SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING & DESIGN Foundation in Natural and Built Environments

Social Psychology [PSY30203]

Individual Journal

NAME : LEE FEI SYENSTUDENT ID : 0323008TUTOR : MR. T. SHANKAR SESSION : MONDAY 3.30PMSUBMISSION DATE :30TH NOVEMBER 2015

Social LoafingIndividual Journal 1 (28/10/2015)

Social Loafing refers to the concept that people are prone to exert less effort to achieve a goal

when they work in a group than when they work alone. It is one of a very common societal

phenomenon in our daily lives nowadays, probably happen in colleges, universities, firms or workplaces.

The concept of social loafing do recall me an example which was mentioned by my psychology lecturer.

In a meanwhile, when a group of people are carrying a heavy box, the person who is tend to own social

loafing will just put his hand under the box without using any strength, but act like he is still helping in

the presence of others. I do believe that social loafing has negative affect for both group and individuals

especially when achieving goals. According to Max Ringelmann, an individual’s performance actually

gets worse in the presence of others. Why? For example, if there were only five of the eight members of

a team are doing most of the works, efficiency and productivity of the group works will obviously go

slower or shoddy than other group with high level cooperation.

The occurrence of social loafing can be clearly observed through group work. Perhaps one of the

circumstances that will promotes social loafing is when individuals sense their contributions are

dispensable, they will indubitably contribute less to a collective effort. At the same instant, motivated

team members might also reduce their workload intentionally or even stop from collaborating once they

feel that others are relying on them, because they no longer want to be exploited by the less productive

members. In fact, the larger the group mostly occur problems with social loafing. This kind of situation

will urge people who are in low levels of motivations for a group task to pick up the slack unless a high

morale is reflected in the team work and with the possess of team spirit.

As time goes by, uncountable assignments I have been through since I joined Foundation in

Natural and Built Environment (FNBE). Even it is just only few months, I did learn to communicate and

collaborate with different kind of people. To be frank, I did not know that is called a social loafing at first

until I have been taught during Social Psychology class.

Some of the group members I met they did not collaborate with us but turned initiative when

they join others. I still remember that there is a guy who never attend our group meeting and always

give us excuses that he was busying or suffering from sickness. When I was given a bad impression to

him, I realized that he has turned into another person. He became diligent and independent enough to

cooperate while with the other groups and that impressed me a lot. Some people do not appreciate to

work with their own friends but strangers. There is also a friend of mine who never accept opinions from

others and once her suggestion has been rejected, she will not put much effort into the group work

unless everyone has to be agreed to her. Other than that, I was told by my friend that she has faced with

the same problems too last time. She told me that she has finished the whole group assignments, city

modeling by herself since no one was helping her. That night, we shared a lot of experiences that we

have been through but still yet figured out the way to deal with social loafing. All we know is, find

ourselves a group that suits us is the best way of all.

Through these experiences, I do believe that personalities of an individual such as laziness,

unmotivated and more is not the main character to create phenomenon of social loafing in our society.

Like what I mentioned above, it also possess with each kind of external factors. In fact, these factors

that affect group cohesiveness will directly impact student’s dislike of group assignments. To prevent

students from collision, I think an individual evaluation is one of the best way to deal with it. Social

loafing always create conflicts and bad morale in our workplaces. Beware and do not hold grudges with

your members and try to be more tolerant is what I have learnt. Compelling and blaming are exactly the

worst way to deal with it because everyone has dignity, humans are called to be mates, to love,

everyone we meet. Try to recognize everyone personalities and find the best way to communicate. If

this does not work, just find yourself another groupmate who is more capable and you are satisfied with

the way he work. Grudges will only make one suffers.

Self-ConceptIndividual Journal 2 (03/11/2015)

Self-concept is a critical term for both social psychology and humanism in our society. It is also a

general term used to refer to how people thinks about, evaluates or perceives themselves. According to

Baumeister, the definition of self-concept refers to the individual’s belief about himself, including the

person’s attributes and who and what the self is. Which means, self-concept is a belief about aspects of

your own identity. In our daily lives, a self-concept helps us to come out with the view of our present

and future. An individual’s self-concept is basically formed by self-schema and self-efficacy.

Self-schema organizes the processing of information related to our self-concept. These

categories of information help us to reflect ourselves to think and feel. Each of these beliefs includes our

overall perceptions of ourselves. Meanwhile, outgoing, shy, talkative are some of those beliefs and

overall perceptions of ourselves. As an example, if a mother tells her daughter she looks like a tom boy,

her daughter may react by choosing activities that she imagines a tom boy would do. Conversely, if the

mother tells her she looks like a princess, her daughter might be more feminine. The self-schema of a

child always created by adults especially parents. As we grow, our self-schema started to influence

heavily by different kind of external factors. Past experiences, relationships, upbringing, society or

culture are basically one of them. These influences also reflect how we think we will turn out in the

coming years, which might include both positive and negative and it is called future self-schemas.

Most of us will doubt our own capabilities and tend to question ourselves frequently. Self-

efficacy the belief that one is capable of reaching certain goals or executing certain behaviors. For

example, people who hold a low self-efficacy for accomplishing a task may avoid it but for those who

believe they are capable they will likely to participate or accept the challenges given. Self-efficacy might

influenced by different kind of factors, previous performance, behaviors or views of others, verbal

encouragement or criticism by people and more. Evidence shows that a person with high self-efficacy

get more life chances and is more confidence than others. However, too much self-efficacy can also

backfire as it can make us too confident about ourselves. Besides, a student with low self-efficacy who

will also believe he is incapable of learning.

As for me, I always ask my friends about myself and point me out if I did something wrong since

I am actually a bad tempered and impatient person. During semester 1, we were required to take a

compulsory subject which is Elements of Natural and Built Environments (ENBE) and accomplishing a

city model is our final project. At the same time, I had some conflicts and arguments with my group

members because they always absented for our group meetings. As the progress did not go well, our

concepts and ideas had been rejected many times by the lecturers. My anger comes from frustration,

fear that we could not achieve the assessment criteria or even finish the current project. Tears has

running down my face, I scolded my group members through whatsapp for their irresponsible so mean

words came out from my text. Although they had started to attend the meetings and share opinions but

the ambience went awkward.

Fortunately, we had finished the city modeling and the results came out with satisfactions. Until

now, I felt so regret and sorry for those words I went to them. Some of my friends did advise me about

my short-tempered and it has reflected to me as my self-concept. Other than that, I am also a person

who do not hold grudges, soft-hearted and reasonable. All of these concept are come from my personal

experiences, relationships and more.

To me, an individual will not be improved if he or she does not know about himself and herself.

Self-concept helps us to leave off our bad habits and personalities. Just like me, as I know I am a hot

tempered, I will be mindful of my emotions, try to calm myself down, be wise as it will influence my

behavior. Education and knowledges are important for us to come out with our self-concept because

the more intelligent people we make friends will teach us more. Each people provides different kind of

perceptions to others. Criticism and verbal judgement will improve us but sometimes we shall try to

avoid too much negative feedbacks and surround ourselves with positivity. Why? It is because verbal

judgements and mean criticism has a significant impact on how we look at ourselves as it will reduce our

self-efficacy and become unconfident.

I am happy with my current life and feel proud to be a me. Self-acceptance is a part of how my

self-concept formed. Anyway, be an optimist!

The Halo EffectIndividual Journal 4 (20/11/2015)

The halo effect is a cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person. In its simplest

terms, The Halo Effect is basically our first impression to an individual, a brand, company or an object. It

shows a positive aspects of an individual. Meanwhile, physical appearance and general attractiveness do

affects how we judge a character. As the better look and behave the character owned, the better the

evaluation will be given. It is originally advocated by psychologist Edward Thorndike. Nowadays, The

Halo Effect has been widely concentrated on in assortment of fields including physical attractiveness in

relation to societal accomplishment especially product marketing.

In reality, there are a few of advantages to the halo effect as people always wish to be friend

with a good-looking person. That is why good-looking individuals always enjoy preferential treatment

because people tend to like them more. Besides, individuals in good-looking also gain more attention

such as actors, singers and more either it is at work or school. Getting a new job or position through

interview will be easier for them as they were born with a likeable appearance. Another advantage of

The Halo Effect is on decision making. Peoples are born to love beautiful things, aesthetic study has

proved that this effect plays critical role in human decision making process. Generally, The Halo Effect

has become a type of heuristic or a mental shortcut. It helps us to make decisions quickly without having

to spend a lot of time by analyzing a person’s behavior or the quality of a product. Therefore, this effect

may be instantaneous and it is not deliberate.

Conversely, the further research into the halo effect also cause disadvantages. It may color how

jurors think of defendants, how a teacher give comment to a student, and even how people judge an

organizations or a brand without analyzing their personalities and the true quality of them. An individual

who perceived more attractive has a wider circle of social network. At the same time, this will also

provoke jealousy by other individuals. Since the masses always pay attention to them, these peoples are

also required to perform better than others if not they will receive severe criticism.

One of a best friend of mine who is called Jasmine Toh is a pretty girl in our high school but she

always look unfriendly to others plus she is a quite person. Elders, teachers and friends do not like her

much at the first time but after they started to interact with her, she has become one of the favorite

students and friends of ours. Times flies, days we spent together are uncountable. Things that she has

been through is indescribable. Some of our classmates hate her so much because of her prettiness

meanwhile she is also a top student in our class and always gets the first place. In this case, her

classmates always try to magnify her mistakes no matter how much effort she has put while

accomplishing something. Things went complicated, she became the hatred and loved ones at the same

time. Lecturers and teachers appreciate her a lot while most of the students do not. It reminds me a

word of ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’ Eventhough aesthetic do bring us benefits sometimes but it

also cause biases and unfairness.

Due to another aspect of product marketing in the halo effect, customers always choose product

depends on its packaging without examining the qualities and its values. The prettier the packaging of a

product the more temptations it will made to consumer. As for me, I always buy clothes from H&M,

Topshop and Cotton On because it has known as one of the best fast fashion outlets to shop with they

provide nice environment and fitting rooms. Without comparing the prices and qualities to non-brand

outlets, I bought myself a pants and two tops unconsciously. Until now, only I realized it is a

phenomenon of the halo effect. Through this situation, it reflects the effective of decision making and

makes our life easier as well.

During the Effective Public Communication class, our EPC lecturer assigned us a class activity to

get to know each other. We were referred to talk about our first impression to the person who is sit on

our left. My friend Rainnie has told me that her first impression to me is feminine and quite. After

hearing that, I laughed inside because I am actually very masculine and aggressive! Last week, I was

given a question of ‘Imagines a prime minister with body tattoos.’ The first word that came out from my

mind was, ‘Jesus Christ! Of course he will be definitely criticized by the masses!’. Justin Bieber is one of

the best example as well, ‘villain’ has become a common appellation we used to address him. The

unforgettable scene to me in the movie of Ted 2, while the bear was asking for help to the lawyer about

his application for rights, the lawyer rejected him according to his criminal record and describes him by

using the name ‘Justin Bieber’. Nowadays, ‘Justin Bieber’ has become a noun to describe villain.

Attitude FormationIndividual Journal 5 (11/28/2015)

An attitude formation is actually based on our emotions, cognition and behaviors. In another

terms, it is simply an individual’s positive or negative evaluation or perception of a noun. These three

components are closely related and connected to each other, which means inseparable. Firstly, our

attitudes is basically affected by our emotions during the events. The higher emotional quotient (EQ) we

possess, the better attitude we had. Through what I have known from psychology lecture class, the

processes of affective (emotions) attitude formation are mostly involved in mere exposure, classical

conditioning, operant conditioning, modeling and observation learning.

Classical conditioning can be easily discovered through group work. When two person reached

the same concepts or consensus, they will be inspired with positive attitudes such as motivating and

synergistic to help them on achieving goals and an improvement of efficiency. Few days ago, while I was

having a short meeting with my group member, Tay Siew Wen, both of us have shared the same ideas.

Shortly, a rough draft for conception of our ITD project has come out under collaboration. At the same

instant, things will become better liked with repeated exposure in terms our consensus and unanimity

which has corresponded to the mere exposure effect.

Another components which is involved in attitude formation is operant conditioning, it is

something like law and punishment for human actions. Each day we are living in the situation of operant

conditioning to prevent us from doing something illegally like follow traffic rules, silence in library and

pass up assignments in time because punishment has become a kind of threat to us. Through this

component, an individual would develop a positive attitude unconsciously associated with the reward

but on the opposite end of the spectrum, a neutral stimulus such as punishment can also result an

individual in a negative attitude.

When I was young, I did observe the behavior of my elder sister for getting rewards from my

parents. Since my elder sister always get a good academic results during her high school period, I

followed her steps and started to study as hard as I can. If my elder sister did something wrongly and got

punishment, I will try to avoid myself from doing it too. Then now, I started to put my observations

among my friends and learn the best part from them. So that this is called an observation learning/social

leaning in psychology theory. As an individual believes that ‘lion are dangerous’, he or she is technically

affected by cognitive component to form an attitude. A person’s beliefs and knowledges will influence

his attitude at the same time. It is a little bit similar with operant conditioning as we know that kill

people will put us into jail like every time when I go to temple, the knowledges which taught by my

parents let me know that shouting and playing around at temple is a bad behavior. Through this, people

may be more reasonable and be more clearly for what they has done.

Psychology happens in our daily routine. People who do not know about psychology studies

might never realize but it does not mean that the theory of it does not exist. The overarching purpose

why I chose this topic for my journal is magnify the importance of attitude in our daily lives. There are so

many external and internal factors that influence behavior. Let’s rapidly characterize the word attitude.

An attitude is the value of an individual assigns to something or someone. How do you feel about the

present President of our country, Malaysia? What do you think about this song? These inquiries will

reveal your level of value towards things that happen in our lives, our state of mind about a person or an

object. In fact, our own attitudes play in three forms, affective, behavioral and cognitive (ABC model of

attitude). A person’s attitude such as passions, serious, horror, hard work and more is related with

human interactions and interactions may cause influence to self-concept. It is like a societal loop.

Optimistic BiasIndividual Journal 3 (15/11/2015)

I had a math test past days ago. When the paper came into my hand, my mind went empty! All

formulas and basic regulations have been thoroughly forgotten. After the math test, I started to comfort

myself and transfuse (maybe?) to myself with the mindset of optimistic bias such as I will get an

unexpected result, trying to tell myself I will score some marks even though the formula is wrong and it

is not that hard though. In our daily lives, optimism bias is defined as the difference between a person’s

expectation and the outcome that follows. Mostly people use it from self-deception but conversely it

will improve our confidence at the same time. If the expectations are better than reality, the bias is

optimistic. If reality is better than what we expected, the bias will be pessimistic. In the simplest term,

the extent of the optimism bias is basically based on an individual’s expectations before an event

unfolds and contrasting those with the outcomes that transpire. For an example, a student expects to

receive higher starting salaries and more job offers upon his graduation but end up nothing. People

always tend to underestimate how long a project will take to complete, how much it will cost or how

serious the outcome of a situation will occur.

Some people do have optimistic bias but some do not. A part of them posses with

counterfactual thinking which is usually associated with bad or negative event. Their imagination for the

outcomes of a circumstances will be differently with those individuals who are with optimistic mindset.

Besides, a counterfactual thinking can be used to improve or worsen an individual’s mood. For instance,

if I told myself that my math test result will came out with flying colors but and the end it score lower

than my expectations, what is in my mindset is called an optimistic bias. Conversely, If I thought that my

results will get low marks but lastly it scored high marks, the counterfactual thinking of mine will

improve my moods instead. According to the researches, studies consistently report that a large

majority of the population (mostly 80%) display an optimism bias. It seems to be an integral part of the

human nature. As for me, I am exactly one of them!

Optimism bias and counterfactual thinking are both a kind of ability to anticipate a hallmark of

cognition. It may be also referred as a kind of inference about what will occur in the future and is critical

to decision making especially enabling us to prepare our actions so as to avoid harm and gain reward

(sounds like attitude formation?). However, humans exhibit a pervasive and surprising bias. We always

overestimate the positive events and underestimate those negative events. It is something like lying to

ourselves and hide from facts (which is unacceptable to us).

An absence of optimism in depressed individuals may also relate to how future scenarios are

mentally constructed. When healthy people imagine their future they tend to form positively biased

scenarios, imagining positive events (such as winning a professional award) in more detail and as closer

in time than negative events (such as losing a large sum of money). Mentally, people ‘approach’ positive

future scenarios and distance themselves from negative ones.

However, optimism is also beneficial for physical health. All else being equal, optimists live

longer and are healthier. The absence of positive expectations of the future is associated with mild

depression and anxiety, by suggesting that optimism is vital to mental health. Is optimism optimal?

Given that the healthy brain exhibits mechanisms that create optimistic beliefs, one can ask the

teleological question of why this is. While classic theories in economics and psychology assert that

correct beliefs will maximize reward and minimize loss, many sources of evidence point to the

conclusion that optimism is nonetheless advantageous compared to unbiased predictions.

Optimism appears to be related to success in the professional domain as well. According to

economists Puri and Robinson report that optimists work harder and longer hours, which may account

for their higher pay. Indeed, optimism has been linked to achievement in education, business, sport and

electoral politics.

There’s so many positive quotes surrounding us in our daily routines. ‘Positive things happen to

positive people.’, ‘Every day may not be good but there is something good in every day.’ ‘Turn your face

towards the sun so that the shadows will fall behind you.’ Are you the person always think about traffic

accident and incurable disease, most of the times negative mindset will ruin your mood but sometimes

bring you surprises, and we define that as ‘LUCKY’. In fact, live in positive is happier right? Why not?