This document contains four journal entries by a student about topics in social psychology. The first entry discusses social facilitation and provides examples of co-action and audience effects from the student's personal experiences working on a group project and playing basketball. The second entry discusses intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, providing the student's story of losing weight for both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons. The third entry discusses heuristics and provides examples of availability and representativeness heuristics from the student's experiences deciding on transportation for a trip and making judgments of others. The fourth entry discusses attribution and types of attribution errors like self-serving bias and fundamental attribution error.

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT
NAME: NGE JIA CHEN
STUDENT ID NO: 0317738
GROUP: MONDAY, 8:00- 10:00AM
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (PSY30203)
ASSIGNMENT 1: JOURNAL ENTRIES
LECTURER: SHANKAR THIRUCHELVAM
SUBMISSION DATE: 10TH NOVEMBER 2014

2. ENTRY #1
‘An improvement in performance produced by the mere presence of others’, is
what social facilitation defines as. Social facilitation differs into two types: co-action
effect and audience effect. Co-action effect is a phenomenon whereby
increased task performance comes about by the mere presence of others doing
the same task. On the other hand, audience effect is a phenomenon whereby
increased task performance comes about by the presence of a passive
spectator/audience. In this entry, I will share my personal stories to further
demonstrate my understanding towards the applications of social facilitation.
Personal reflection 1: Just on the last Friday, 7th November, we were having a
submission for our Introduction to Design 3D model exhibition. For the past
weeks, I have been working together with my teammates, Amos, James and Hao
Xiang. In this project, we did our work pretty much together all the time and I
have noticed that every little contribution made by my fellow teammates really
motivates me towards contributing even more. All of us did our best and we
managed to finish the model making and presentation boards within the time
limit that we set. Co-action effect is shown here as the presence of my
teammates really enhance my working efficiency and the fact that we always do
work together increases our overall performance, avoiding us from spending
sleepless nights just to get our work done.
Personal reflection 2: Basketball is no doubt my favorite sports. My basketball
buddies and I will always go playing basketball whenever we have free time. But
something just feels different when a certain girl shows up. Every time I notice her
sitting at the side watching us playing basketball, my heart starts pumping faster
and I will never feel tired. I will become very confident in every shots I make and
often scores more after that. Audience effect take place here as every time the
girl shows up, I tend to perform better in game. Her presence made me better in
what I’m doing and it does not trigger when this condition is not met.

3. ENTRY #2
Motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented
behaviors. Motivation is what causes us to act, whether it is getting a
plate of pasta to reduce hunger or reading a comic book for entertainment. It
involves the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate
behavior. Different types of motivation are frequently described as being either
extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic motivations are those that arise from outside of
the individual and often involve rewards such as trophies, money, social
recognition or praise. Intrinsic motivations are those that arise from within the
individual, such as doing a complicated ‘Sudoku’ purely for the personal
gratification of solving a problem.
Personal reflection: Since I was a child, I was never one day not being
overweight. To the extent that I would grow more than 10kg a year. I have no
problem being overweight in the beginning until one day I slowly noticed that
there are a lot of inconvenience caused by me and also to me. For instance, when
I move around and starting to sweat because it is easier to sweat as a fat guy, I
begin to release a bit of odor that displease other people around me. Besides
that, being overweight is not that visually pleasing at all, at least for myself. For a
very short while my self-esteem went down but I stood up and I thought I must
make a change. So, I started my very own weight management program. I
researched on the net how to control my diet, which workouts are the most
effective ones and so forth. In school, I used to skip lunch after having a breakfast
and fight against my hunger for food until dinner. Other than that, I only eat a
quarter of my previous portion of food for my every meal. Every evening
afterschool, I would workout at least 2 hours at home together with Mike Chang
(Personal trainer-body builder- nutritionist), on the other side of the computer. I
started following his workout videos after I realized his program called Six-pack-shortcuts.
After a year of hard work and persistence, I finally cut down from
100kg to 65kg. I was so satisfied with my own result. Things started to change
around me, people tend to mix around with me more although they were good
people at the first place, I feel a lot more confident now and I can approach
anybody at ease even girls. I used to be an introvert due to my lack of confidence
but that is no longer a weight on my back to me. This story of mine presented
both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivation as in the need of
myself wanting to become more visually pleasing. Intrinsic motivation as in the

4. transformation of mine causes myself to have an extra boost in my overall self-esteem.

5. ENTRY #3
A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make
judgments quickly and efficiently. These rule-of-thumb strategies shorten
decision-making time and allow people to function without constantly stopping to
think about their next course of action. While heuristics are helpful in many
situations, they can also lead to biases. Heuristics play important roles in
both problem-solving and decision-making. When we are trying to solve a
problem or make a decision, we often turn to these mental shortcuts when we
need a quick solution. There are two common heuristics: availability heuristics
and representativeness heuristics. Availability heuristic is our assessment of how
likely an occurrence is based on how easily an example of the event can be
recalled. On the other hand, representativeness heuristic is our assessment of
how likely an occurrence is based on how much it resembles our expectation for a
model of that event. The downside of heuristics is they might give us wrong
information at times and causes us to make wrong decision and assumption.
Personal reflection 1: Back in July, my friends and I decided to go Penang for a 3
days trip. All the while, we have been discussing our mean of transportation to
Penang and we decided to take a flight. To be honest, I was a bit worried when
they wanted to take a flight instead of bus. The reason being with the
disappearance of MH370 caused a lot of people to be anxious while taking a flight
and that does not exclude me. At that time I thought that the flight ticket might
be expensive too aside from my worries that our flight might end up like MH370
too. This event shows that I have an availability heuristic that all flight might end
up like MH370 which is not true. This mysterious occurrence does not apply to
every single flight and who can assure us that bus will not be the same?
Therefore, the availability heuristic that I have here made me do wrong
assumption. In the end, I went to Penang and came back in one piece.
Personal reflection 2: In the retrospect, I have a close friend of mine that I never
thought he would be one. The reason being since the first day of high school, the
moment I saw his mischievous looks, I thought of him as a very naughty kid and
would one day join a gang or worse. He indeed turned out to be a naughty kid and
always breaking the regulations in school. After years of understanding each
other, I do not see him as that naughty boy anymore. Although he still wears rings
and piercing but on ear only, but that is just his way of dressing. After mixing
around with us, he became obedient and he even became a prefect. Despite his

6. looks, he changed, he had grown into a more mature adolescent. I am truly proud
of him as a friend. This event has shown representativeness heuristic as I see him
as a mischievous boy when I first met him due to his looks as he resembles the
looks of all naughty kid but that does not mean he will not change. Heuristics
does give you a faster way to look at things but sometimes it will change.
Therefore, we need to understand the people around more before we jump into
conclusion.

7. ENTRY #4
Attribution is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors. In real
life, attribution is something we all do daily, usually without any awareness of the
underlying processes and biases that lead to our inferences. For example, over
the course of a typical day you probably make numerous attributions about your
own behavior as well as that of the people around you. When you get a poor
grade on an exam, you might blame the teacher for not adequately explaining the
material, completely neglecting the fact that you didn't study hard enough. When
a classmate gets a good grade on the same exam, you might attribute his good
performance to luck, dismissing the fact that he has great study habits. Our
perceptions of events are often distorted by our past experiences, our
expectations and our own needs. A few of the most common types of errors in
attribution include: self-serving bias and fundamental attribution error. Self-serving
bias is the tendency to attribute positive effects or successful behaviors to
dispositional factors while attributing negative effects or unsuccessful behaviors
to situational factors. On the contrary, fundamental attribution error is the
tendency to attribute causes to internal factors such as personality characteristics
and ignore or minimize external variables. This phenomenon tends to be very
widespread, particularly among individualistic cultures.
Personal reflection 1: In the past, I used to be very confident in everything I do
especially in tests. Before the trials for SPM, I tend to be a bit more laid back as I
am confident but it turned out that I got myself a not-so-satisfying result. Then, I
started to praise myself being smart for the subjects that I scored but for those I
did not such as Additional Mathematics, I blamed the people around me for being
distracting as they are scratching their heads to answer the questions. Self-serving
bias is clearly shown in this event as I attribute positive effects on myself
saying I am smart when I scored on certain subjects but I blamed on the situation I
have been through when I did not score a certain subjects just to protect my self -
esteem.
Personal reflection 2: Few weeks back, I went to A&W with my friends after our
visit to A’Famosa in Malacca for a project. The customers were very few at that
time. So we ordered and sat down on one of the tables at the back.
Unfortunately, a friend of mine and I have to wait for our order while our other

8. friends were already sitting down and about to have their meal. We were given a
number and so we sat down with our friends and wait for our orders. After 20
minutes, there is still no one coming to us and bring our orders while we were
watching the food served table to table but not ours. I started to get irritated.
‘Are they even doing their work? How can they be so lazy? They must be slacking
in the back’, all these questions started popping up in my head. Not long after,
one of the staff brought our orders and we finished it up and left the restaurant.
After a while, I thought what if they actually were encountering some problems
behind the kitchen such as shortage of staff, machine faults and so on. I
attributed them as lazy and slacking workers because I waited for half an hour. I
never thought of the situational factors that might influenced their behaviors. My
main focus was on the food that time causing me to fall victim towards
fundamental attribution error.

9. ENTRY #5
Attitude is the tendency to evaluate a person, object, or idea with some degree
of approval or disapproval. Attitudes form directly as a result of experience. They
may emerge due to direct personal experience, or they may result from
observation. They can be explicit or implicit. Explicit attitudes are those that we
are consciously aware of and that clearly influence our behaviors and beliefs.
Implicit attitudes are unconscious, but still have an effect on our beliefs and
behaviors. Social roles and social norms can have a strong influence on attitudes.
Social roles relate to how people are expected to behave in a particular role or
context. Social norms involve society's rules for what behaviors are considered
appropriate. Attitudes can be learned in various ways such as classical
conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is a learning
process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and
a naturally occurring stimulus. It involves placing a neutral signal before a
naturally occurring reflex. On the other hand, operant conditioning is a method
of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Operant
conditioning relies on a fairly simple premise - actions that are followed by
reinforcement will be strengthened and more likely to occur again in the future.
Personal reflection 1: I still remember how I used to hate dolls when I were
younger. Dolls were neutral to me but under some external stimuli, I became a
doll-hater. It was Child Play, a horror movie presenting a serial killer’s soul had
been summoned into a doll and it started committing murders. With the
additional presentation of loud, scary noises when the doll is murdering, thus
generating fear in me towards dolls. Prior to classical conditioning, doll is just a
neutral stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus was the loud, scary sounds and the
unconditioned response was the fear response created by the noise. By
repeatedly pairing the doll with the unconditioned stimulus, the doll (now the
conditioned stimulus) came to evoke the fear response (now the conditioned
response).
Personal reflection 2: I would not deny the fact that I am somewhat a lazy
person. I would rather play video games all night rather than reading books.
Although I do fine in my tests, I was never a high achiever. I can maintain my
grades only because that I have at least 5 tuitions in a week. I only do revisions
during tuition classes. But during Form 3, I started to get a bit anxious as PMR is
one of the most important test in our school life. My mother then, confiscated my

10. sole entertainment at that time, a Playstation 2, gaming console. She forbid me
from playing it until I finished the test. Although it is a pain for me, but I believed
it is for my own good. My mother added a condition for me, saying that if I ever
get good results in PMR, she would grant me my very first smartphone. I was then
further motivated to do better in the test. In the end, I managed to get 7A’s and
1B. My very first smartphone is finally in my hands. The removal of the game
console is to prevent my bad habit from getting worse and the promise to get me
a smartphone reinforces my behavior to study better for the test. This event
shows both positive and negative reinforcers from the concept of reinforcement
in operant conditioning.