Social Psychology Video Concepts

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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
VIDEO PRESENTATION
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (PSY0103)
Thean Hai Xu (0313489)
Sharon Chow Ci Yung (0313387)
Tony Tang Lee Lung (0314002)
Ong Jun Chao (0314199)

FNBE JAN 2013 INTAKE- PSY 0103

Names of group members: Thean Hai Xu, Sharon Chow Ci Yung,
Tony Tang Lee Lung, Ong Jun Chao

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TABLE OF CONTENT

Cover Page

Page 1

Table of Content

Page 2

Introduction

Page 3

Role Play

Page 4-5

Script

Page 6-7

Explanation of Applied Concept

Page 8-13

Concept Linking

Page 14

Conclusion

Page 15

INTRODUCTION



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For this assignment, we are required to produce a minimum length of 5 minutes
video that includes five social psychology concepts that we have learnt in lecture
throughout the semester. Our group member consists of four members which are Thean
Hai Xu, Sharon Chow Ci Yung, Tony Tang Lee Long and Ong Jun Chao.
After some brief discussion among our members, we came out with five social
psychology concepts that can all be incorporated into our video. The five concepts are:
1. First Impression
2. Observational Learning
3. Confirmation Bias
4. Halo Effect
5. Cognitive Dissonance
In order to shows these concepts that we had learnt, we decided to apply it into real-life
situations. We discuss about the appropriate storyline which able to link and illustrate
what we want to inform to our audience.

ROLE PLAY
a) Scene 1


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Actor: N/A

b) Scene 2
Actor: Tony and Chao
-Tony has three style and acting as a passer to take the drinks.
-Tony acts as the model for the Chao to observe.
-Chao acts as the learner and follows what Tony had done.

c) Scene 3
Actor: Chao and Thean
-Thean is acting like owner of the drinks
-Chao is acting like innocent

d) Scene 4
Actor: Tony
-Tony acts as another passer who is thirsty and takes a drink


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-Tony failed to take the drink and fell down.

e) Scene 5
Actor: Tony and Thean
-Tony continues lay down on floor.
-Thean act as the passer and refused to take the drink because don't want to be like
Tony’s result.

f) Narrator:
Sharon Chow
-Briefly explain the situation and applied concept in each scene.

SCRIPT
a) Situation 1
A total of twelve drinks are displayed on a table in front of Lecture Theatre 12 where
tons of people walk pass. No labels were put on the drinks. As the pass byers walk pass


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the drinks, they formed a first impression of the drinks on the table. They will thinking
of why the drink is displayed and form their own perception toward it.
b) Situation 2
Five minutes later, finally one of the pass byers, Tony 1.0 took one of the drinks.
Then, Tony 2.0 took another drink and followed by Tony 3.0. Now the table left nine
drinks.
Chao saw what Tony 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 did. As three of them initiates the action of
taking the drinks on the table, Chao learn through his observation and took one of the
drinks as well. Chao’s action can incorporated with the observational learning
concept. But he doesn’t imitate all the behaviour, instead of one he had taken three in
one shot since it was free. So the drink now left six.

c) Situation 3
Then, Thean, the owner of the drinks came back and caught Chao red-handed. He
told Chao he has to pay for the drink. Chao claimed that why the others don’t have to
but he has to. He pointed at the drink which supposedly left six. However, there is nine
drinks on the table (we secretly refilled up to nine while the video shooting) .At the end,
he become speechless and helplessly paid Thean for his mistake. This situation shows
the confirmation bias concept. Chao relies too much on the given information (the
drinks appeared to be free as no one blocking Tony even though he took three of them)



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and formed the schema that the drinks are free and he can take as much as he wants
to.
d) Situation 4
A piece of “Free Drinks” note is placed on the table. This time, all the drinks are free
of charge for real. The note on the table caught one of the pass byers, Tony 4.0’s
attention. However, he didn’t realise the fact that the drinks are attached on the table.
While pulling one of the drinks off the table, he lost balance, fell down and passed out
on the floor. This situation shows the Halo Effect where Tony 4.0 only paid attention to
the fact that the drinks are free and didn’t realise they are attached on the table.

e) Situation 5
The pass byers as well as Thean 2.0 saw the “Free Drinks” sign too and of course
they do like to have one but they don’t want to end up like Tony 4.0 so they ignore the
drinks and walk away. This situation shows cognitive dissonance as the pass-byers
hold two conflicting cognitions, which the behaviour is not equilibrium with its attitude.

EXPLIANATION OF THE APPLIED CONCEPTS

a) First Impression:
People form impression through other’s physical appearance. It acts as an element
to obtain the attention from the strangers encountered. First impression sometime gives


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accurate information to the observer. Research shows that people will unconsciously
comprehend the others or an object and decided whether having either a positive or
negative attitude towards it within the first few milliseconds only. This phenomenon
occurred instantaneously and not deliberates. Attractiveness, likeability, trustworthiness,
competence and aggressiveness are all judged at the same time that our perception
and evaluation had form after the initial impression.

As an experiment, we displayed a table on the road where people will pass by. We
prepared twelve pack of drinks on it and record the passer reaction and this experiment
doesn’t limited toward student only. As the time passed, we noticed that the drinks are
remained the same and no one was taken any of them throughout the five minutes time.
The first scene of the video also proved that even though there’re about twenty
strangers passed by. Some of them have a look to the drinks but they tend to ignore it
while others are just walked away without observe it. Throughout this experiment, we try
to put in ourselves into the same situation and search for the reasons. We concluded
that the passer may like to have the drinks, but they can’t confirm that the drink is either
free or is for other purpose. They may consider and form a first impression that the drink
can’t be taken for granted. Hence, they choose to ignore the drinks instead of taking a
risk of making a mistake.

b) Observational Learning:


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Observational learning is a process happened when an observer engage to
repeating a person’s behaviour after observing it. Albert Bandura stressed the
importance of this learning. It is because this process helps people, especially children
to acquire new responses for example attitudes, fears, opinions, or specific behaviors.
Unlike classical conditioning and operant conditioning, it doesn’t involve any
reinforcement but a model. This social model can be anyone for instance parents,
teachers, friends and etc. Throughout the observational learning, learner will observe,
remember and imitate those action that model displayed and tend to repeat
unconsciously when involve in the same situation. However, the learner doesn’t
necessary need to duplicate the model behaviors as it is. For example, the learner may
observe an unwanted behaviour and the subsequent consequences. Therefore, they
may try to refrain from that behaviour.

We had included this concept in our video in second scene. Tony and Jun Chao are
acting in this scene. Tony passed by and saw those drinks displayed on the table and
he straight took it away. Right after he went, Chao passed by and followed Tony
behavior. At this point, Chao was the learner as he observed the person in front him,
Tony, or can be said as a model took the drink as granted. So, Chao took the drink for
granted too. On the other hand, Chao didn’t imitate Tony’s behavior as all. Due to guilty,
he took more drinks than Tony did as he think why should be generous as the drinks
are free. It totally illustrated the concept stated above.



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c) Confirmation Bias:
Confirmation bias is a tendency for an individual engage to seek out data that
support and disregard data that refute his/ her beliefs, preconceptions or hypothesis
regardless of the information provided is true or not. People will learn how to react when
in the particular situation from their life experience or learning from others. However,
some behavior learned may be wrong or unacceptable. Therefore, the individual may
interpret the situation in a biased way if they continuously rely on the data they been
given. Sometime, confirmation bias will contribute to overconfidence in personal believe
and causes a phenomenon called as belief perseverance. In this condition, people will
tend to maintain or strengthen their original beliefs even in the face of contradictory
data. Hence, this bias frequently leads to disastrous decisions or an error in making
decision.
This concept had been illustrated in the video scene three. After Chao had taken the
drink, he had been blocked by Thean who acting to collect the money of the drinks.
Chao argued with him and stated that there is also others who taken the drink but why
he didn’t been asked for pay. However, Chao realised the number of drinks reduced
from the table are actually the same amount of the drinks that he has on his hand. Here
shows that Chao had over relied on the information given and interpret the situation
wrongly which the drinks are free as others (Tony) also took it as granted. Bias occurred
and Chao had to pay for his mistake.



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d) Halo Effect:
Halo effect is a cognitive bias in which stated an individual’s had been affected by
the overall impression of him/her and making a contrary judgement toward the person.
On the other hand, the individual had focused only an outstanding personality trait of a
person which is obvious then generalized and evaluated the person’s whole personality.
It often occurs without our active awareness. In this case, first impression is taking the
essential role to causes this bias to happen. For example, majority of man will be
attracted by beautiful ladies. They will often evaluate the girl throughout the impression
they formed and judging that girl was good and nice in her personality such as softspoken, caring, elegant and etc. But the truth is the girl was rude, selfish and lazy.
Therefore, a person’s attractiveness influenced the perception as it form the Halo effect
and affected the judgment tied to personality traits.

In the video’s scene four, some changes had been made which is adding a free drink
note and placed below the drinks. Here Tony was the only actor who will show the Halo
Effect concept. He acts as a stranger and passed by the drinks. Due to thirsty, he was
thinking to have one drink since it was free. When the moment he try to take the drink,
he noticed the drink was stick on the table (actually the drink didn’t stick on it). From this
point of view, we able to know that Tony had over rely on the physical available
information given which is the note placed and judge himself the drink is free for all.
Then he failed to get the drink and fall down on the floor.



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e) Theory of Cognitive Dissonance:
According to Leon Festinger (1957) state that theory of cognitive dissonance
explained the disequilibrium between attitude and behaviour. This situation involve
conflicting attitude. When an attitude is in keeping with a behavior then there is a
consonant relationship; while when an attitude is not keeping with a behavior then there
is a dissonant relationship. For instance, a smoking person (behavior) may know that
smoking will affect his/her health and causes cancer (negative attitude toward smoking).
In this case, a consonant normally will be added as a third element to reduce the degree
of dissonance. We can focus on more supportive beliefs that outweigh the dissonant
belief or behavior so that it able to reduce the importance of the conflicting belief.
Cognitive dissonance often helps people aware of the decision making process and
lead improvement and more accurate choice.

This concept can be found out at the last scene of the video. Thean was the actor.
He acts as the passer and saw the free drink note just like Tony. At the moment he was
thinking to take the drink, he saw Tony was laid down on the floor. Then he refused to
take the drink and walked away as he didn’t want to be the same result as Tony. In this
case, Thean’s attitude toward the drinks is positive as he had attracted by the free drink
note. However, he noticed that if he tried to take it, he may counter the same situation
as Tony. So, he walked away which shows a negative behavior toward the drinks.


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Although it has a conflicting between his attitude and behavior, a consonant which are
won’t have the same result as Tony had actually reduce the degree of the
disequilibrium.

CONCEPT LINKING
So, how these concepts able to link together? The concepts that we had discussed,
First Impression, Observational Learning, Confirmation Bias, Halo Effect and Cognitive
Dissonance, if we realised and noticed, our daily life is actually tightly connected with
these concepts. No matter in which field, our human being would encounter other
people and get along with them. Some cases like interview or presentation, first
impression carry a very important part of the success. Our physical appearance may
cause other to form likeability attitude toward us due to our dressing or cosmetic are
generated the Halo effect which causes the other has a perception and evaluation in a
biases way. Therefore, people often rely on what they saw, what information they able


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obtain through observing. However we frequently judge simply and immediately without
noticing the hidden part, true face and reality of the particular person, object or event.
Observational learning is one of the examples which able illustrate this mistake. As
human being, we tend to follow the majority decision due to social influence and also
stereotyping. On the other hand, we only observe and follow what the model (individual)
behave without considering other inner factor. Then it will lead most of us to allow the
confirmation bias occurred in our life as we often assimilate our schema toward certain
object. When we be proved wrong based on our biases, our behaviour may change
accordingly to the ‘right way’ that others belief. On the other hand, our attitude toward
the incident may still stand strong as belief perseverance affected our though. Here
cognitive dissonance had happened.

CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, social psychology influenced and incorporated in our daily life.
Throughout this assignment we get to apply what we learnt in class in real-life
situations. This assignment doesn’t just test us theoretically like what we are used to
back in high school but actually forced us out of our comfort zones to really incorporate
the social psychology concepts and theories that we learnt in class throughout the
semester with real-life human behaviours.
Furthermore, we find this assignment rather challenging as we have to think of five
concepts that can be incorporated together in one story. However, we did manage to
work together and find a way out of it. At the end of the day, we did get plenty of


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benefits from this assignment, not just from the academic perspective but we also get to
bond with each other and enhance our capabilities in working on group projects which
will be useful for us when we get into degree.



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REFERENCES
Cherry.K, (2013). What is Observational Learning. Psychology. Retrieved 20th
November 2013 from http://psychology.about.com/od/oindex/fl/What-Is
-Observational-Learning.htm

McRaney,D (2010). Comfirmation Bias. You Are Not Smart, A Celebrity of Self
Delusion. Retrieved 22nd November 2013 from
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J.M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced
compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203–210.

Unknown, (N/D). chapter 3: forming first impressions: cues, interpretations, and
inferences (pp. 57–72). social psychology student learning program. Retrieved
23rd November 2013 from
http://psypress.co.uk/smithandmackie/resources/topic.asp?topic=ch03-tp01
Unknown, (N/D). The Halo Effect. The Psych of Social Psychology. Retrieved
24th November 2013 from
https://sites.google.com/site/thepsychofsocialpsychology/classical-studies/the
-halo-effect.



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