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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILT ENVIROMENT (FNBE)
AUGUST 2014 INTAKE
Chong Kit Yee
0319748
0900-1100 Monday
Social Psychology [PSYC0103]
27th
April 2015

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Journal 1
Social Psychology
Entry 01: Social Facilitation
Social Facilitation can be defined as the tendency for a person to do better when there is a
presence of others or in a group task. Social facilitation also is the idea that you will likely do
better when other people are watching you but you would tend to do less well when you
are alone. For example, a cyclist tend to cycle faster in a competition rather than he is alone
because there are people competing with him.
In my own experience, my family was very emphasis in education. Relatives or maybe we
ourselves will compare the results of education especially in primary and secondary school.
Once you get bad results you will be scolded or even contempt by other relatives. So under
this situation, we were competing with one and another. In this kind of grouping I’ll tend to
work hard and achieve my own target rather than just being less efficiency. I’ll keep on
study and also do more worksheet to make myself better than my other cousins. This shows
the social facilitation in myself, performed better when competing in a group or the
presence of others.

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Journal 1
Social Psychology
Entry 02: Social Loafing
Social loafing describes the tendency of individuals to put forth less effort when they are
part of a group. Because all members of the group are pooling their effort to achieve a
common goal, each member of the group contributes less than they would if they were
individually responsible. In an easier way, social loafing refers to the concept that people are
prone to exert less effort on a task if they are in a group versus when they work alone.
This was the worst experience I ever had, for the first project of Creative Thinking Skills we
had to group ourselves in ten and each of us had to produce a daily object musical
instruments to play together. A few of our group member, they just kept changing their
instruments and always late or even absent for meetings. Every week before the
performance we will meet up once and practice all the songs. They were just slacking,
ignoring the leader or even leaving without telling us. Few hours before the performance,
we only knew what their instrument were and had a full rehearsal. To me, social loafing
conquer when you are doing individual task but not in group task.

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Journal 2
The self
Entry 01: Motivation (Intrinsic and Extrinsic)
A motive is an impulse that causes a person to act. Motivation is an internal process that
makes a person move toward or achieve a goal. Motivation, like intelligence, can’t be
directly observed. Instead, motivation can only be inferred by noting a person’s behaviour.
There is two kind of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. Sometimes people are motivated
when they have satisfied internal needs. Intrinsic people did something for self- fulfilling.
However, sometime people aren’t motivated by internal needs. For example, people
sometime eat even they don’t feel hungry.
Through my own experience and also observation, when I went for my guitar camp I met a
guy who had played guitar for ten years. He started since he was 8 years old. I was
impressed by him I thought he really love guitar so much but actually not. He was forced by
his parents, they told him “after you finished learning guitar I’ll let you learn whatever you
want.” This is the extrinsic motivation that his parent gave to him. When he was playing,
there were no soul in it. He just follow the music notes and without rhythm. To me, I was
really enjoying in the song feeling the rhythm. Every time I finished a song smoothly I felt
satisfied but when it was bad I’ll keep on practise until it was perfect. This is the self-
satisfying for intrinsic motivation.

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Journal 2
The self
Entry 02: Self-serving biases
The common human tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal characteristics, and
one’s failures to factors beyond one’s control. The reason people tend to personalize
success is because it helps their self-esteemlevels. Most people demonstrate this behaviour
on a regular basis. It is also human nature to avoid responsibility entirely for mistakes or
problems to make ourselves feel better. For example, a basketball player make a throw and
manages to make a basket during the last few seconds. He attributes this to his skill.
A story that happened one year ago, at my age of 17 when I was learning how to drive. It
was smooth when I was learning practical. Even my tutor said I was good enough to face the
exam and just have to relax and not to panic. However, on the exam day I failed. I was using
different car for the entire exam so at the first stage up to hill I already failed. Until I went
back home, my parents scolded me and I kept on giving excuses like the car’s clutch was
hard, totally different from what I drove during practical. This cognitive bias allows me to
protect my self-esteemand absolve themselves from personal responsibility by blaming
outside forces for failures and absolve themselves from personal responsibility.

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Journal 3
Social Cognition
Entry 01: Self- fulfilling Prophecy
A sociologist named Robert K. Merton created self- fulfilling prophecy in 1948 to describe 'a
false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the originally false
conception come true.' In other words, the prediction we make at the start of something
affects our behaviour in such a way that we make that prediction happen. For instance,
when teachers treat middle-class students as if they will do better than lower-class
students, the middle-class students tend to perform better and achieve more than they
otherwise would.
Have you ever think or believed that you wouldn’t be good before started a new job or
given task? I do tried this before in my secondary school. In the last year of my secondary
school life, I was the president of Chinese Society. Before that, I’m not a very active and old
member of the society. I don’t understand why my seniors chose me to handle this great
responsibility. At first, I thought I won’t do it well because I didn’t know much about the
society so I just did all the job by slacking and started to shirk my job to others committee.
Due to my self-fulfilling prophecy, the first event of our society was ruined. All of the
committee and I were being scolded by the teacher in charge. A negative self-fulfilling
prophecy will established a bad schema to others and also affect yourself. While a positive
self-fulfilling keep motivates you.

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Journal 3
Social Cognition
Entry 02: Stereotyping
Stereotypes are beliefs about people based on their membership in a particular group.
Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral. Stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or
occupation are common in many societies. Stereotype cause you assume that all member in
a group share the common features. For example, people may stereotype women as
shopaholic, love to cook so on and so forth.
In Malaysia there’s a common stereotype which is racial stereotype. One day, I happened an
accident in Sunway area. This happened because of the Indian driver did an illegal U-turn
and hit my car. Once I saw he was an Indian my brain told me he must be a gangster or
maybe a bad guy. Which my stereotype occurs. When he offered me to go to his workshop I
was afraid of it and I just exchange my phone number with him. After I backed home, my
mother was mumbling if this number was fake or get cheated how can I find him and get
reparation from him. (Racial stereotype occurs again)
The day after, the Indian call me how can he paid the reparation fees to me I was shocked. I
thought he would just hit and run. At last, he paid the exact amount of my reparation fees.
This stereotypes always seemto favour the race of the holder and belittle other races. It is
probably true to say that every ethnic group has racial stereotypes of other groups.
However, is not eventually all the member of a group share the common characteristic.

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Journal 4
Social Perception
Entry 01: The Halo Effect
The halo effect is a type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person
influences how we feel and think about his or her character. Essentially, your overall
impression of a person ("He is nice!") impacts your evaluations of that person's specific
traits ("He is also smart!"). This effect causes people to be biased in their judgments by
transferring their feelings about one attribute of something to other, unrelated, attributes.
For example, our overall impressions to a celebrity is attractive, likeable and successful. So
we also tend to see them as intelligent, friendly and so on.
As you read above, the halo effect can influence how teachers treat students, but it can also
impact how students perceive teachers. In one study, researchers found that when an
instructor was viewed as warm and friendly, students also rated him as more attractive,
appealing, and likeable. As my experience, I’m one of the talkative students in my class and
always skip classes. However, when I was in mathematics class I was silent and focus on
what teacher teaching. In this case, my mathematics teacher thought I was clever and
created a good impressions of me. This is one of the Halo Effect occurs in my experience.

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Journal 4
Social Perception
Entry 02: Confirmation Bias
A confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favouring information that
confirms previously existing beliefs or biases. We will actively seek out data that support our
belief even in the face of contradictory data. For example, people who support or oppose a
particular issue will not only seek information that supports their beliefs, they will also
interpret news stories in a way that upholds their existing ideas and remember things in a
way that also reinforces these attitudes.
I was opposed to homosexual marriage, and would like to stop being close to someone who
was homosexual. I firmly belief that god created men and women is to get marry and breed
for the next generation. While homosexual was totally against of god’s guidance. I
specifically think sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex as among the
forbidden acts. A boy or girl who discovers homosexual feelings should realize that, like
other interests and feelings, it may be only a passing phase that will fade away in time.
Meanwhile, he or she should avoid becoming obsessed with the feelings or indulging in any
kind of sexual activity.
But in this era, homosexual was slowly being accepted in some country and homosexual
marriage was allowed in America. I think I would be this confirmation bias victim for my
entire life because to me homosexual marriage was still against the god’s guidance and the
natural phenomena.

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Journal 5
Attitudes
Entry 01: Observational Learning
Observational learning is sometimes also referred to as shaping, modelling, and vicarious
reinforcement. While it can take place at any point in life, it tends to be the most common
during childhood as children learn from the authority figures and peers in their lives. It also
plays an important role in the socialization process, as children learn how to behave and
respond to others by observing how their parents and other caregivers interact with each
other and with other people. For example, a group of children play hide and seek but one
child has never played before and is not sure what to do. After observing the other children
play, she quickly learns the basic rules of the game and joins in.
As we always said “Like father like son.” Most of the children learnt their attitude and also
behaviour from their parents. During my part time job, I as a primary students’ tuition
teacher, one of my student was eventually same as his father. His father was a business man
so was very polite and humble in any way. As to his son, every time he saw me he must
greet me and also when I praised his results were good he would be very humble like his
father. Even their accent, behaviour, attitude were same. I think this is because of my
students admire of his father and want to be like him. That’s why observational learning
occurs.

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Journal 5
Attitudes
Entry 02: Operant conditioning
Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments
for behaviour. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behaviour
and a consequence for that behaviour. In a simplest way, operant conditioning is using
reinforcement or punishment to strengthen or weaken a particular behaviour. For example,
a child may be told they will lose recess privileges if they talk out of turn in class. This
potential for punishment may lead to a decrease in disruptive behaviours.
I remember when I was young my mother wanted me to learnt mental arithmetic. I would
need to memorise the whole multiplication table (1*1 =1, 1*2=2….) to carry on the next
level. So my mother ordered me to memorise each of it and recited in front of her. Once I
had wrong I had to redo again and also copy the whole multiplication table. I’m afraid of
doing again so every time before I recited I would learn by heart. This is because of operant
conditioning, learning through punishments that I afraid of.