This document contains a student's journal entries for a Social Psychology class summarizing concepts discussed in lecture, including self-serving attribution, illusion of control, halo effect, stereotyping, and egoistic model of helping. The student relates personal experiences to illustrate how these psychological concepts apply in their own life and observations of others.

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT
NAME: LIM CHIN YI
STUDENT ID NO: 0315627
SUBJECT: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY [PSYC0103]
SESSION: MONDAY 8A.M - 11A.M
ASSIGNMENT: PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL
LECTURER: MR. T. SHANKAR
SUBMISSION DATE: 12th
MAY 2014

2. 14 April,2014
In the past weeks’ lecture, Mr. Shankar had discussed the concept of Self-Serving
Attribution with us. Self-serving attribution is the tendency of people to make attributions to
allow themselves to be at a better position in a situation. People tend to give credits to
themselves if the outcomes are positive, but they put the blames on external factors if the
outcomes are negative. I can relate this learning to my past experience which had happened not
too long ago.
In my first semester of Foundation in Natural and Built Environments, there was a
subject called Creative Thinking Skills. We were given various assignments to boost our
creativity and critical thinking skills. During that time, a lot of students including me were not
satisfied with the grades given by lecturer. When we got low assignment marks, we complained
about the lecturer being strict and picky while grading our assignments. In fact, most of us were
actually doing the assignments at last minute. Instead of making self-reflection, we blamed our
lecturer for giving us bad grades to put ourselves in a better light. Therefore, our behaviors could
be related to the concept of self-serving attribution that we learnt in Psychology class. Now, I felt
sorry for the lecturer and I would like to apologize to her.

3. 21 April, 2014
I remember Mr. Shankar taught us about the illusion of control in Social Psychology
Class last time. The illusion of control is the perception of people that uncontrollable events are
controllable in some way. They have the tendency to overestimate their ability to control the
events in their daily lives. I can somehow relate this concept to the people around me and myself.
Like most of the typical Chinese family, my family would buy lottery and 4-Digits
especially during a special occasion. For example, my father would buy the 4-Digits number of
his car plate during his birthday. Sometimes, I would join him and plead him to buy ‘1128’, the
month and date of my birthday, which I believed is my lucky number. We believed that the lucky
numbers will bring us luck and really influenced the outcomes causing us to win the prizes on
the special day. However, in fact, the 4-Digits numbers or lottery were just randomly picked by
machines and we could not be giving any effect on them.

4. 28 April, 2014
Mr.Shankar had discussed the Halo Effect with us in Chapter 4. The halo effect is a type
of cognitive bias in which one positive quality of a person will cause us to attribute other positive
qualities to him. When I heard of this concept in class, I was reminded of a friend instantly.
I have befriended this friend since I was in my elementary school. She likes listening to
k-pop music and she is a huge fan of Korean dramas. Due to her huge interests in Korean
entertainment, she began to favour everything that was related to Korea such as Korean cosmetic
products, electronics and Korean food. Since she favoured Korea very much, she unconsciously
perceived Korean as charming people. One positive quality led to other, she also tend to see all
Korean as polite, brilliant and responsible.
Hence, according to the concept of Halo effect, my friend’s overall impressions of
Korean had somehow influenced the way she thought about them. She was really surprised when
I told her about the Halo Effect because she herself did not notice about these all the way along
too.

5. 7 May, 2014
‘Stereotyping’, this concept has been mentioned a lot by Mr.Shankar in our Psychology
Class. Stereotyping basically means a general belief of a particular group of people. The belief
may not be accurate because there will be differences in each individual.
A few weeks ago, I was really surprised when a friend of mine told me that she classified
me as an extrovert. She then disagreed with my statement when I told her I am actually an
introvert. The reasons that she disagreed that I was an introvert were I did not seem to have the
characteristic of an introvert. In the opinion of my friend, I seemed to talked and made jokes a
lots. Here, my friend was having a stereotype that all introverts are quiet. In fact, like most of the
introverts, I enjoyed silence and found peace when being in my own world. I regained energy
that I lost while socializing through this. Although sometimes I could be quite talkative and
active too when I was with my friends. I did not fake these extrovert-like behaviours just to gain
more friends, I behaved like that because I simply just enjoyed the company of my friends.
Hence, her belief of introverts are always quiet may not be that accurate in this case.

6. 11 May,2014
In the journal, I would like to talk about egoistic model of helping, one of the
psychological concept in Chapter 8. Egoistic model of helping happens when a person helping
the others for their own benefits. The act of help is not motivated to increase the welfare of the
others. It usually happens for one’s self to obtain rewards, reputation or just to feel better. This
concept could be applied to me.
I was assigned a charity drive project in my Business course. In this project, our group
was required to raise RM3500 for Spastic Children's Association of Selangor & Federal
Territory. Therefore, last week, as a start up for my project, my group members and I went
around Taylor’s University selling roses to peoples for Mother’s Day. According to the egoistic
model of helping, we were not doing this solely for charity but our own welfare. We were raising
the fund in order for us to pass the assignments. Apart from that, some of our rose buyers were
applying egoistic model of helping too since they were donating the money to get the roses for
their mothers. However, their contributions were sincerely appreciated by us since the money
donated was still going to charity regardless of their motives.