still believe in the existence of God. By not accepting
other theories and beliefs, I definitely am practicing confirmation biasness.
Another good example would be the Hang Jebat, Hang Tuah and olden heroes which are taught
in schools to be local warriors. It is considered a confirmation bias because the historian in Malaysia had
no evidence and yet concluded that the warriors were local. However, according to written history, the
warriors came from China.
Confirmation bias is also shown within my family, for example, no matter what bad things my
older sister’s daughter (also known as my niece) does, my older sister will be defensive and protect her
daughter against any accusations. Whenever my niece does something wrong like drawing and coloring
the walls, sofa and my books, my older sister will defend her daughter stating that we siblings were the
same when we were younger. This clearly indicates confirmation bias as, even though knowing that
vandalizing property at home is a bad value, my older sister didn’t rectify and analyze the situation
clearly and went straight to siding with her daughter. In my opinion, this kind of confirmation biasness
can sometimes lead to further problems if not dealt with immediately. For example, whenever the child
does something wrong, the parent should take full responsibility and teach the child there and then on
the spot. This is because by doing as so, the child will learn his or her mistake and will grow up learning
to be responsible by not repeating the mistake like vandalizing or other inappropriate actions in future.

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7th
May 2014
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is always and constantly happening around us, sometimes I tend to act
and interpret information in a way that confirms only my beliefs. In family’s situation, schools
and politics it takes place. In Malaysia itself, it is already taking place.
I have the tendency to interpret that all China’s electronic gadgets are cheap, faulty at
some point and might even explode. Therefore, I only succumb to buy electronic gadgets coming
from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, United States and other countries other than from China. With this, I
had already practice confirmation bias. It is because of my interpretation of China’s electronic
gadgets as cheap and faulty that led me to not buy their products. However, it might not be true

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as most electronic gadgets itself are produced and manufactured in China and given a label by an
American company and so on.
There’s one popular phrase that goes like this, one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.
The point is that because of China’s reputation of producing fakes and incidents that took place
before like the explosion of phones, I had already took on a confirmation bias towards buying
phones from brands other than from China.