SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN THE DESIGN SCHOOL

FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT 2014 FNBE AUGUST INTAKE

Social Phycology Assignment 1 - Individual Journal

Name: Tan You Liang

Student ID: 0320215

Session: Monday 4pm-6pm

Course: Foundation in Natural and Built Environment

Submission Date: 27 April 2015

Entry 1: Social Influences

5 Aug 2014

Social influence is a major topic in social psychology and looks at how individual thoughts,

actions and feelings are influenced by social groups. More about various types of social

influence including peer pressure, obedience, leadership, conformity and persuasion. Social

influences occurs when one's emotions, opinions, or behaviours are affected by others.

For instance, before I came up to university, during the days in high school I used to hang out

with one of the well-known gang in the school. We were so called the “well-known” gang

because of creating too much problems to our teachers and people around us. During the days

we were so spoiled that we often commit crime such as bullying, stealing, gangsterism and so

on. After all these years of childish act I’ve done during my life high school, it finally came

to an end. Fortunately I managed to graduate and the moment I first stepped in my university

life, I realised everything was so different compared to high school. The first friend I met in

here was Roy, he is an optimistic, diligent as well as an active person. Not only him but also

another few people that I started to get along with. Initially during our project 1, I was still a

lazy and procrastinating person that always trying to give excuses for not completing work

and not coming for meetings and stuffs. However during project 2 they didn’t leave me for

my behaviour. Instead they tried to understand my past as well as trying to lend a helping

hand to change my attitude. I was so touched by their kind act towards me. Ever since that, I

learned from all my mistakes and been through a real change in life. Turning over a new leaf,

I am now a completely different person from the past, I became a better person.

Entry 2: Self- Efficacy

22 Nov 2011

Self-efficacy is a person's judgment about being able to perform a particular activity. A

person with low self-efficacy will try to avoid difficult tasks and produce low quality of

outcome because they do not believe in their own ability. For people with high self-efficacy,

they tend to believe in their own ability. They see difficult tasks as challenges, they give their

best to accomplish the work so that the outcome they produce with be way better than the

outcome produced by individuals with low self-efficacy. Even though an individual with high

self-efficacy produce a lot better work but overly high self-efficacy in an individual may not

bring out a good result sometimes.

For example, during the days I was in high school, everyone was compulsory to take part in

sport. Everyone deserves an opportunity to choose their favourite sport. Therefore I chose the

basketball club. The reason I joined basketball club because I was so amazed by the

basketball athletes. Their skills, performances, attitude caught my eyes. Before joining the

club, my knowledge for basketball was only through sports channels but as soon as I became

one of the member of basketball club, I signed up for their training programme every

weekend. The training was tough and tiring, my stamina was not strong enough to catch up

my teammates. I was not flexible enough on sports. I find it too hard for myself. I had once

thought that I was not talented in sports and eventually I was about to give up on playing

basketball and performed inadequately during the training session. However things were not

so bad, my teammates found out my problem and came to assist me. He told me not to give

up easily as Rome was not built in a single day, he also told me that as long as I kept on

believing in myself and not giving up, eventually I will become someone greater than I

thought. From that day onwards, I trained hard and consistently to brush up my skills. My

first competition impressed the coach and he offered me to play for his team. I am now a state

basketball player. My teammate’s words gave me the most motivation and that was what

makes me what I am now, I promised myself not to give up easily when I face harder

challenges in future.

Entry 3: Counterfactual Thinking

12 June 2014

A concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives

to life events that have already occurred. A counterfactual thought occurs when a person

modifies a factual prior event and then assesses the consequences of that change. A person

may imagine how an outcome could have turned out differently, if the antecedents that led

to that event were different. This often happens in 'if only...' situations, where we wish

something had or had not happened. This can be so powerful we can change our own

memories, adjusting the facts and creating new memories.

Counterfactual Thinking is classified as two different categories that is Upward

Counterfactuals and Downward Counterfactuals. For my experience I will be talking about

Upward Counterfactual Thinking. “People always say life is too short for regrets. But the

truth is, it’s too long.” ―Sarah Addison Allen. One of the most difficult things to deal with

in life is regret.  Sometimes something will happen, and you will respond in the wrong

way, and for a while thereafter you will wish you had done it differently. This is hardly the

worst kind of regret. Well as for myself, one of the greatest thing I’ve regretted on was my

relationship. Her name is Chelsea. The story started a year back, we met each other in

school, after months of pursuing her we started dating like any other couples do. We shared

a real sweet moment before everything went downhill. As everyone know, examples of

relationships that didn’t work out will go through 6 main stages that is the meeting, the

chase, the honeymoon, following the comfortable, tolerance and eventually to downhill and

breakups. As for my case it was more likely when we could not make it through the stage

4, the comfortable. The time when we were comfortable with each other, we truly act as

ourselves in front of each other. It depends on what you do with that comfort, some use it

positively, continuing to work at their relationships, grow together. However for Chelsea

and I, we allowed each other to create distance. Whether it is taking each other for granted,

or people changing over time, the bottom line was someone stops trying and gradually our

feelings aren’t strong as before anymore. We had a terrible argument and that ends

relationship between us. I knew it was my fault for not being understanding enough, I

shouldn’t scold her for being with another guy as they were discussing to surprise me for

my upcoming birthday. However our relationship had gone irreparably damaged. She

couldn’t bear with me anymore. I should have made things clearer before I talk. Even until

now I will constantly remind myself, thinking that what if I didn’t throw those words to her

and acted differently that day, probably we are still able to work it out.

Entry 4: Self-fulfilling Prophecy

3 April 2014

Positive or negative expectations about circumstances, events, or people that may affect a

person’s behaviour toward them in a manner that he or she (unknowingly) creates situations

in which those expectations are fulfilled. This happens because our beliefs influences our

actions. For example, if a woman thinks that her husband will leave her for another woman,

she will act in ways that will directly or indirectly cause her belief to come true. She might

get jealous easily and make a fuss about him being friends with other women. She might pick

fights whenever she suspects that he is cheating on her, or she might go through his personal

things to look for evidence of cheating. Eventually, her actions will put a strain on their

marriage, and her husband just might leave her, causing her prediction to come true.

Based on my experience, I was once got into an interview for a job. It was during my school

holiday. That was my first job interview. Before the interview, I was so afraid that I could not

get that job. I even decide the result that I could not get the job for myself before the job

interview. I was so negative thinking back then. I was so nervous and kept on doing rehearsal

so that I will not fail to get the job. But when I got into the interview, I couldn’t utter a word

as I was too nervous like butterfly was fluttering in my stomach. In the end as my expectation

I could not get the job. After this incident, I will not think any more negative expectation but

positive expectation so that same thing will not happen again.

Entry 5: Observational Learning

23 April 2012

A tremendous amount of learning happens through this process of watching and imitating

others. In psychology, this is known as observational learning. It tends to be the most

common thing during childhood as children learn from the authority figures and peers in their

lives. It also plays an important role in the socialization process, as children learn how to

behave and respond to others by observing how their parents and other caregivers interact

with each other and with other people.

Observational learning is a process in which a person observes another person's behaviour

and the consequences of the behaviour. If the consequences are positive, the person may

imitate the behaviour. Based on my experience, I had a job in sales. However, I had no sales

experience. During my first day I observed an experienced salesperson. I believe that helps

me to gain knowledge of the statements and behaviours of an effective salesperson. Another

experience of my observational learning was during my childhood. When I was a kid I

witnessed another boy on the playground get in trouble for hitting another child. I learnt from

observing this interaction that I should not hit others.