Psycho journals

FNBE 02/14 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL JANICE LEE JUEN YUNG | 0318695
SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING & DESIGN
Foundation in Natural and Built Environments (FNBE)
Name : Janice Lee Juen Yung
Student ID No. : 0318695
Group/Session : Monday (4pm – 7pm)
Subject : Social Psychology
Intake : February 2014
Lecturer : Mr. Shankar Thiruchelvam

Journal 01 1st September 2014
Stereotype
Recently, illegal foreigners in Malaysia have drastically increased in numbers. Every
street in the Kuala Lumpur at least has a foreigner passing by or working. There are many
articles published about many crime cases committed by illegal foreigners. Cases such as raping,
stealing, robbing a bank and more are also committed by foreigners. I remember there was a case
where a 13 years old girl was raped and tortured by a group of foreigner. This causes the girl to
pass away. It gives me an uneasy feeling that I have to be more careful and take care of my
belonging wherever I go. Therefore, I have developed a stereotype that every illegal foreigner is
evil and have committed in many crime cases. When I was walking in SS15 today, I carelessly
dropped my pile of notes on the floor. Then, a foreigner who was passing by picked up the notes
and returned to me. I was surprised, I took my notes away at once and said thank you. He smiled
at me and walked away. Even though that guy is being generous and nice, I always think that he

is just doing this to snatch my bag away but he did not. I still feel uneasy and it is very hard to let
my guard down whenever I see a foreigner.

15th September 2014
Stereotype
Since young, I have developed a stereotype that all beautiful girls out there have a good
attitude. This is because I assume that God has given girls beautiful looks because their attitude
is positive and good. To me, it is like a reward to those girls out there from God. Therefore, I
have always envy of how beautiful they are and compare to them, I am not at all. I am ugly and
hot tempered. However I decided not to stereotype that all beautiful girls have good attitude
because an experience of mine had made me changed the way I look at them instead. The most
‘memorable’ customer of mine, Ashlop Chu who has an extremely beautiful looks. She replied
me very rudely when she was placing order with me. Also, she ask for 80% discount on the order
that she made because she assumed that she is popular and popular people should have more
discount than the others. Not to be forgotten, she even broke the necklace she bought from my
store and tries to ruin my business with my other customers! Nevertheless, because the truth can
never be hidden, she failed to ruin my business. Due to this experience of mine, she is my first
most hated customer ever and I hope that she will never place an order with me again! In the
start, I stereotype beautiful looking girls have beautiful and positive personality. Through this

incident, I decided not to stereotype them. Instead, there are beautiful looking girls with bad and
good personality too!

Journal 02 27th September 2014
Confirmation Bias
About three months ago, a café called H Café has opened near my housing area. It is a
very unique café because there are rabbits in this café and you are allowed to pet and feed them.
As a rabbit lover, I love the idea of H Café. In addition, it is near my housing area so I will make
more frequent visit to that café. Unfortunately, I did not visit the café at all because I have got no
time to visit it as there are many assignments that due every week. Even though I am busy, I
went online to search for the reviews of the café and see through some images of the café’s
interior. And the reviews online about this café were extremely good! For example, the food
there is cheap and delicious. However, when my brother told me his experience visiting this café,
it contradicted the positive reviews online. He said the food was extremely bad and overpriced.
The place was overrated by the online reviews. Plus, my brother told me the place where the
rabbits are, is dirty because they seldom clean the rabbit’s drop. I was taken aback by his words
but I did not listen to him. Today, I went to the café with my mother in the afternoon to check it
out. However, I felt the same as my brother and I did not like the place at all. Through this
experience, confirmation bias is shown through this experience of mine. I read the positive

reviews about this café and had the schema that this café is going to be great but it is not when I
try it out.

3rdOctober 2014
Confirmation Bias
Time management is very important to me because I have to manage my time within my
family, friends, assignments and my own small business. My sister once told me to stop my
business but I did not listen to her because I needed the profit to pay the materia ls needed for my
assignment. Also, I feel very embarrassed to ask extra pocket money from my parents just to buy
the materials needed for my assignment. Therefore, I had to continue my small business online. I
have received many customer orders and I have one particular one which I would like to share
my experience through this entry. The young lady who ordered accessories from me is very
beautiful and therefore I treated her well. I assumed that she is also very kind, nice and lovely
person because of her image on WhatsApp. I imagined all kind of stuff like her being all kind
and give extra tips or something. Apparently when I show my sister the image of this pretty lady,

she told me that girl is from her class and although she has a beautiful look, her attitude is a total
different thing – rude. I did not believe her and I told her that I think she is a very beautiful lady
with a kind heart. No matter how much she convinced me that she has a very poor attitude, I
ignored her. However, words that my sister told me are true. All reply from her to me is very
rude and even asked for a discount of 80%. However I still treated her well because customers
are always right even though she is rude. I realized that confirmation bias exist within me. I had
the schema that she is beautiful, therefore her attitude should be good but it was not what I
expected. She is extremely rude!

Journal 03 9th October 2014
False Consensus
Every Thursday is house cleaning day for my family and today is a sorrow day. I
volunteered to help my mother in her house chores because I have got no assignment that has to
hand in next week. Also, this will be my first time doing house chores in my life! Therefore she
asked if I can wipe the entire house’s windows and I don’t mind. All cloths are placed in my
store room’s first drawer and I take one of it to wipe the windows of the house. When I have
nearly done wiping the house’s windows, I rested and placed the cloth on the table for 5 minutes.
Immediately my mother scolded me because the cloth that is used to wipe the windows is the
cloth use to wipe the tables. She nagged me for using the wrong cloth! I was so pissed but after
15 minutes I was not angry because I totally forgot about her scolding me. After that, I
volunteered to wash the bathrooms in my house. When I was washing the toilet bowl, my mother
saw me using an old scrub which is used to wash the pots and pans. She screamed in anger and
started scolding me for using the wrong brush and she even scolded me stupid because I do not
know which is the proper cloth and proper brush! My mother threw the proper brush at me to

scrub the toilet bowl and after washing the bathrooms, I give a loud sigh. I will remind myself
not to volunteer to do house chores anymore even though I am free in the future. The false
consensus effect occurs when one estimates the commonness of one’s attitude. Therefore, this is
one example of false consensus effect where my mother thinks that I know which brush is used
to wash different objects just like how she knows.

16th October 2014
False Consensus
Every Wednesday morning, I have English class and the topic yesterday was about non
verbal communication. However, at the end of the lecture, she told us tomorrow there will be a
debate about the topic, it is better to study overseas than locally. And that is the end of the class
and she left all of us a blank mind. We did not have the time to ask her questions about the
debate tomorrow as she was rushing to a meeting that was going on. We do not know what we
are supposed to do and she did not send us any brief about the assignment she had just given to
us. On the next day, we came with all the information about the topic of debate that she had
given to us. However, we did not know how to debate and what is the proper way to debate,
therefore we had all our points on our power point slides. When my English lecturer saw the way
we debated, she literally flipped the chair beside her and scolded us like a mad cow. She said,
“You do not even know the basic knowledge of debating, even my 5 year old son knows about
it!” The false consensus effect is shown by my English lecturer. She thinks that the knowledge of
debating is known by her and she assumes it is common sense when it is actually not. She
estimates the commonness of one’s attitude.

Spot light effect
When Mr Shankar explained to us about the spotlight effect about a month ago, the first
thing I think of is my former high school teacher, Miss Pam. She taught me Accounting when I
was 17 in high school and she is a very hot tempered woman, not to be forgotten, the way she
taught us was extremely boring. One day, when Miss Pam was teaching us, she got annoyed
because my classmates were not listening at all, instead they were talking aloud. She decided to
keep quiet for 10 minutes and stared angrily at each of us in the class. Yet, no one realize she
was staring because we were busy talking to each other. When she realize that we were not
listening, she got angry and threw the pen she was holding across the classroom. This caught our
attention and we looked at her. Then, we realize that Miss Pam was angry due to our bad
behavior. My classmates remained silent after that and she was scolding us like a mad cow. This
spotlight effect phenomenon is shown by Miss Pam. The tendency to think that more people
notice something about you than they do.

29th October 2014
Spotlight effect
During the first semester in my college life, I met a girl and her name is Daisy. She
slowly became my good friend and we literally laugh at everything. Then, in an assignment, we
were assigned into random groups and it was me, Daisy, and a guy name Li. Daisy and I dislike
Li because he is very lazy and always complaining about the assignment being not ‘architecture’
enough. We got annoyed and after that assignment, we never want to be in the same group as
him again. Few months later, he has no group for a new assignment and he asked our permission
to allow him to join our group. However, Daisy showed all kind of faces and said something
sarcastically about his attitude which indirectly saying no. What is worse, Li does not understand
what she is trying to say, he assumed Daisy and I allowed him to enter our group. Then, he wrote
his name in the group assignment paper list. After Daisy knew Li did not understand, she started
the silent treatment on him. Yet, he does not understand what message Daisy is trying convey to
him. Through this experience of mine, Daisy wants the spotlight effect and wish Li knew that
Daisy does not want him to be in our group.

Halo Effect
Today is a wonderful day as my crush decided to take the first action and invited me to be
his lunch date this afternoon. Immediately, I agreed and I went to the restaurant with him. We ate
our campus food court and we ordered Korean food. Surprisingly, the chef of this Korean food
store was his uncle’s friend. They had a little chat with each other. My crush told me the chef of
this store is a very gentleman and helps my crush a lot during his hard times. After that, we took
our food and sat down near the lakeside to enjoy our food. As he was enjoying his food, he was
complimenting about how tasty his Bibimbap was. He said it was too delicious that he could eat
8 bowls of Bibimbap because it was cooked by his uncle’s friend. Not to be forgotten, he
assumed that all food sold in the store were extremely great because it was cooked by his uncle’s
friend. However, the kimchi stew I ordered was extremely horrible. It was tasteless, watery and
the vegetables in it were not fresh. The halo effect is shown by my crush through this experience
of mine. This is because halo effect is a cognitive bias in which an observer’s overall impression
of a person influences the observer’s feelings and thoughts about that entity’s characters or
properties. In this case, my crush is influenced by his uncle’s friend and because he is a good

guy, my crush assumed that he cooks very well and the food he cooked is extremely great but in
reality, it is not.

4th November 2014
Halo effect
In year 2007, my parents got an Ipod touch for my eldest brother’s 18th birthday. He is
extremely in love with his Ipod and brought it with him everywhere. After 4 years, he is now
working, he got himself the latest MacBook Air for studying purposes. Before getting himself
MacBook Air, he argued with my dad about the choice of laptop he wants. My dad thought a
Fujitsu will be better than Apple because it is made in Japan and the price is reasonable, whereas
the Apple MacBook Air is expensive and it is very different from the Window’s laptop. Few
days ago, my brother changed his iPhone 5s to iPhone 6 Plus. I remembered last year when I just
got my Samsung Note 3, he was saying that it is a bad phone and it will never be as good as
Apple. He did not touch or play my phone at all because he thinks that my phone is very big and
complicated to use but in reality, it is actually not. This shows halo effect as my brother had a
favorable experience with the brand Apple, he does not want to switch to other brands or try
other brand’s stuff. Also, the price of all Apple gadgets are increasing drastically, as customers
who had a great experience with the product, would most probably buy another new product

simply because it is made by the same company. In this case, my brother had a great experience
with the iPod, therefore he got himself a MacBook and now an iPhone 6 Plus because it is made
by Apple Inc..

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