1. Foo Shi-Ko
0318262
Foundation in Natural & Built Environment
Social Psychology
Group 12-2pm
27.10.14
2. Chapter 1: What is Social Psychology?
Social Loafing
Social loafing depicts the tendency of individuals to put forth less effort when they are part of a group. Because all members of the group are pooling their effort to attain a common aim, each member of the group contributes less than they would if they were individually responsible. The idea of working in groups is typically seen as a way to improve the accomplishment of a task by pooling the skills and talents of the individuals in that group. But, in some groups, there is a tendency on the part of participants to contribute less to the group's goal than if they were doing the same task themselves.
For example, I tend to execute better and effortlessly when our lecturer allocated an individual assignment for us instead of incorporating team work into a certain project. I feel at eased and comfortable working alone as I did not need to considerate to arrange work equally among the team mates and I can do and work at any given time I want. Everything will go exactly the way I want so I would tend to do better and efficiently on that particular assignment and got better grades than how I usually get for group assignments.
On the other hand, I usually get really low grades for group project as work and job are given and divided respectively among the group. The social loafing tendency makes it likely that I would put less effort into
3. the project when I was aware there was presence of others around me and I felt being evaluated and pressured to achieve that given certain expectations. Instead of assuming responsibility for certain tasks, you might simply assume that one of the other group members will take care of it.
Different perspectives of Social Psychology on why students stress so much
Sociocultural Perspective
Since young, my siblings and I were taught that if we did not pursue our studies hard then we would end up working as a embarrassing garbage collector like those men sleeping at the roadside. Due to this pressure being objectify on us, stress occurs because the culture accentuates more on the education itself rather than the significance of adopting a good attitude and personality within the person.
Evolutionary perspective
We are pressured to attain good grades because the emphasis is on competing with one another in the society in order to survive. Moreover, we would disappoint the people that we love if we do not achieve the certain expectations from our parents or lecturers. Hence, even if we aren't naturally good leaders nor good in certain field such as art, music
4. or sports but then the pressure would build up to facilitate because study hard and accomplish excellent grades can improve the change of survival for us in the future
Social Cognitive Perspective
Cognitive processes have not been established that identify developing a good attitude and personality in life is much more important than focusing solely on education itself. No cognitive conditioning has occurred to link that living a happy life is essential than just bury our heads in studies only and disregard everything around us such as family relationships, friendships and love.
Social Learning Perspective
Living in the environment where your friends and parents are very hardworking people and having high expectations like having comparing us with children who are better than us, eventually we too develop and grow into people like them through years of observing the behaviors of theirs. As such, study hard to strive a better achievement is even more important than building up the morale value within the person itself is perceived as an ordinary and acceptable behavior in our modern society today.
5. Chapter 2: The Self
Self-Schema
A self-schema is a belief or idea about oneself that leads to a bias that is self-perpetuating. It could consist of a particular role in society or a generalization based on social stereotypes. My whole life I've been told by my parents that I'm an independent child and my siblings should look up to me as a role model just so they do not need to rely everything on my parents. From this, I react by choosing to learn everything by my own and never ever depends on anybody else. I did everything by myself from studying to baking and learning all sorts of skills such as playing the instruments. The self-schema becomes self-perpetuating when I choose activities based on the beliefs of my parents instead of what I want to be, hence desires. Once we have developed a schema about ourselves such as a certain characteristics, there is a strong tendency for that schema to be maintained by a bias in what they attend to, in what they remember, and in what they are prepared to accept as true about themselves. That is why I've come to believe since I bear in mind that I am always capable of taking care of myself without needing any help from the others.
6. Self-serving biases
The self-serving bias refers to our inclination to take personal acknowledgment for success while blaming external attribution for our failures in other words we do not take responsibility of our own failures. Essentially, we tend to believe that our successes are due to internal traits also known as positive attributions and talents, while our failures are caused by variables outside of our control. For example, when I play really horribly in front of my Piano teacher during the lesson, I tend to blame her (external attribution) that I play this badly because she was inspecting me and it made me feel uncomfortable and pressured whereas I could play the melody beautifully at ease without any difficulty at home where no one is actually looking. On the other hand, I more likely to give credits to myself (internal attribution) especially when I play the song marvelously and gracefully without hitting a wrong key or irregular tempo stating that that was because I had practiced for the week and did my homework well. Self-serving biases are often occurs to allow people to protect their self-esteem. People tend to get boost in confidence through positive attribution while protecting their self-esteem and from personal responsibilities through negative attribution about them.
7. Chapter 3: Social cognition
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs. For instance, I've been longing to go for this camp which was held by my friend's church 3 years ago. It was the first camp I've ever attended so I was really thrilled and excited about this trip that I couldn't even have a wink the night before the camp. I've woken up the next day before the alarm rang and rushed to tidy myself up to look more presentable just to form a good impression on the rest. My friend's brother had eventually came to pick me up from my house. Upon arriving the destination, it was a enormous youth camp so there was probably around 80 or 90 kids there too who probably had the same thought as I do. As the adrenaline shot vigorously through my veins, I became even more ecstatic about this and it's finally happening. Suddenly, I accidentally tripped and knocked this little boy who happened to was running around the place with his friends and hooked his toy on my lace skirt. My heart sank as my skirt just ripped into half. I felt so embarrassed as there were people looking and whispering. I had a tough time overcoming that less than suave first impression, even though you are usually a very graceful and flexible person.
8. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is when a person unknowingly causes a prediction to come true, due to the simple fact that he or she expects it to come true. I once was in the lowest-ranked class (D class) my whole 6 years during my elementary school times. In the chinese education system for my school, they would arrange the students in 4 different classes for each standards exclusively depend on their overall grades for that particular term. However, I was given a choice to switch to the first class (A Class) which is the elite classroom when I was standard 5 because of my sudden improvement of scores and I was always ranked first in my class. From here, I've got to experience how the same teacher can react differently based on the type of classroom she entered. For instance, my Science teacher, Mrs.Wong never expect anything from my classmates in D class as our class was famous for its lazy students reputation. Therefore she didn't pay much attention nor given any motivation to our class. In other words, the D class didn't accomplish anything that she had given when she did gave extra homework or certain workloads to our class, thereby fulfilling her expectations. In other words, an expectation about a subject, such as a person or event, can affect our behavior towards that subject, which causes the expectation to be realized. Nevertheless, Mrs.Wong reacted differently by giving a lot of close attention to her students in A class and providing the student with careful and helpful suggestions when the students were
9. in need of help in their homework. Therefore, the students in A class being protected and showered with care and love tend to score well and better than my friends in D class even if they held the same qualities in both classes. Hence, fulfilling Mrs.Wong expectations that A class are filled with smart and well-developed students.
10. Chapter 4: Social Perception
Covariation Theory
Harold Kelley's Covariation Model of Attribution explains how we use social perception to attribute behavior to internal or external factors. It also explains what information we gather through perception, and how it's used to form a judgment about someone's behavior. The word 'covariation' refers to your ability to observe how two or more variables change in relation to each other. This attribution theory assumes that you have information from multiple experiences (at different places and times) that you use to determine what variables have changed and what has stayed the same. For example, Kayla is studying silently in the classroom for the psychology test later. The consensus variable answers the question, do multiple people behave the same way in the same situation? If the answer is yes, then consensus is high. If the answer is no, then consensus is low. The rest of the classmates are doing research and studying as well just like what Kayla is doing. So, consensus is high for Kayla's actions. Next is the distinctiveness variable. For instance, Kayla doesn't study so hard for every test but just for psychology because she's particularly weak in this subject. So, distinctiveness is high for Kayla's behavior because it is distinct from normal behavior in any other location. The third variable, consistency, For instance, Kayla doesn't always study silently in classroom as she gets distracted easily but for
11. psychology test only that she would pay more attention to this subject. So, consistency is low for the behavior.
12. Halo Effect
The halo effect is a type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person influences how we feel and think about his or her character. One great example of the halo effect in action is our overall impression of celebrities. Essentially, Winnie admires Chris Hemsworth because he is attractive, successful and owns a great body. Therefore, it impacts her evaluations of that person's specific traits such that she would think that he is a kind, smart and outgoing person as well in her eyes even if it might not be true. This also speaks the significance of forming first good impression on others and occur without us knowing or realizing it. Finally, let’s not forget the sad fact that negatives make a stronger impression than positives.
13. Chapter 5: Making Evaluations about the world
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a learning process in which two unrelated stimuli are repeatedly paired, and over time a reaction to the second stimulus can be achieved by the first stimulus alone. My mother is allergic to glutinous rice. Everytime she eats them, she'll get a terrible stomach ache and next diarrhea. She repeated eating them without knowing glutinous rice was the cause of her pain. After several tries, she came to know that glutinous rice was in every meal that she had which causes her extreme stomach ache. She stopped consuming any food which has glutinous rice in it right after she knew about it and the stomach ache eventually stopped. My mother also avoided food which has ingredients similar to glutinous rice for the following 20 years of her life since then as she associates glutinous rice with the agonizing indigestion causes.
14. Operant conditioning
Operant conditioning is the process of learning behavioral patterns which are based on certain stimuli from the environment, such that, external stimuli lead to certain behavior. Positive reinforcement
I would be rewarded with whatever I desire whenever I've got an A+ in my test or I helped out with the house chores particularly when I was in the elementary school or middle school. Maybe with a sticker or written in colorful ink and a big A+, was reward enough to keep studying and turning in homework on time. For this reason, I'll help out my mother with tidying the living room consecutively and wash the dishes as I understood clearly that I would be rewarded in return for something I wish that my parents would buy for me.
Negative reinforcement
My sister, Yuyan who absolutely despises watching horror movie which causing her to have many sleepless nights one after the other. She would remember each murder and blood-splattered scene clearly in the back of her mind as if it just happen to her yesterday every single time she watches. To avoid this ghastly experience from repeating itself, she would avoid talking or even listening to people talking about ghost stories nor purely fiction thriller by switching conversation or just leave.
