The document discusses the concept of first impressions and how people tend to quickly judge others based on appearance. The author provides an example from their life where they initially formed a positive first impression of their archery manager based on his polite demeanor and commitment to the sport. However, over time the manager began to show his "true colors" and the author heard complaints about him from other teammates. The author believes first impressions are an innate human trait but that judgments could potentially be wrong and it is important to get to know someone more fully over time.

1. Journal 1 – Social psychology 20th November 2015
concept : Social Facilitation
In year 1898, Norman Triplett undertakes the study on the performance of cyclists.
The research proves that the cyclists performed better with the presence of other
competitors rather than racing alone against the clock, and this is basically what social
facilitation means. Human being performs much way better when others is presence, due to
the fact that human tends to get motivated or challenged to be the best or to create a good
impression on others. I am sure that somewhere in my life I had included social facilitation on
certain situations to achieve a specific goal.
Throughout my whole life of living, I can say that social facilitation has been around in
my daily life since the day that I joined the archery sport club. Social facilitation is usually
applied in my life when I step into my training field or tournaments. Since young I was always
the best for my age group, it is obvious and clear that everyone was jealous and they would
train harder than ever to beat me in every upcoming tourneys. Even the parents were
pressuring them to do better. I was a national athlete before entering my university life. Back
then whenever I step into the archery field the pressure kicks in and everyone would try to
strive for a better performance, so that each of us can earn the spot to be in the so called
“Olympic Team”.
Backwhen I was still competing, I would normally do better in team events rather than
solo events, this corresponds with Mr. Tripplet’s research whereby a cyclist would perform
better during group races. Other than that, I was never a fan of shooting alone during practice

2. and this had always been my weakness in this sport, because I’m not able to give my full
concentration and my shots would be well below par. I always shoot better in tournaments
due to the pressure or the term social facilitation, it may seem unusual but I guess that is just
my human nature.
In a nutshell, I am glad that I can benefit from social facilitation during my upcoming
tournaments and also be applied to my daily life. Hoping that with this I am able to get better
results when I am under pressure or in charge.

3. Journal 2 – The Self 20th November 2015
Concept : Self Verification Theory
Perceiving others that what we think of ourselves is a thing that most people would
do. As what Sally Field stated, “It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone
else’s eyes.” It is without a doubt realizing that many individuals are living with the self-
verification theory, people tend to perceive others to see them as what they want others to
see themselves. The best way to prove that this self-verification theory is when people tries
to change the way they look or act by doing things such as being nice or polite in the eyes of
the people surrounding them. Other than that, those individuals that has negative self-
concept will only put them down and cause them to get depressed or lack of ability to accept
criticism from others and etcetera.
Sometimes I myself uses the self-verification theory. Usually I perceive myself as a
happy go lucky person who is always free and easy, and even the truth is deep down inside I
am feeling blue. I just hate it when people around me realizes that I am not in a good mood,
just because of that I am afraid that I will catch their attention and they’ll be throwing
questions at me. This is simply because I like to keep things to myself, and opening up can
somehow be difficult for me because the reality that I have trust issues. I will only tell my
private stuffs to people that I am really close with. Being able to perceive other people on
how I want them to be are very beneficial in such way. There was once during this archery
tournament that I had joined few years ago when I was still a state player, I was not really

4. feeling confident due to the performance on my archery results that I had made the day
before due to lack of practice before joining the tournament which is also my own fault. As a
result of the performance I had made the day before, the team spirit suddenly just declined
remarkably. Everyone in the team including my Team Event teammates confidence is close to
zero. As the alpha in the team, I had to perceive them that I was feeling better than ever. I
tried my best to cheer them up the whole morning before the tournament starts just to keep
them going strong and trust that everything will be alright. Guess what the trick that I did was
working, everyone was laughing, cheering for each other and most important is that they are
confident. At the end of the day, my “team event” team won the first prize and we went on
the podium carrying the Sabah Flag. One of the best time of my life because my little brother
was there with me on the podium receiving medals and we even got on the sports page of
the newspaper the next morning.
All in all, the self-verification theory can be good and bad in many ways. This theory
will always be applicable in my life. Even though it has its pros and cons, I am still going to
continue using it but in a good manners so that it can benefit everyone around me.

5. Journal 3 – Social Cognition 25th November 2015
Entry 1 : The Optimistic Bias
It is obviously a human nature to most people that are optimistically bias that they will
always convince themselves that they are less likely to get in trouble when what they are
actually experiencing is the absolute opposite. Proven by Noreena Hertz, stating that “All of
us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything
that agrees with the outcome we want.” Some examples that I can provide an understanding
about optimistic bias is that when people who are heavy smokers that smokes two to three
packs of cigarettes a day for a long period of time has the same percentage of getting cancer
is the same as those that is considered as social smokers or the chances of getting involve in
a car accidents is lower compared to motorcycle. Particular outcome from these two events
are positive events usually lead to happiness and the negative events causing them to not
take precaution.
There is this event in my life that I can relate with this theory that is the optimistic bias
theory, and I hope that it would not repeat again in the future. This happened when I was still
in high school where I had joined the MSSM (Majlis Sukan Sekolah Malaysia) competition
when I was in form 4. I did very well the year before by winning six gold medals out of eight
for the under 15 category. During the first few days of the competition, everything was going
as planned. I got first placing for every event that was available for my category and
unfortunately a silver for my team ranking. After getting the team ranking result on the

6. second last day of the tourney, the following day would be the ”Team Event” where three
archers from every state will be competing against three archers from another state’s team.
The next morning came and papers were posted on the notification board, managers would
be scouting for the next opposing team that their state will be facing on the 1st round of the
Team Event and archers would continue their warm ups on the warm up area.
That morning warm up session was my worst session ever, it was 30 minutes before
the first round of the event when my bow had a big problem. I broke my lower limb of the
bow, it happened because I never checked my equipment and worst comes to worst I never
had a spare limb. Believing that my equipment will never get this type of error. I was having
a panic attack for a moment but I was entertained by the way that my coach reacted, he went
crazy for a while, running here and there looking for the bow dealer to buy me a new pair of
limbs. He actually managed to get a new pair of limbs for me. After a few rounds of exciting
shoot offs, we managed to steal another gold medal for the team.
In a nutshell, being optimistically bias is not my cup tea anymore. But it is human
nature to thinking that way. But we can minimize it by being more precaution of what we do.

7. Journal 4 – Social perception 26th of November 2015
Concept : First impressions
The first thing that will run through my head when a guy walks into a room would be
his appearance. My friend once told me this, “For me it’s always about first impressions. I
trust my instincts. I love to prepare if it’s something that requires training. But I don’t like to
prepare the psychology too much. I enjoy the psychology of the character but I work better
from a first impression.” – Billy Zane. It is human’s nature as social creature tend to judge on
every still thing that humans can see, mostly people. Judging others has its bright side as well.
In fact that we may be able to discover the real identity of someone that is a bad person in
disguise but also there is flaws in judging people, but we may also judge wrongly that the
individual is the total opposite of what we think.
Throughout my life, I had met thousands of people and formed my own first
impressions of them. I believe that every single human being that meets someone new will
instantaneously create a first impression. One of my own experience on making a first
impression was when I was introduced to my new archery manager for SUKMA 2012, who
was also one my teammates’ father. He was a typical Muslim guy who is nice, polite, helpful,
committed in the sport and also holy, that was my first impression. In the beginning, when I
met him I knew that he was going to be a good and responsible manager by the way he
dressed, talked and interacted with the other comity members. Hewas always punctual when
it comes to time management, every day he would come to the training ground and takes the

8. attendances of the archers. But he started to show his true colours when we get to know him
more. There was once during atournament that we went as a preparation for SUKMA, I heard
complaints about him from the other archers that he was getting more strict and his attitude
changed quite a bit since the first time that they met him. So I didn’t want to believe what
they were saying and I continue my normal routine. We finished the tournament and came
home with some medals. After a few games that we had participated in, our manager got
proud of himself and started to get bossy in the training field. Since then more and more
complaints came, even from the parents and other committee members. I started to notice
his attitude. Not long after that, this was when he was sacked by the association. He was
caught red handed for stealing money and equipment from the associations.
Nevertheless, first impressions are not always wrong but it is also not always right. We should
not be perceived easily, like what this quote says “Don't judge a book by its cover” ― George
Eliot.

9. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE,BUILDING AND DESIGN
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT
Name : ADAM WONG
Student ID : 0322520 Group/Session: Monday (8am)
Subject : Social Psychology
Submission date: 30th
November 2015
Lecturer : Mr. Shankar

10. Journal 5- Attitudes 29th of November 2015
Concept : Cognitive Dissonance
Somewhere in every individual’s life, there will be this point of time that this
individual meets someone who shares the same belief, humour, personality and etcetera.
As once said by Simon Mainwaring, “The role of social media is critical because it helps to
spread cognitive dissonance by connecting thought leaders and activists to ordinary citizens
rapidly expanding the network of people who become willing to take action.” On the other
hand, there are individuals who are certain to make new people who have the opposite
interest of theirs which will make everything somewhat uncomfortable and weird. This will
somehow create an uneasy relationship.
The cognitive dissonance theory has been applied into my whole life of living. I am a
very picky person when it comes to making new friends. Most of the people that I had met
had nothing in common with me. Those people who does not share the same belief,
humour, personality and etcetera would only be a normal friend or colleagues. It is hard for
me to look for a person that has the same interest as me, due to I am more to an introvert
and sometimes an extrovert. For instance, there is this friends of mine he is a big fan of
recreational drugs. Whenever he gets a chance to take it, he will never miss the opportunity
to get high. He is the type of guy who is very fun to hang out with when he is sober but
when he is high on drugs, we just can’t communicate like normal people does. I guess he is
just living in his own world most of the time. I am not a fan of recreational drugs, as a result
of this, I tend to slowly trying to not hang out with him before I get in trouble. After many

11. attempts of asking and begging to stop taking those stuffs, he still refuses to listen and
continue his recreational drugs intake.
In a nutshell, cognitive dissonance has its pros and cons. It is good to keep your circle
small and your beer cold.