This document contains 6 entries from a student's journal on social psychology. Each entry summarizes a chapter or concept: 1) sociocultural perspective, 2) social facilitation, 3) motivation, 4) social comparison, 5) counterfactual thinking, and 6) attitudes. Examples from the student's experience are provided for each concept. The entries show how social and cultural factors influence behaviors and how people evaluate themselves compared to others.

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT (FNBE)
AUGUST 2014 INTAKE
Name: Alan Chung JiaZen
Student ID: 0321487
Group/Session: Monday 2pm
Subject and Course: Social Psychology (PSYC0103)
Assignment 1 – Individual Journal
Submission date: 27 APR 2015

2. Entry 1- Chapter 1- Sociocultural Perspective
What is actually sociocultural perspective? It is one of the four perspectives in social
psychology. This perspective focuses on the relationship between social behavior and culture.
In depth, it is that social behavior, an ability of mankind’s on determining how individuals
interact with one another within a group or society. Besides, variation of culture leads to
different social behavior of an individual between each other. This is how it connects
between the relationships of these two element.
For example, in my experience so far we interact with different people from different
cultures around us. There’s one time when I interact with an individual with a different
culture than mine, I found that it is completely hard for us to connect with each other’s
understanding. As it is a huge gap between the two of us, we are less likely to interact with
each other anymore to prevent further misunderstanding occurring between the two of us.
Another example would be such as two different cultures from different places which is
Japan and New York gives different impression to the outsiders. Japan practices a culture
which determines the social behavior of the citizens living in that country such as the way
they talks are in a very polite manner. While for the New Yorkers, some of them are less
likely to speak in the same manner as the Japanese does which aggressive and abusive words
may be heard from them while interacting. This is how culture affects social behavior of an
individual and the connection between them are strongly related.

3. Entry 2- Chapter 1- Social Facilitation
Social facilitation is the idea that you will likely to perform better on simple tasks in the
presence of other people watching you. While for tougher task, it may varies and there will be
a larger margin of error because of nervousness. Social facilitation can be divided into two
types which is co-action effects and audience effects.
One of the types of social facilitation which is co-action effects occurs when a higher
level of performance is present when surrounded by other individuals performing the same
task. In my experience, during a group assignment, when a person is surrounded by people
which is the person’s teammates that works in a same task, that person would likely to
perform much more outstanding in his tasks rather than when that person is working alone.
This is due to the presence of the others doing the same task around that person. Second type
of social facilitation would be the audience effects, which is when an individual is playing
piano in a performance. That particular individual would perform well in the presence of the
audience if the individual think that playing piano is quite easy, but it is in opposite way if
that individual thinks it is hard to play a piano. As conclusion, audience effects might bring to
positive or negative effects to an individual depending on the task whether it is easy or hard,
but both in the presence of other people around that individual.

4. Entry 3- Chapter 2- Motivation
Motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented
behaviors. It is an internal process that makes a person move toward a goal. Motivation can
be further breakdown into two types in psychology, which is intrinsic motivation and
extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation involves engaging in a behavior because it is
personally rewarding; essentially, performing an activity for its own sake rather than the
desire for some external reward. Extrinsic motivation occurs when we are motivated to
perform a behavior or engage in an activity in order to earn a reward or avoid a punishment.
In addition, self-esteem is connected to motivation part too in psychology.
In my experience for intrinsic motivation, when one person is choosing a course to study,
it is more likely that everyone would choose those which interest them. While there are those
who didn’t know what to study, they would just simply take up a course and study. For
individual who have chosen courses which they prefer or like the most would enjoy their
study or even assignments the whole time. They would even eager to do even more than the
usual specified tasks to make it better just because they enjoy by doing so. For extrinsic
motivation condition, one is to clean their own rooms just to avoid being scold or criticize by
their parents. It is not the intention of that individual to do so, which is to clean and tidy up
their messy room, but it is an act which forces them to do so because they want to avoid
getting punish. This is what extrinsic motivation goes by. Besides that, self-esteem also
affects one’s motivation by when one is feeling good about themselves, they would feel
motivated in doing some tasks or even improving their performance. Self-esteem is all about
a person’s overall sense of self-worth or personal value. This is how self-esteem affects in
motivation.

5. Entry 4- Chapter 2- Social Comparison
The social comparison is a process that involves people coming to know themselves by
evaluating their own attitudes, abilities, and beliefs in comparison with others. It also defined
as how we determine our own social and personal worth based on how we stack up against
others. Social comparison can be too divided to two kinds which is upward social comparison
that when we compare ourselves with those who are better than us and downward social
comparison which when we compare ourselves with those who are worse off than ourselves.
In my experience, when an individual A gets a good result, he thinks it is satisfying
enough that he had achieved what he wanted. As he saws another individual, which is
individual B that gets better results than individual A, A would in turn think that his results
are not that good anymore. This is how upward social comparison works in this incident.
Second example would be when an individual A thinks himself are weak in some aspects
such as not performing well enough in sports, he would compare with the others which are
much more weaker than him in performance, and hence he motivates himself through this as
he can make himself feels greater than the other knowing that there are weaker presence than
him.

6. Entry 5- Chapter 3- Counterfactual Thinking
Counterfactual thinking happens when an individual contemplate the outcomes that might
have emerged had they pursued another course of action. For instance, they consider the
possibility that some alternative outcome or event could have unfolded, called counterfactual
thinking. It is also defined as thinking about a past that did not happen and often happens in
“if only….” situations, where we wish something had or had not happened. Counterfactual
thinking are differentiate in two kinds too which is upward counterfactuals and downward
counterfactuals.
In my experience, when an individual have submitted an assignment and gets the result
which is not satisfying enough after that, with some of the example and advices on his
assignment from the other people, that individual would think that he could have done greater
if he were to take advices from other people at the first place which leads to upward
counterfactual thinking. Another example is that when an individual takes exams, he gets
result that are not really up to his expectations. This will not affects his mood but in turn that
individual would lighten himself up with thoughts such as at least he is performing well
enough to not get much worse grades than what he had now. This usually happens in an
individual with much more self-esteem in response to negative events, which is the
downward counterfactual thinking.

7. Entry 6- Chapter 4- ABC’s attitude
Attitude, in psychology are defined as a learned tendency to evaluate things in a certain
way. This can include evaluations of people, issues, objects or events. Attitude can be divided
into 3 types, which is the ABC’s attitude. A refers to affective which is emotional based
component, for example feelings or emotions that something evokes. While B refers to
behavioral which is action based component, mainly emphasizing on the tendency to act, that
what we do and what we intend might be quite different. The final part which is the C refers
to cognitive, a knowledge based component that which are our thoughts, beliefs, and ideas
about something.
In my experience, I will feel that if I’m eating a salad, and there’s too much mayonnaise
on top of it, I will feel nausea and in turn lose my appetite to continue eating the same salad
again. This reaction reflects the emotional based component. The second one would be the
behavioral based component, which the example for this would be when one individual does
not like to exercise, he or she will still continue to do so just because they concern about their
healthy concern. For the third one, which is the knowledge based component, for when one
individual will think that all coffees are bitter tasted, but in actual it is just a mindset of
themselves to think so because there are coffees which are sweet tasted too.