This document summarizes notes from three classes in a Social Psychology module. The first class introduced the module topics and included an in-class experiment to measure shyness levels. The student scored moderately shy. The second class discussed self-knowledge and how external influences can impact self-explanations. The third class covered the effect of color on perception and mood, noting that red increases arousal and attention. The student found insights applicable to their architecture studies.

1. FNBE0413
CheahTeck Wei 0315215
PSYC0103
1st OCT 2013
It was the first class for my Social Psychology (PSYC0103) module and I’ve got to
know my lecturer of this module which is Ms Pang Chia Yee. As it was our first class, she
briefly explained to us about what is this module about, the assignments and quizzes.
Through her concise and clear briefing, I could understand and keep in mind that what would
happen and I would learn throughout the module, how the quizzes would be taken and so on.
After that, we had a short lecture and there’s an interesting thing – a class experiment!
Ms Pang gave us a very famous experiment which is “The Shyness Scale” by Cheek
& Buss, 1981 which was to test our level of shyness. The experiment was carried out by each
of us answering a couple of questions with multiple choices which has a score of 0-4. Each
question has to be answered from your mind without deceiving. After answering all the
questions, we’ll have to reverse all the score we had, as example, 0 will be equal to 4, 1 will
be equal to 3 and so follow by others. Then, we’ll sum up the scores and find out the shyness
level of ourselves. As if your score is lesser than 8, that means you are less shy than others; in
another way round, if your score is higher than 20, you are more shy than others. I’ve got a
score of 16 which indicates that I’m moderately shy. As we were curious about why reversing
our scores, Ms Pang told us that most of the time we thought ourselves was right, but actually
we’re wrong. I am quite satisfied with the result I have because I think it was right.
This module was really interesting for me, I like and wanted to observe and explore more
about Social Psychology, and also what I am.
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2. FNBE0413
CheahTeck Wei 0315215
PSYC0103
8th OCT 2013
In today’s class, there is a topic that gave me a huge resonance about our act in daily
life which it did happened. Thetopic was “Self-Knowledge” as known as “Know Thyself”
which is knowing ourselves. To get to know ourselves, firstly is explaining our behaviour
such as why did we choose Taylor’s University, why did you fall in love with that special
someone and so on. But then, actually most of our self-explanations were wrong as we’re
often being influenced by other people or media. For example, why am I choosing Taylor’s to
pursue my study? Honestly the first reason that I had chosen Taylor’s was because of its fame
as people told me that architecture in Taylor’s were good, and also the environment of
Taylor’s. So, my decision was actually influenced by other factors. Then, we predict our
behaviours. There’s a research which carried out by University of Waterloo students which is
predicting whether their roommates’ romance will survive. They actually got a conclusion
which is “If you are in love and want to know whether it will last, don’t listen to your heart,
ask your roommate.” Why? This is similar to a quote “Love is blind”, when we are in love,
our mind were affected by the love and happiness we’re having with our couple hence
causing us neglecting some negative parts in the relationship; in another way round, our
roommate (or another else) were not in the relationship so that they could look into the matter
in a more calm and logical way, pointing out what may be wrong.
Besides that, we’re also always overestimating things, a very clear example of mine
was, I always thought that the project could be done in a week, but when I started doing it, it
often cost me more than a week.Lastly, it was predicting our feelings. As we know that the
word “predicting” means “we think that”, which is an unconfirmed fact. This prediction
could lead to many of our life’s decision as that was how we chosen to be. For example, you
predict that the food of a restaurant you never tried before whether it’s delicious or not before
you try it, as if you predict that it would not be delicious you would not even try it.
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3. FNBE0413
CheahTeck Wei 0315215
PSYC0103
12th NOV 2013
The main topic of today’s class is about “Visuals”, which is a topic which is a little bit
less related to social psychology. But still, it’s a very interesting topic to learn. Starting with a
short introduction to structure of our human eyes, and proceeding to our main topic – The
effect of colour and The Visual System, Perceptual Process. I’ve got more interest on the
effect of colour as it could help me in my architecture course as well where the usage of
colours in a drawing is important to create attention and so on. In this topic, I’ve known that
colour is not only red, white, blue, black, green and etcetera; they are also feelings and moods.
From the results of experiment from University of Illinois, every colour brings a feeling such
as “Black and Grey are bad; White, Blue and Green are good; Yellow, White and Grey are
weak; Red and Black are strong; Black and Grey are passive; last but not least Red is active.”
I have strong agreement of the result of this experiment especially on the result of Red
colour which is strong and active. This is because in a picture with items with different colour,
I tend to focus on the item in red more compared to other items in different colour. Besides,
red colour is also believed that it could raise the arousal and brain activity such as a food in
red or full of colours is way more attractive than a food in black or other colour in dim.
Moreover, the common game among us, which is the dart game also practices the same
concept which is the bull’s eye (which is the central point) is red in colour where people tend
to focus on it more. In addition, I had also heard that a bedroom should not be painted in red,
this is also because of the theory I had learnt earlier that red colour increases the arousal and
brain activity as known as making you active and causing insomnia.
In this class I have found out that many things that I didn’t notice in my daily life is so
close to visual concepts, besides increasing my knowledge I had also learnt some additional
skills to apply on my drawings while taking my architecture studies.
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