Chong Chin Pin wrote a journal entry about optimism bias for a social psychology course. Optimism bias is when a person believes they will experience less negative events than others and that bad things will happen to other people, not them. For a class project, Chong was confident they could finish on time but ended up having to work through the night to complete it due to optimism bias causing them to neglect the importance of timely completion. On the day it was due, Chong was late to school after a car crash delayed their father who was driving them, as Chong's optimism bias led them to believe they would have enough time despite finishing late. Optimism bias can be good when based on positive attitudes but causes problems when stemming

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING & DESIGN
Foundation of nNatural Build Environment (FNBE)
Name: Chong Chin Pin
ID: 0319595
Group/ Session: Monday 2p.m. - 4p.m.
Subject and Course: Social Psychology (Foundation in Natural and Built Environment)
Submission Day: 27 April 2015

2. Journal 4
Date: 20 April 2015 -21 April 2015
Time: 6 p.m. of 20 April 2015- 11.45 p.m. of 21 April 2015
Theories or concepts: Optimism Bias
Life is full of possibilities. We can not predict what will happen for us after the next
minutes. We will hope that the good news will occur everyday on us. Then, we may think
that ourselves are special and we are lucky than others. We may think that bad things will
always happen to other people and we will experience the positive events in our life. All of
these show the optimistic bias. It is a cognitive bias that caused a person to believe that he
will experience less negative event compared to others. The true situation was not same
as the person’s expectations. The true situation might be worse than what the person
thought. Besides, I realised that when we continued to think to avoid the bad event, the
bad event will occur to us.
For our culture and civilisation course project two, students were required to
produce a six pages individual booklet with packaging. I was confident that I could
complete it on time. Then, I did my other subjects’ works first even though their submission
date was later then the booklet. The reason that I started late on my booklet because I
thought that it only required six pages and this was very easy to me. Therefore, I paid less
attention on it. My optimism bias caused me neglected the importance of complete works
on time which is works for today should be complete today. The affects of my negative
attitudes were I needed to sacrificed one sleepless night and the morning time to produce
the booklet.
After that, I needed to rush to the school and I hoped that there were nothing bad
occur on the way when I went to school. Unfortunately, I had met the worst thing that every
late students hate which crashed a car. Therefore, when I reached the school, I was
definitely late. That day, the driver was my father. I was late to school because I needed to
complete the project that I required to submit in the afternoon. Normally, I will drive to
school by myself. However, I was so tired so my father decided to drive me to the school. I
needed to enter my tutorial class at 12p.m. but I arrived at 12.30p.m. When I was trying to
complete my project in that day’s morning, I believed that I still have enough time for me to
go to school. The truth was I was too optimistic and the situation was different with what I

3. believed. I failed to complete the works in my expected time and I spent more time on it so
this caused me came out late to school.
In a nutshell, optimism bias is about the belief that our judgement or control is better
than the truth. Plus, it also mentioned that people will more likely to think that they have
the good luck and the others meet the negative effects. Sometimes, optimism bias may be
good because people should be live happily. However, if the optimism bias was occurred
based on negative attitudes, it will cause our things become worse.