2nd Nov 2014, 6pm

After learning Chapter 2, I have come to realize only now I know myself better.

This is like an overall description of the self-concept. Even though there are few

ideas of how people describing themselves but I rather think Mead’s Self theory

by George Herbet Mead and The Looking-Glass Self theory by Charles Horton

Cooley are pretty much well-explained to describe myself.

Firstly, Mead argued that our self is something that has a development process

in it whereby it is not nurtured but natured, instead. Somehow I do agree in this

statement, I think who am I today is because of the experience I have been

through for 19 years of living. Just a simple event like on the first day of college, I

have been so insecure with the fact that I might not do well in this course. Of

course, I wanted to do well as I do not want to be slacking anymore and I do not

want people to see me as the chi ld who took things for granted. This can be

described in Cooley's theory where I imagine how I look to others and how other

people will judge about me. After having an interaction with my course mates,

through conversations, ideas and opinions like how Mead says, I slowly came to

realize that we are all the same and everyone starts from the scratch. By then, I

slowly gained confident and started to learn and study hard in order to success.

In overall picture, I can see my self-development during the process - from

someone who was intimated to someone who is very confident and sure of what I

am doing in the future.

Failing on pre-university in the past might still haunted me everyday. However,

due to self-efficacy, the belief in my ability to achieve certain goals is the reason

why I am still standing strong. The first time I entered this course, "Is your

parents an architect?" is a very frequent question to be asked. At first, I do feel

discouraged because my parents are not and I do not have the benefits as

others. Nevertheless, I take that as challenge instead and it encouraged me even

more to do well in future. I am determined to prove to others that just because

your parents were not architects, you can't be one as well. Just like how Albert

Bandura (1977) stated, I believe I am person with high self-efficacy, whom see

difficult tasks as challenges rather than something to be avoided.

In conclusion, this lesson helped me to look back and compare the old and new

me. The surrounding especially, had affected so much in sharping and

developing my self. Without doubt, I must admit that my family and close friends

are the biggest influences of creating who I am today.

2nd Nov 2014, 8pm

Back in Chapter 1, Mr S was explaining to us in class about the causes of an

individual behaviour in different social situations. To be honest, this lessons really

reminds me back of myself in high school where we had an inter-class drama

competition.

My class, 5 Omega was eagerly to be the best among the best. Therefore, we

took our time and discussed in order to win this competition. It was good of

course to get the chance to exchange and generate more cool ideas during the

preparation time. We even spent our class money for the props and costumes.

Not to be forgotten, we also practiced everyday so we could succeed this in one

go, on the real day of the competition. Just like how Norman Triplett (1898)

described, this is called social facilitation where by an individual's performance is

enhanced better in the presence of others. Personally, I think most of us were

behaving in such ways because we really wanted to win. However so, working in

a large scale of group is not an easy task because social loafing can also

occurred on the same time. Due to social loafing proposed by Max Ringelmann

(1883) happened in the group, where an individual/a bunch of people who feels

their ideas and contribution are less dispensable, our class unfortunately lose the

competition. Even though it was devastating that we lose the competition, we

were all proud of the work and paid off as The Best Cooperation Award.

To think about it, the reasons why my class eagerly wanted to win the

competition can be described in different perspectives of social psychology. In

sociocultural perspective, my class were actually influenced by the individualistic

culture. The culture had already place a greater emphasis on winning group is

the best class among the entire batch. In evolutionary perspective, we believe on

winning the competition, we were gaining something, not only prizes but pride

and attention from others. Moving on, in social learning perspective, we wanted

to win because we learned through example that losing are for losers and

winning for champions. On the other hand, in social cognitive perspective, we

just wanted to win is because we deserved to win. Results of the all the

perspectives, my class were actually way too determined on winning rather than

doing our best on the drama-play which therefore, effected us on losing the

competition instead.

Without realizing, it is proven that our behavior is actually really changing in

different kind of social situations.

3rd Nov 2014, 8pm

In Chapter 3, we have been exposed about “schema”. It was actually an

interesting topic to talk about. Schema is a mental frameworks which guide us in

understanding of the world. Schema generally helped us in developing ourselves

but truth is, there is a trouble in schema that can actually effect to ourselves. The

trouble in schemas is called stereotyping.

This had reminded me of myself when I was being the only Malay in the class

back in my previous university. Truth to be told, it wasn’t easy because it feels

like I have been seeing as an alien or a weird living-creature in the class. Even

though I tried to be more out-spoken but some of them just cannot accept the

way I am. I am that little girl who will be left out especially during lunch hour

because nobody will invite me to join in. Most of my classmates were rather think

I am a “burden” because they couldn’t go to the non-halal restaurants if I were

joining them. Honestly, this have left a huge impact to myself and made me

stereotype Chinese as inconsiderate people.

It was true that when this schema had formed, it is hard to change. It is pretty

hard for me to let go of these kind of schema and after that event, I tend to

assume all members of that particular group, which is Chinese, share some

common feature, which is being inconsiderate to others.

However so, when I entered to this university, everything had changed. The

Chinese here, acted and behaved differently compared to the Chinese I knew

before. Of course it is hard for me to change my perception towards that

particular group, but the differences in every each individual had allowed me to

modify the existing schema (which is stereotype them for being inconsiderate) to

accommodate to a new piece of information. This term called accommodation, as

what Jean Piaget had proposed.

Now that my schema had change, not all Chinese are being inconsiderate after

all. In fact, now all my close friends are actually Chinese. This lesson not only

make realized of what had occurred to myself, but it stopped and prevented me

from being stereotype to people, especially to any races, in the future. In

addition, I hope this lesson can be useful for the future, because that is what

schema was about after all.

9th Nov 2014, 8pm

Among all, I could say that Chapter 4 is the most interesting chapters I have ever

learnt! In that class, Mr S gave a lecture about how we perceive the others. I

personally think that it is an interesting topic because we perceive others

unconsciously almost every day without us knowing.

As proposed by Fritz Heider (1958), the way we perceive others are actually

based on the pattern where behavior become predicted. This term called the

attribution process, where by it gives us a clue and prediction of other’s behavior

and response. As an example, in previous group project, I was appointed as

group leader. I noticed that one of my members was not doing his work. Indeed,

it was not a behavior that I expected because deadline was just stone’s throw

away that time. In a dispositional attribution, which only focuses on individual’s

characteristics, I tend to assume that he is very lazy and troublesome to my

group. I was being dissatisfied of this kind of behaviour as this might effect to our

progress. Due to situational attribution, which focuses on his current situation

who is injured due to an accident, I somewhat being considerate for giving him

less work instead.

On the other hand, the situational factors can only be weigh if the observer has

the capability to do so. This term called cognitive capacity, which proposed by

Gilbert, Piham and Krull (1988). As a leader, I act as a person who need for

cognition, where I have innate drive to solve problems through reasons, thinking

and analysis. Even though it needs time, motivations and energy for me to put

aside my member’s characteristic of laziness, but I think it will be such a waste of

time being dissatisfied on that particular issue. To solve the problem, I reduce the

the amount of workload that he has to do, which on the same time too, lead a

reduction of correspondence bias.

It is unbelievable how this lessons had taught me that - simple event like this are

the proof the way we perceive others, it is either favour or unfavourably. Without

any doubts, this knowledge can help me work and perceive others more

favourably in future, hopefully.

9th Nov 2014, 10pm

In Chapter 5, we learnt about our attitude, of making evaluations about the world.

In this chapter, we were firstly introduced the meaning of attitude. Attitude in

general, refers to evaluations of a person based on the ABC components which

are Affective, Behavioural and Cognitive.

During Mr S lecture, he did came across telling us of how attitude can be

ambivalent at times. Ambivalent attitude is when I am having both positive and

negative attitude at one particular issue. As an example, playing songs loudly in

the studio while doing work was something common to architecture students to

motivate us to do our work. The most frequent song being played in studio

nowadays was by Sam Smith. Even though I enjoyed listening to his ‘Stay With

Me’ song, but I don’t really like the other songs from him. When other songs from

him were being played, my emotions were disturbed and lead my behaviour to

stop doing work for awhile until the song is finished.

Even though the situation above showed that my attitudes affected my

behaviour, but not most of the time it does. Research done shows that attitude

and behaviour did not influence to each other. Just like how I know skipping

classes is bad for me but I still did anyway. Skipping classes are bad because I

might missed lecture’s important notes or some tips for final exams. Due to peer

pressure, I sti ll tend to miss classes and hangout instead. Somehow, this matter

made me feel very discomfort to which point that I wanted to change my attitude

to agree and match with my behaviour. In order to succeed that, I have to gain all

my motivation and supports that are needed.

After all, I am glad that I realized my mistakes after learning to this lesson or else,

I never knew when will I notice them. I seriously hope that the more I learn in the

future, doesn’t matter whether the subject is Psychology or others, this

knowledge will lead me to be a better person in the future.