Foo Shi-Ko

0318262

Foundation in Natural & Built Environment

Social Psychology

Group 12-2pm

27.10.14

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

psychology test only that she would pay more attention to this subject.

So, consistency is low for the behavior.

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.

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.

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.