Social Psychology Individual Journal FNBE 0814

1. NAME : LIM ZI SHAN
STUDENT ID : 0320372
GROUP : MONDAY 4-6PM
SUBJECT / COURSE :SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
[PSYC0103]
SUBMISSION DATE : 27 APRIL 2015

2. Journal 1 : Motivation
Motivation is something that triggers you to do things, be it for your own sake
or you had to.Motivation is an internal process that directs and maintains behavior.
Motivation is an internal process that can cause someone to move towards a certain
goal. It’s the difference between cleaning your dirty room during the weekend and
sleeping until late afternoon during the weekend. Motivation can be differentiated into
two parts which is intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Based on my
understanding, intrinsic motivation is basically your hobby where you did it because you
like it, and enjoy it and extrinsic motivation is your responsibility because you feel obliged
to do certain things because it was appointed to you by someone who’s powerful or elder
than you. There are some examples that could describe motivations at best such as
when a person is motivated by the desire to help others may become volunteer for a
nonprofit and donate a significant amount of money to the nonprofit even though that
doesn’t give him any physical benefits which is what we called it intrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic motivation can also be seen when a person has the desire to earn a lot of
money for a better future will choose to study courses that could earn a lot of money in
the future such as doctors or lawyers even though they don’t have any interest in that
particular subject.
I remembered that there was this one time, one of my uncles asked me and
my family out to go for a hike just nearby our house. Because I have a weak body when I
was a kid and I also have a child-onset asthma, sometimes I have hard time breathing
when I exercise excessively which I don’t usually do sports, my parents actually asked
me whether I really wanted to go for the hike. But even though I did worry about the
issue for just a moment, I still decided to go for the hike because it’s been a long time
since I have exercised and I wanted to enjoy the nature once in a while. During the
journey to reach the top of the hill, I was getting dizzy and short of breath but I was being
left behind and I didn’t want to be the last one so I just went on without resting even
though my vision was getting blurry overtime. I just kept on hiking and by the time I
reach the top of the hill, everything just went pitch black and I passed out. The moment I
opened my eyes, I can feel that my father was holding me and my mother was fanning
me. I was breathing like someone who was just saved from being drowned. I took a
short rest, everything was back to normal and we head to our way home. To me, this is
what it means to have an intrinsic motivation. Even though my health condition does not

3. really allow me to exercise excessively, but I still did it because I could enjoy the scenery
of nature and I would like to spend some time with my family.
As for the extrinsic motivation is when I have to study to get good grades.
Truthfully, I am not the kind of person that can spend a lot of time studying as I cannot
concentrate when it comes to reading. My parents always told me that I should get good
grades to have a better future as companies nowadays only hire those with good
grades. Realistically, I do understand the fact that big companies only hire those who
were highly educated and paid them a fairly high salary, and so I would force myself to
study even if I cannot concentrate. Whenever I am studying, I would get distracted by all
sorts of things such as mobile phone, television shows and even the slightest noise
could get me distracted. I would try different kind of ways like hand over my phone to my
mother to prevent me from playing my phone, asking my parents not to turn on the TV
just so I could concentrate, and even using a lot of time to do the notes for that particular
subject. Despite all of that, I still couldn’t understand any of the content I’ve gone through
and the only way for me to get a good grades was to by memorizing it. I would write the
notes over and over again to make it easier for me to memorize. This only proves that
I’m being forced by the reality to study as to get good grades instead of benefiting myself
for the knowledge I’ve gained.

4. Journal 2 : Counterfactual Thinking
Counterfactual thinking is a concept where a person imagines a different
outcomes for an event that has already happened. 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 blame and responsibility. For
example, when a student turns out getting a bad result for his exam, he may have
thoughts like “ If only I had studied for the exam...” or “ If only I had double-checked my
answers...” which can lead to worsen or improve his mood. However, if one 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. Examples for both of the counterfactual thinking can be seen in athletes.
Athletes who silver medal would feel regret for the closeness of winning a gold medal
and having upward counterfactual thoughts like “If only I had jumped further...” or “I
could’ve won if I ran faster...” while bronze medal winner would feel lucky to win a bronze
and having downward counterfactual thoughts like “I only won a bronze medal but at
least I’m not at the last place...!” or “I did bad but at least I did not injured myself...!”. 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 mother, she would always have second thoughts whenever she bought
something like groceries or clothing from the market or mall. She either would think that
it was too expensive or the quality was not good. She had bought two pieces of clothing
from a mall once, when she was back home from shopping, she would tell me that, “ I
shouldn’t have bought that clothes, I could buy a lot more clothes from the night market.
“ or “ The quality of these two clothes are not worth of that prices, I should have think
over before I decide. “ What’s more hilarious is that she would actually keep mumbling to
me about it until one point that she won’t care about it anymore. I guess most of the
mothers would act like this a lot of times. Mothers hope to save for the family but
sometimes they just couldn’t resist the urge to buy something good for themselves. They
would regret their decisions and thought of another outcome if they hadn’t choose that

5. decision. However, there’s this kind of person where he or she does not care about what
happen’s next or what outcomes were to be out of the decision they made and just
chose to live with the present. They’re usually carefree and easygoing 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 we first moved into our
new house, our house had some problems with leaking problem whenever it was
raining. We would rush to check on our rooms except for my sister. I asked her why
didn’t she went to check on her room, 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 just
speechless. She had always been like this where she usually would think of the better
side of the problems she had faced.

6. Journal 3 : Self-fulfilling Prophecy
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 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. In psychology, this is known as “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 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 a person thinks that
he won’t be able to become a doctor, so he stopped working hard to reach his goal and
just decided to give up, of course becoming a doctor will not be in the reach of his
hands. 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.
Back in the days when I was in high school, we usually had these class
differentiation based on your final exam results where the smartest student would be in
the top 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

7. students in the top three class, would explain even clearly during classes and punishes
you when you hadn’t submit your homework on time. However in the other classes, they
would copy everything from the textbook onto the blackboard and asked the students to
copy it down without doing any further explain. This is because the teachers had expect
that the students in the bottom class are lazy, didn’t have the interest to learn anything in
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. With this,students will just stop asking
solutions from their teachers and just give up to study hard in result of meeting the
expectation of the teachers. This concept also could be seen when the discipline teacher
punishes students who caused trouble. In my case, the discipline teacher during my high
school was quite bias, most of the time they would punish students from bottom class
instead of students from top three class even if they made the same mistake. The
discipline teacher would think that it is always the students from bottom class make
trouble and it’s their fault to drag the top class students down. Sometimes bottom class
students didn’t even bother to explain themselves because they knew that the teachers
won’t listen to their explanations. This has made bottom class students 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.

8. Journal 4 : Observational Learning
Observational learning is a process that it occurs through witnessing and
observing the behavior and action of others. It takes place at any point or stages in life,
however it is the most common to be seen during childhood as authority become
important. 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 things that children learned are taught by their parents. For instance, a child learns to
walk, chew, laugh by observing how their parents act on their daily basis. Children learn
how to behave and respond from how parents or other people act. Children pat attention
to an action, 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 learned not to come late to work as he saw another employee was fired
because of that. To put it in another way, when a model is given reward for his action, the
observer is most likely to replicate it, in contrast, if a model is given punishment for the
action made, it would be less likely for the observer to replicate it. If a young girl saw her
brother getting punished for eating chocolates without asking permission from her
mother, she would not choose to eat chocolates without asking permission. In this
process, they have to observe closely, remember it, and later use it in their lives.
Ironically, parents would always tell you when you’re a kid and even after you
grow up, they’ll still tell you this, “ Don’t even try to learn smoking, smoking is bad for
your health, ” but you could always see that your father was holding a cigarette in his
hand before eating or after eating or whenever he has free time, taking a sip and blowing
out cigarette smoke. No matter how many times your mother tell you not to learn from
your father and your father tells you the same thing, you’ll still learn it despite of what
you saw in the news about the consequences of smoking and what you heard from your
parents. You’ve been watching your father smoke for your whole life, and you see that
he’s fine smoking until now and so you thought that it’s fine to smoke even if you know
the fact that smoking is really not good for your health, that you’re killing yourself. The
typical example would be my brother, who had been smoking for 5 years. My father had
also been smoking for over 20 years, and my brother had watched seen him smoking
since he was born. He remembered the fact that my father had been smoking and
eventually learned smoking when he’s 17 years old. Regardless of how much my parent

9. has reprimanded him for that, he still wouldn’t quit smoking as it had become a habit of
his now. Now that my father has quit smoking now, I guess it’s just a matter of time that
my brother will apply the concept of observational learning.

10. Journal 5 : Stereotype
In your everyday lives, you will meet and see different kinds of people.
One glance, you’ll automatically categorize 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, you’ll group that person into a category
that you’ve created in your mind. When people are not acting the same as you,
you’ll 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 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.

11. 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.