This document summarizes key concepts from a student's journal entries on social psychology topics including counterfactual thinking, self-fulfilling prophecies, observational learning, and stereotypes. The student provides examples from their own experiences to illustrate each concept. Counterfactual thinking involves imagining alternative outcomes for events. Self-fulfilling prophecies occur when a belief causes a person to act in a way that confirms the belief. Observational learning is learning through watching others. Stereotypes involve making assumptions about people based on their group memberships.

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURALAND BUILD ENVIRONMENT
NAME : CAROL TANG NGIE BING
STUDENT ID : 0323963
WORD COUNT : 4138
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (PSYC 0103)
ASSIGNMENT 1 :Journals
LECTURER : MR SHANKAR
TUTORIAL : MONDAY (8AM TO 10AM)
SUBMISSION DATE : 30TH
NOVEMBER 2015

2. Counterfactual Thinking 09-11-2015
Counterfactual thinking is a concept in which we imagine alternative outcomes for
events, can have a strong effect on your emotional reaction to given events. Depending
on whether the imagined alternative is better or worse than the real-life event,
counterfactual thinking can darken or lighten your mood. Advertisers use this strong
emotional connection to the “what-if” to influence our decisions as consumers. People’s
counterfactual thoughts following negative outcomes tend to be geared towards helping
them to avoid such outcomes in the future. These counterfactual thoughts of what could
have happened can affect one’s emotions, such as causing them pain, regret, relief or
satisfaction. They can also affect social situations, such as who deserves condemn and
responsibility.
For example, when I turn out getting a bad result in my exam, I may have thoughts
like ‘If I listen to the teacher and makes notes carefully in lass.’ or ‘If I got revise all
lessons taught by teacher every nights before the exam come.’ or ‘If I got double-checked
my answers before I hand in my answer sheet.’ which can lead to worsen or improve my
mood. On the other hand, if I had imagined a negative outcome for the event happened
would be upward counterfactual and imagining a positive outcome for the event
happened would be downward counterfactual. which can resulting in worsen or improve
my mood. On the other hand, if I had imagined a negative outcome for the things
happened would be upward counterfactual and imagining a positive outcome for the
things happened would be downward counterfactual.
Examples for both of the counterfactual thinking can be seen in when i was an athlete
who join Shot Put. I had join Shot Put competition since primary 6, but I always get
number 4th and never be in first 3 places until form 4. Still remember my last high school
sport day, i join Cheer-leading, Shot Put and Discus Throw. It was an unforgettable sport
day in my life, if was my first time get bronze medal for Shot Put, but unforturnately i
lose for Discus Throw and Cheer-leading and only get 4th place. when i was inform i get
the 4th place in Discus Throw and Cheer-leading, I feel regret for the closeness of
winning a bronze medal and having upward counterfactual thoughts like 'If i had train
harder before the competition.' or ' If i don’t last minute for the training.' while 4th place
winner would feel lucky to win a 4th place and having downward counterfactual thoughts
like ‘A least I won a 4th place but at least I’m not at the last place!’ or ‘I get 4th place
because my opponents is too strong’ or ‘ At least I try my best to get 4th place for the
competition.’ It is pretty obvious that upward counterfactual revolves around guilt or
regret which are mostly pessimistic thinking and downward counterfactual revolves
around relief and satisfaction.
Upward counterfactual thinking can mostly be relate to mothers out there. Just like
my mom, she would always have second thoughts whenever she bought something like
groceries, electronic products or clothing from the market or mall. She either thought that
the products was too expensive or the quality of the products wasn’t that good.
Still remember years ago my mom went to shopping without me for few times. She had
bought few pieces of clothing from One Borneo( a mall in Kota Kinabalu) at once. But,
when she get back home from shopping, she had told me that, ‘she shouldn’t bought

3. those clothes, She could buy a lot more clothes from the night market or during
promotions time.’ or ‘The quality of those clothes are not worth with the prices, she
should have think again and again before she decide to buy those clothes.’ What’s more
hilarious is that she would actually keep murmur to me about it until there is one point for
her to forgot or doesn't care about it anymore. I think most of the mothers out there would
act the same as my mom a lot of the times. Mothers hope to save for their own family but
sometimes they just couldn’t resist the urge temptation to buy somethings is better for
themselves. But, after that they would feel extremely regret for their decisions and
thought of another outcome if they hadn’t choose that decision.
Nevertheless, there is also this kind of person where he or she does not care about
what would happen in the next or what outcomes were to be out of the decision they had
made and they just chose to live with the present. They’re that kind of people usually
carefree and easy come easy go because they are less likely to be worry about their lives.
These happy-go-lucky person are said to be possess downward counterfactual thinking.
For instance, when my family first moved into our new house, we are having some
problems with the new house. We face leaking problem whenever it was raining and we
would rush to check is there any leaking in our own rooms except for my sister. I asked
her before why she didn't went to check on her room whether there is leaking or not, and
what she told me was this : ' Yes, my room is wet but at least my bed isn’t, right ? I’ll
clean my room when the leaking is done. ' I was really speechless on her. She had always
been like this where she usually would think of the better side of the problems she had
faced.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy 02-11-2015
In Psychology, Self-fulfilling Prophecy which means that a prediction or belief that
comes true because we expect it to become true. Most of our belief affect our actions.
Sometimes our actions unconsciously creates a situation in which those expectations are
fulfilled.
Assuming a volleyball coach expects those freshmen to be less skilled, so the coach
doesn't need to put them in to play very often. When the coach does put them in, they are
rusty and don't do well, thereby fulfilling her expectations or An employer expects that
the new employee he just hired would be incapable person, he would less likely to give
chances to the employee to show his skills that it leads to where his skills become rusty
hence fulfilling the employer’s expectation. Just like how someone would label a child as
a thief just because he’s poor, they would treat that child as a thief and giving him the
cold-eyes which lead him to act consistent with their beliefs. Self-fulfilling prophecy
often lead to unfavorable outcomes. Imagine if a person thinks that she won’t be able to
become a doctor in future, so she stopped working hard to reach her goal and just decided
to give up on everything she did, of course becoming a doctor in future will be impossible
for her. In addition, personal attitude can influence other people and their response to
your behavior. If you have a positive mindset, other people will perceive you in a positive
way.
Have you ever had one time where the moment you opened your eyes, you’re already
thinking that today is going to be a very bad day? You busy fixing your bed hair and

4. you’re late to school, you bumped your head to the the sink when you’re washing your
face, and you started to look at the mirror thinking that today is going to be a bad day, and
it really turned out that way. Back in the days when I was still in high school, we usually
had these class differentiation based on your final exam results where the smartest student
would be in the first class and follow on. Most of the teachers had different attitude of
teaching in different classes. The teachers would give a lot of exercises and practices to
the students who are in the first three class, and they would explain even clearly during
classes and punishes them when they didn’t submit their homework on time. But for the
other classes, they would copy and paste everything from the textbook to the whiteboard
and asked those students to copy it down without doing any further explain. This cases is
happened because those teachers had already expect that their students in the bottom class
either they are very lazy, not that smart or they didn’t have the interest to learn anything
in the class and are always the troublemaker in school. This has become of that whenever
the students in the bottom class asked the teachers about something that they couldn’t
understand in the subject, the teachers would just give them an unclear answer which
doesn’t help in solving their questions at all or even they don’t even explain the student’s
question at all. With this, those students will just stop asking their teacher for solutions
and keep everything for themself or they will just give up on study hard in result of
meeting the expectation of the teachers.
This concept can also be seen when the discipline teacher are punishing those
students who caused troubles. In my case, the discipline teacher during my high school
was quite bias, most of the time they would only punish students from bottom class
instead of students from first three class even if the students from the first three classes
did the same mistake with the students from bottom classes. The discipline teacher
always think that only students from the bottom classes always make noise, trouble and
it’s their fault to drag down those student from first class, because those teacher think that
students from first three classes is smart, book worm, quiet, all in one is called they are
perfect. Sometimes students from bottom class didn’t even want to bother to explain
themselves because they knew that the teachers won’t listen to their explanations. This
has made students from bottom class to cause even more trouble because they know that
even if they didn’t do anything, the adults would still blame that for it hence fulfilled the
self-fulfilling prophecy.
Observational Learning 20-11-2015
Think of how a child watches his parents wave at one another and then imitates these
actions himself. A tremendous amount of learning happens through this process of
watching and imitating others. In psychology, this is known as observational learning.
Observational learning is not the same as pure imitation of another behavior.
Observational learning is a process that it occurs through witnessing and observing the
behavior and action of others. sometimes also referred to as shaping, modeling, and
vicarious reinforcement. While it can take place at any point in life, it tends to be the
most common during childhood as children learn from the authority figures and peers in
their lives. This process does not provide rewards or punishment but instead it needs a
role model in particular parents, siblings, friends, teachers and anyone who are in a higher
status. However, parents are still the most influential authority figure as most of the

5. things that children learned are taught by their parents. For instance, a child learns to
walk, climb, chew, laugh or talk and etc by observing how their parents act on their daily
basis. Children learn how to behave and respond from how their parents or other people
act. Children pay attention to an action and they will remember the observed behavior, be
able to imitate the behavior and be motivated to produce the behavior.
Observational learning can also be seen when an employee will learned not to come
late to work as he saw another employee was fired because of coming late for work. To
put it in another way, when a supermodel is given a reward for his action, the observer is
most likely to replicate it, in contrast, if a supermodel is given punishment for the action
they had made, it would be less likely for the observer to replicate it. If a young girl saw
her brother getting punished because he is eating chocolates without asking permission
from her mother, of course the young girl would not choose to eat chocolates when she
haven’t ask her mom for permission.
We are always observing those around us. It's simply human nature. Sometimes when
I was at the gym and I don't know how to work on some of the machines, I will just wait
until someone in the gym had uses it. When they use it, I will stare on them to see how
they use those machines. By watching them use those machines, I can figure out how to
do it by myself. Other than that, at first the rudest word I had ever said is ‘CB’. But now,
since I was close to a girl call Christina in my collage life. We use to go everywhere
together just like a twins, and she always said ‘MaDe’ no matter what she is talking
about. Days by days, I realize I started to said that word and its like more frequently. In
this process, I had to observe closely, remember it, and later use it in my lives.
Ironically, My parents would always tell us when we are still a kid and even after we
grow up, they will still tell us this, ‘Don’t even try to learn smoking, because smoking is
really bad for our health,' but I could always see that my grandfather was always holding
a cigarette in his hand when he wake up, before and after eating or whenever he has a free
time, taking a sip and blowing out cigarette smoke. No matter how many times my
mother tell us not to learn from my grandfather and my grandfather did tells us the same
thing, but we will still want to learn it despite of what you saw in the news about the
consequences of smoking and what we had heard from my parents. I has been watching
my grandfather smoke for my whole life, and I see that he is fine for smoking until now
and so I thought that it is fine to smoke even if I already know the fact that smoking is
really not good for your health, that I am killing myself.
The typical example would be Thomas. Thomas is my cousin, who had been
smoking for 5 years. My grandfather had also been smoking for over 35 years, and my
cousin had watched seen him smoking since he was born. He still remembered the fact
that my grandfather had been smoking and eventually learned smoking when he’s 17
years old. Regardless of how much my uncle and aunt has reprimanded him for that, he
still wouldn’t quit smoking as it had become a habit of his now. Now that my grandfather
has quit smoking now, I guess it is just a matter of time that my cousin will apply the
concept of observational learning.
Stereotype 26-10-2015
In your everyday lives, you will meet and see different kinds of people. One glance,

6. you will automatically classifying groups that person as rich or poor, lazy or
hardworking, maybe doctor or nurse. Just with that one look, based on their appearance,
their demeanor, their outfits, yo will group that person into a category that you have
created in your mind. When people are not acting the same as you, you will define them
as a different category from you. A stereotype mostly believe that someone has a
particular character only because this is what many people believe someone of their
particular class, nationality etc must be alike, not because you know anything about their
personality. Stereotypes can be negative, positive or neutral.
For example, you have the mindset that only people from China knows how to speak
Chinese, you are making a blank statement that does not allow for some individual
variation - such as some of the people from other country like Malaysia who also know
how to speak Chinese. You assume that only people from China knows how to speak
Chinese and does not leave any possibilities that some other people have or do not have
these characteristics.
Let’s just say that one day you’re going back home late and you’re walking alone,
you saw few young foreign men walking towards your direction, you would
unconsciously choose a further path to walk home because you do not want to encounter
with them even if maybe they don’t have the intention to approach you. Stereotype is
highly connected to prejudice and discrimination, There are different type of stereotypes
such as racial stereotype, age stereotypes and gender stereotypes.
Most of the Chinese or other races in Malaysia somehow could have the mindset that
people from other races would not understand their language, such as Indians think that
Chinese and Malay did not know how to speak and listen to Hindi and the Chinese also
think likewise. I had encounter this once where I was in a convenient store to buy some
snacks, and by the time I went to the counter to pay, there was another Indian customer
right before me, making a scene about how the store sold her an expired product. She was
basically shouting at the cashier and the cashier apologized sincerely but the customer
just won’t stop complaining. The cashier took back the expired product and gave her a
new one as compensation, only then the customer decided to leave. Before she leave the
store, she mumbled something in Hindi and truthfully I couldn’t understand what she
said, but before the Indian customer leave the store, the cashier called out to her and told
her this, “ Please don’t think that no one knows what you mumbled just now, ” and I
could literally see the Indian customer’s expression became really embarrassed and left
the store quickly. When I asked my Indian friends about the words that the Indian
customer mumbled, it turned out to be some kind of rude words. This happened because
as mentioned just now, the mindset that only Indian knows Hindi, only Chinese knows
Chinese, and only Malay knows Bahasa Melayu gave them the misconception that they
could talk bad behind other people’s back.
Nevertheless, this story was happened to Pinky. Pinky is my housemate, who is
taking Architecture course. The thing happened last weekend, When she rides the bus to
pyramid, she makes assumptions about the other passengers. She looks around the bus,
trying to decide where to sit. For each person, she looks at gender, age, ethnicity, religion
and other social groupings. These categories are called cognitive schemas, which are
based on preconceived expectations. After a quick scan of the strangers on the bus, Pinky

7. had finally decide to sits down next to this guy. She's feeling social and he looks like a
fun, friendly guy who seems like he'd be easy to strike up a conversation with. They chat
and he asks for her number, which boosts her self-esteem, but also makes her
uncomfortable, so she gets off at the next bus stop.
Not having thought this through, Pinky finds herself in an unfamiliar part of town.
One of the other passengers gets off the bus, too, and is walking behind her. To avoid
what she believes is a potentially dangerous situation, Pinky ducks into a convenience
store to wait for the next bus.On a basic level, stereotypes help us to quickly determine
whether to initiate a flight, fight or social response to any situation. The other passenger
could potentially be a friend or enemy, but Pinky makes a quick judgment based on
stereotypes.
Confirmation Bias 10-10-2015
As I scrolled through my Facebook page, here and then, I would always manage to
see posts lamenting about how mediocre our government and politics is. Of course, this
was nothing out of the strange. We Malaysians certainly like to talk about our politics,
especially the older generations(Uncles and Aunties) and also the working community in
general are having a conversation about politics as their favourite pastime at any
‘kopitiam’ or ‘mamak stall’. Perhaps, they are blaming and grumbling rather than chit-
chatting, it would be a more suitable word. A kingdom that is energetic participate in its
political and democratic activity is good, however when you look into those
conversations, posts and comments, they are more frequently ungentle and unpleasant
than justified.
It also got me thinking about the concept of confirmation bias that which had been
taught by our lecturer in class, the “Confirmation Bias” which is a person’s tendency to
notice information that confirms one’s beliefs and to ignore information that confirms
one’s beliefs. An incident in what decision makers have been shown to actively seek out
and assign more weight proof that support their hypothesis, and ignore or under weight
proof that could deny their hypothesis. And so it can also be thought of as a form of
selection bias in collecting evidence.
I find that the concept was particularly evident during our election period last year.
Who could forget the major hoo-ha surrounding the heated election event? I lived in Kota
Kinabalu, the east of Malaysia. I go throught the news, in South, there was a major
breakdown between two political parties which was UMNO and the opposing party and
also between it main followers, the Malay and also the Chinese. Back then, the movement
of majority of the Chinese supporting the opposition, demanding a political reformation,
was really heated. Almost every weekend, you would see the Chinese community
gathering at a specified venue, thousands of them clad in the opposition’s color, filling up
the space,chanting and rooting for their favoured party.And then along with the
reformation movement, came upon the supporting pages on the social media, and this is
where confirmation bias really is evident.
For the whole pre-election period, my Facebook page was bombarded with links,
news and photos, to show how “clean and righteous” the opposition party was, and how
“dirty and corrupted” the government party was. You see, I’m no political expert, nor is

8. politics my daily cup of tea, so I’m in no place to say which party is superior and which is
inferior. But one thing that I can say is that it is obvious that these news and posts are
undeniably biased to favour their preferred political party. Some of the times, the posts
can be quite outrageous and harsh, but still people supports it to justify their stand. Even
if there’s a news that’s on the positive side for the other party, they would disregard it,
saying that it probably just is a publicity stunt by the particular party.
Of course, everyone is entitled to their own personal opinions and ideas as we are a
democratic society. But I also believe for the prospects of the nation well-being, all pieces
of information must be throughoutly processed and think over first rather than just simply
laying out a uncredible fact and start to bash out ruthlessly.
Confirmation bias can be a powerful thing. When you have a strong personal need to
believe something, you set out to verify your belief with a mixture of motives.You want
to know if what you believe is true, but the cost of disappointment may be so high that
you become susceptible to any number of tricks we play on ourselves to make sure our
lives are not too greatly disturbed.
Confirmation bias happens when we preselect for our attention only those data which
support the beliefs we had before we even began our quest to find the truth. As long as
we can find quick and easy ways to dismiss and ignore all data which contradict our
preconceived ideas, we will find that the remaining “evidence” perfectly supports
whatever we thought from the very beginning.It’s a clever trick our minds play on us, but
if we are ever to learn how to think critically, we must learn to recognize this process
before it blinds us to the things we’d rather not allow ourselves to see. To truly help our
nation rise up the occasion, I think we all still have much to learn. More oftenly, we
are too blinded to see not only with our own perspective.