This document contains four journal entries by a student discussing concepts from social psychology. The first entry describes the student's mother disapproving of her boyfriend due to his educational and employment background, showing stereotyping. The second discusses how the student overcame doubts to achieve academic success, demonstrating self-efficacy. The third describes a classmate who is favored by teachers due to her intelligence but has a poor attitude, showing the halo effect. The fourth acknowledges the student's tendency to blame others to preserve their self-esteem, known as self-serving biases.

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT
2013 JULY INTAKE
NAME: How Lee Jing
STUDENT ID NO: 0315669
GROUP AND SESSION: MONDAY (12PM-4PM)
SUBJECT: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY [PSYC0103]
ASSIGNMENT 1: INDIVIDUAL JOURNAL
SUBMISSION DATE: 12th
MAY 2014
LECTURER: T. SHANKAR

2. Concept: Stereotyping
Date: 10 March 2014
I have a boyfriend which my mum doesn’t admit my relationship with him that caused
me sad and deep in thought for a long time. There are some reasons that she doesn’t want to
accept him. First, he’s just a high school graduate student. Secondly, he is working as a sale
merchandiser at Carlsberg Company in Shah Alam. Everything happen must have a reason. He
didn’t further his study due to his poor family background and he works at there just want to
deepen his understanding of social phenomena and relationships, and broaden his outlook, but
my mom doesn’t think so. She thinks that he is poor so he can’t take care of me in the future.
He always dresses up quite messy so she thinks he is impolite and has a bad manner. She also
told me that selling beer is always have related to pub, bar, clubbing and something really bad,
so she suspected he is a bad guy and asked me not to be close to him too much. I felt so bad
when I heard what she said. I told her, it doesn’t mean you are poor now can’t change to
become rich in the future, you can’t judge a people personalities and attitudes from how the
way he dress, and also he is working in Carlsberg company it isn’t an illegal job, he just need to
send the stock to different shopping center and sign chop and just check is the stock has any
problem, THAT’S IT! I try to explain to her but she doesn’t want to listen at me and she just
asked me to listen at her cause she has more experienced than me. She asked me to approach
a rich guy which has a good education level and told me I deserve a good and better man. I felt
really bad when I heard what my mum said. In fact, he can further study but he is just want to

3. save the money for his sister. He chooses to work because he wants to help his family earn
more money to feed his family. Not everyone who put on untidily, no high education level,
work at Beer Company is a bad person. I know it is hard but I hope there is a day my mom can
change her thoughts.

4. Self-efficacy
Date: 19 March 2014
When I was a form 3 student, I always get scolded by teacher for not paying
attention and always sleep in the classroom. Because of that, I got very poor result and bad
class ranking. I felt really regret, hurt and sad at the time. Therefore, I promised myself I will get
a good result in my form 4. When I told my friend I wanted to get first they laughed and insult
at me and don’t believe that I can do it. I felt really frustrating but this has becomes one of my
motivations for getting the first. Before my form four life start, I tried to get some tuition and
read about some form 4 reference books. Not only that, I have also copy down some motivated
quotes on sticky paper and paste it on my wall. I believe myself that if I really work hard on it, I
can do it. Sometimes I feel so depress when I didn’t get the result what I want, but of course it
doesn’t block my ambition! Providence doesn't let down a man who does his best, I made it,
and I got the first in the class. My average result compare to the year before differs by 10! It
really surprised me and also surprised those people who don’t believe in me. Now, I can
achieve the goal I want when I wanted to do something seriously. ”Never give up, I can do it!”
has become my favorite phrase and I still practice it in my daily life.

5. The Halo Effect
Date: 5 April 2014
Sometimes it’s really pissing me off when teacher treat and evaluating a smart students as a
nice and well-behaved student before the teacher has really understand her/his personality. I
have a classmate who very smart in study but her attitude is like a bitch. She was an apple
polisher in front of teacher. She always acts like very concentrate and take active in part in the
classroom. That caused many teachers like her and believes in her. In fact, she will use the
power that teacher gave to commanded us to do things. If we don’t follow what she said, she
will complain it to the teacher. She is the smartest student in my class, so when we trying to ask
her to teach us the things we don’t understand, she will just ignores our questions. Her
selfishness attitude has piss off a lot of people. There are a lot of people disliking her but
teacher didn’t know that. I still remember that my Moral teacher has given her the highest
conduct assessment in my class, I really very angry about it. Why teacher always like smart
student and always disparage a bad result student? They should understand and communicate
more with students not only look at the surface of students.

6. Self-serving biases
Date: 10 April 2014
I am a person who has a very high self-esteem. Therefore, I will blame on others and don’t
want to admit that is my fault for my failure. In my high school life time, I will keep find many
excuse to cover my wrongs. This is bad I know, but when it’s really happened I will still make
the same old mistake. I was a cheerleading leader during my high school. When it comes to
group works, when I can’t finish it on time, I will blame my others group members for not giving
cooperation and blame them doing nothing, I finished everything by myself. Besides that, when
the performance went wrong, I will just scold them for not concentrate their mind and didn’t
practice hard. As a leader, I should have the responsible arrange the schedule nicely, finish it by
myself and also look after everything to ensure everything goes well, but when there was a
mistake, I will just pass the buck to others. On the country, if the performance went successfully,
I’ll treat it as my good leadership skill. Not only that, when my mum asked me why I get a suck
result, I always will point a finger at teacher for not teaching well. It should be my fault but I
will remove myself from responsibility. I hope I can change this bad behavior.

7. Concept : Social Learning
Date: 4 March 2014
I have 2 dogs in my house which breeds are Poodle and Shih Tzu. Shih Tzu was the later came to
my house. The Shih Tzu treats the Poodle like his brother. It is cute when we saw Shih Tzu will
keep observe and imitate and follow what the Poodle did.
What we have observed is the Poodle uses a lot of hard time to learn how to climb the stair but
the Shih Tzu just uses a short time. Perhaps it observes how the poodle climbs so its learning
ability is fast.
My sister has shared a photo through WhatsApp which two cute dogs sleep together on the
sofa. As you can see their sleeping position is the same and they sleep at the same place. Not
only human, animal also know about social learning. 
16 March 2014
There is boy gang in my FNBE group they will keep imitate Shaun’s catch phrase which is “Ni jiu
hao lo” which means so good. It is funny when I look at them they keep imitate each other
action and the pattern, tonality and the ways they speak.