SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING & DESIGNFOUNDATION IN NATURAL & BUILT ENVIRONMENT

July Intake 2013Semester 2

Social Psychology (PSYC0103)

Submission Date: 2nd June 2014

Name Student ID No.

Lee Kim Thiam 0310710

Tan Chiew Nee 0303531

Liong Xin Yie 0316600

Tay Jia Jian 0315508

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Table of content

Title PageAcknowledgement 1

Introduction 2

Method Procedure

Materials and Apparatus3

Discussion 4 - 5

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Acknowledgement

A sincere gratitude to Tan Chiew Nee, Tay Jia Jian, Lee Kim Thiam and Liong Xin Yie

for their outmost participation in making this project a success. Also, special thanks to our

lecturer, Mr Shankar for providing us with the advice, support and guidance in helping us

with this project. Additionally, we would like to thank Fong Jia Zheng for playing an

additional role in this project.

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Introduction

Social psychology plays a big role in everybody’s lives. It has many concepts, where

people have experienced or probably will in the future. For this project, we have produced a

short video that shows the concepts that people experience in their everyday lives. In this

video, there are five concepts which people mainly experience, which are unrealistic

optimism, bystander effect, aggression, racial prejudice and prosocial behavior.

The synopsis of the story is as followed. Darren comes back home and gets drunk from

alcohol assumption. He gets a call from his friend Sherny for lunch and agrees. Sherny tells

Darren that he is too drunk and he should not be driving, believing that people die more

from car accidents than most cases. Darren denies it with a factual statement that even

more people die from heart attack than most cases but they are not shown to the public. He

then assures himself that he will be fine and leaves his house, only to get into an accident a

few minutes later.

After crashing, there are two passersby who are at the scene of the accident. They just

stare at the accident without calling for help. Not long after, another passerby comes and

calls the ambulance immediately. At the hospital, Darren’s friend, Jia Jian, visits the hospital

and sees the doctor who is a Bangladeshi. Halfway through, Jia Jian fantasizes about himself

beating the doctor up, but when in reality, he just thanks the doctor for his help.

Outside the hospital, Jia Jian pushes Darren out in a wheel chair and leaves him at the

top of a slope while he takes a phone call. The wheel chair rolls down but Darren is saved by

a passerby. At the end, she asks for money for saving Darren from rolling into the lake.

When declined, she pushes Darren down the slope. The whole video depicts concepts of

what most people would usually experience every day.

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Method

Procedure

For this project, we decided to use Taylor’s Lakeside University’s surroundings as it was

more convenient for the group members to carry out the project together. The main areas

of the campus that we shot our videos at were the car park and on the road. We decided to

shoot our video during the weekends as we predicted that there would be lesser people

during the weekends. This is to ensure that there is no interference during our video

shooting. We have used a few materials to help complete this project. There were a few

scenes which required us to shoot in one of our group members’ house, where we were

able to portray a person’s situation at home. The house we used to shoot our video in had

materials that were of good use for our video project such as the sofa and the fridge.

Apparatus and Materials

The main apparatus for this project is a video camera for video shooting purposes. We also

had one extra person who does not belong to our group to play an extra role in the video.

The props used for this project include a car for one a few of the scenes in the video,

multiple clothing sets for the different characters in the video as there are too few of us for

the number of characters set in the video as well as can drinks for one of the scenes. In the

video, there is a scene where it required alcohol consumption. Therefore, to refrain from

alcohol consumption, we replaced it with soft drinks and stuck a piece of paper on the can

to indicate that the soft drink was alcohol.

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Discussion

From the video, we are able to portray some of the concepts that we have learnt from

our psychology lessons.

Unrealistic Optimism is the tendency to imagine that our own outcomes are better than those

of other people. The Unrealistic Optimism concept can be seen when Darren tells Sherny that

he will not get into a car accident, believing that it won’t happen to him but does anyway.

The definition for the Bystander Effect is when responsibilities are pushed away in the

presence of more people. The Bystander Effect is shown when Darren crashes his car and

when two passersby come across the incident, they just stare at each other and wonder if

they should call the ambulance. Thinking that someone else would have already called the

ambulance, they assume that the accident is not their problem anymore thus walking away.

Aggression is the intention to harm other people through verbal or physical methods. The

Aggression concept can be seen when Jia Jian has entered into a thought of hitting the

doctor. The definition for Prejudice is a negative learned attitude towards people, while the

definition for Racism is the discrimination directed at a certain racial group. From this video,

we can see Racial Prejudice as Jia Jian was about to hit the doctor who is a Bangladeshi as he

is prejudice against Bangladeshis. In the end, he doesn’t when it comes back to reality. This

shows prejudice for the Bangladeshi race instead of discriminating them as Jia Jian does not

literally take any physical action against the doctor. The definition for Prosocial Behavior is

the positive social actions taken in order to help others. It can be divided into two models,

one being the Altruistic model where behaviors are done for selfless reasons and also the

Egoistic models where behaviors are done for selfish reasons. From the video, we can see

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that a passerby helps Darren only to ask fifty dollars for saving him from rolling into the lake.

When rejected, she pushes Darren into the lake.

In conclusion, we can see the concepts that are applied into the video that can be

related to our everyday situations. These are a few examples of the many social

psychological concepts that we can all see in real life.

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