This document contains notes from several lectures on topics in social psychology, including self-concept, intuition, and vision. For self-concept, it discusses how people define themselves, self-knowledge, and self-serving bias. It also covers positive thinking exercises. For intuition, it discusses controlled vs automatic thinking, schemas, memory, and how attitudes can change. For vision, it outlines the structure of the eye, effects of color, and visual illusions.

1. NAME: PARHAM FARHADPOOR
STUDENT ID: 0313698
SUBJECT: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURER: MS. PANG CHIA YEE
COURSE: FNBE APRIL 2013 INTAKE

2. Journal: Self-Concept
One of the basic but very important topics in social psychology is Self-Concept. This
topichelps us to know ourselves better than before. People have different definitions about
themself that presents their life, these specific beliefs that defines a people by themselves are
their self-schemes. Actually there are two types of personalities, one of them describes its
social identity and the other one gives information about its personal traits. For example,
during social psychology class, we had an activity to define our self by I am… and I defined
myself by my identities such as my name and the country that I come from which puts me in
the first group.
Self- concept contains many important steps and one of them is self- knowledge which means
understanding of oneself or one's own motives or character and includes explaining our
behaviour, predicting our behaviour, and predicting our feelings. For instance the reason I
chose Taylor’s university is how I explain my behaviour, deciding to reach university on time
is how I predict my behaviour, and thinking and thinking about what will happen during
social psychology is how I predict my feelings.
Then we’ve learnt about self-serving bias which is the other important part in self-concept
and it means the tendency to perceive oneself favourably, for example many studies have
found that people accept credit when told they have succeeded.This bias divides to two
versions, marital version of self-serving bias and martial version of self-serving bias.
The propensity to underestimate is the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or
successful behaviours is known as false uniqueness effect. For example during class, we had
an example like the people who use weed but use seat belt as well. So I was thinking to
myself that these people knows that seat belt is for safety but they don’t know how worse
could smoking weed be, then I realized that these kind of things happen in everyone life but
we may not realize them.
We also had an activity about the powers of positive thinking, the lecturer asked us to close
our eyes and think of someone you know or admire who is very happy, then vividly imagine
them standing in front of us. Notice what they are wearing, how they are standing, where they
are looking and what they are doing. And told us ‘’now imagine them turning around so you
are behind them, and now imagine stepping into that person, so that you see through their
eyes, and actually physically copy their posture now. Stand as they stand, breathe as they
breathe and experience their feelings.Notice where the good feelings are strongest in your
body and spread those feelings all around – up to the top of your head and down to the tip of
your toes’’. At the end I really felt good and I realized how powerful positive thinking could
be.
The last topic that we’ve learnt about self-conceptwas self-efficiency which is defined as
anoptimistic belief in our own competence and effectiveness pays dividends.People with
strong feelings of self-efficacy are more persistent, less anxious, and less depressed and they
also live healthier lives and are more academically successful.The good example given about

3. this topic was,imagining a person may feel like an effective driver (high self-efficacy), yet
feel endangered by drunken drivers (low control) which I think it’s true about everyone.

4. Journal: The Powers and Perils of Intuition
We are full of thinking in our daily life and it’s not even comparable to our expressions like
what do we say or what do we act. The topic that we’ve learnt about the powers and perils of
intuitionour thinking is partly controlled and partly automatic. Sometimes individuals stop
and think deeply about themselves, others and society, like the time that I chose Taylor’s
university to study. This kind of thinking is known as controlled processing, defined as
thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful. But sometimes our actions can
become increasingly automatic, so they manner in how we think, for example sometimes that
I’m angry I just argue with people for no reason. The more practice individuals have in
thinking in a specific way, the more automatic that kind of thinking becomes, to the point
where we can do it unconsciously, without any effort.
The schemas of automatic thinking is mental concepts that intuitively guide our perception
and interpretations and the emotional reaction happened before there is time to deliberate
thinking.For example when a car is coming towards me, the thought is ‘I am in danger’ and I
feel fear and anxiety.
One of the most important factors that affects our thinking is our memory. Memories are not
exact copies of experience that remain on deposit in a memory bank. For example the
memories that I have from my childhood are not as exact as what happened in my life. So this
may cause changing people attitudes and People whose attitudes have changed often insist
that they have always felt much as they now feel. For instance when I was child I didn’t care
about my country as much as I care now.
At the end we had an activity during the class, so we stood in a circle and the lecturer asked
us to choose one of our classmates and tell about how we thought about them from the first
sight and what do we think about them. So personally the attitudes about some of my
classmates has change and for some not which means that attitudes may change by time to
time.

5. Journal: Vision
Vision is faculty or state of being able to see and of course it enact an important role in social
psychology. This was one of the topics that we have learnt about in one of the lecture. At first
we understood about light and what makes it visible and also the structure of the eye, for
instance pupil is an adjustable opening in the eye; widens and narrows to control the amount
of light entering the eye.
Nobody could deny that colours are the most important sector in vision, so during the class
we’ve also learnt about the effect of colour and psychology of colours and the lecturer told us
about the best colours to use for specific purposes. For example using blue colour for offices
because it’s a productive colour and that’s why most of the lecture theatres in our university
are in blue colour. Beside that we predict people’s feelings by the colour of their clothes and
if someone wears black colour we consider that person emo. I’m one the persons that wear
dark colours a lot but I wear coloury clothes as well and I don’t think that I’m an emo person.
Visual system is the sensory system for vision. This part of the lecture was the most
interesting for all students, and, we have seen many photos such as a drawing that you could
see rabbit and a duck in a same picture known as reversible figures. We also have seen some
visual illusions and everyone was wondering. At the end I felt this topic was very interesting
to me and I’ve learnt about how knowing about vision can help me in the future either
business or architecture.