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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING & DESIGN

Foundation of Natural Build Environment (FNBE)

Name: Joshua Lee Yee Kai

Student Id: 0315820

Group/Session: Monday (4pm-7pm)

Subject: Social Psychology PSYC0103

Course: FNBE (July 2013 intake)

Lecturer: Shankar Thiruchelvam

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24th Febuary 2014

Self-concept

Self-concept is explained as what we think of ourselves and self-esteem is explained as

what we feel about ourselves. The “self” is a tool used to associate or communicate with our

society. Self-concept is explained as what we think of ourselves and it can categorize a person as

“I” and “Me”. “I” is the one with contact with people. Therefore it is used as a catalyst to deal

with people in the real world. Then, “Me” is the thought of one, it is cognitive. The “Me”

regulates the “I” to behave a socially acceptable behavior. From what I learnt about this is, the

“Me” could be me thinking of how disgusting it is to smell the stench of fart from a friend,

however the “I” projects a calm behavior suggesting it is natural and normal and saying

otherwise from the “Me”. This regulation will help prevent social conflicts. Also, the “Me” could

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be thinking of how I dislike this person’s attitude but then the “I” shows no sign of me disliking

the person. One example that I can really relate to this concept would be I dislike a guy from my

course named Egbert. Though I do not like Egbert’s annoying and childish attitude, but I still

choose to maintain my friendship with him and avoid further conflicts by not picking on his

annoying attitude. By doing so, I not only get to maintain my friendship with him but also avoid

the chance of hurting his feelings. At times, the “Me” could be thinking about how

uncomfortable I feel whenever I am with Egbert but the “I” projects a calm behavior whenever I

am in contact with Egbert.

This also explains that the “self” can be used to self-regulate an individual. I have also

learnt that the self that can self-regulate is a mature self, for example, if I am angry, what I can

do with the anger? How is the anger helping me to achieve my goals? Therefore, by being able to

regulate and control the anger, then one can be considered a mature self. On the contrary, “Me”

is a material self, a mature self and is able to self-regulate. I remember when I was a young chap,

I used to throw tantrum whenever I don’t get to buy the latest Ultraman and power-ranger’s toy.

But when I grew older, I soon learned the value of money and how my parents worked hard

towards earning the money. Thus, over time, the “Me” grew matured and the “Me” is able to

regulate the “I” in thoughts, actions and from worldly greed. With that, I learned to save money,

appreciate my parents, to understand the financial issues within the family and also to control

myself from throwing unnecessary tantrums.

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24th Febuary 2014

Self-Concept

Self-concept can also be broken down to self-schema, self-efficacy and physiological influences. For the

first part, self-schema, we hold beliefs about our identity. For example, all this while I am alive, I have

always had the self-schema of myself being talkative and bubbly. I enjoy talking with people and I am

quite sociable among people as well. Sometimes people find me fun and energetic to be around with. At

the same time, I also hold a self-schema of myself as a handsome guy. I felt that most girls are attracted

to me and are shy to respond to my talkativeness. I could be wrong but this is what I have built up for

my self-efficacy. It could perhaps also be that the girls that I associated with are shy in nature and

doesn’t respond much in return. This factor could also be due to a certain degree of the parents raising

the child up and also the education system the child went through when they were younger and were

taught to listen attentively and respond with few words and answer straight to the point. Or another

theory I could say is that the girls that I associate with are careful and doesn’t share much with strangers

like me. Or they could have a schema that handsome guys like me are dangerous and cunning. Still with

all this happening, it doesn’t change my self-schema on how I view myself as a handsome guy.

Moving on to the second part, which is the self-efficacy. The self-efficacy is your belief in your own

ability to achieve a certain goal. For example, when I was younger, I have always thought of myself as

being a very and super brilliant guy. I had always thought that whatever hard questions in Chemistry and

Biology that was thrown to me, could be done if I studied hard enough. Albert Bandura (1977) explained

self-efficacy as high self-efficacy and low self-efficacy. Simply put it, people with high self-efficacy see

difficult task as challenges. In contrast, people with low self-efficacy see difficult task as something to be

avoided. From my past experiences, I had a high self-efficacy in solving the difficult Chemistry mystery

and studied really hard for it without giving up. I even went all the way for tuition classes to improve my

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understanding of Chemistry. At the same time, even though I had a high self-efficacy in studying

Chemistry, I never had the same for Biology. I had a low self-efficacy in studying biology. Biology never

interests me and is plain boring in my opinion. In my form 5 year, I dropped Biology subject as I view it

as difficult, hard to remember the facts, and plain boring. These examples would have demonstrated

both my high self-efficacy and low self-efficacy in performing a task.

Finally, the self-concept is also very much influenced by the physiological influences. For example I

remember once falling down in primary school and broke my left arm. After removing the cast or

bandage from my left arm after a month, I fell down that week and broke my left arm again. Because of

all the traumatized events that took place to my left arm, I have always felt that it was weaker than my

right arm. Because of these traumatizing experiences, it has very much influenced how I view my left

arm as a weak arm and not being able to perform as well as my right arm. Due to this very reason of

having my left arm broke twice, it has also influenced me by thinking that I am not as strong as most

guys that didn’t break their arm before would generally be. I could be wrong as well, perhaps I should

start lifting some weights and training my left arm to be as strong as it should.

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3rd March 2014

Schema

Schema was explained as a mental framework on ones’ experiences. For example,

whenever you enter a male toilet, one will expect to see tissue papers, hand dryer, mirrors, sink,

urinal and so on. Last year around March the 20th, I was in one of Melbourne’s restaurant. After

tasting and eating Kangaroo’s meat for the first time, I decided to go to the loo. I was in

complete shock as I entered the unisex toilet for the first time. Initially I was shocked as I saw

some women coming out of the toilet and also thought I was in the wrong toilet. At the same

time, not seeing any urinals makes me wonder even more. The worst thing I saw in the toilet was

a used condom. Anyways, seeing a female inside the toilet and no urinals around just challenge

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and pauses my mind for a moment. Because of this experience, I developed a new schema on

unisex toilets, which is rather unpleasant and uncomfortable at times. Another example would

be, whenever you hear the word “apple”, you might either be thinking about the apple company

that manufactured apple products or the real apple from the tree that is juicy and delicious. Mr

Shankar stated that schema could also be activated or triggered through smells, a person and so

on. For example, if you have a bad experience with a person before, whenever you see that

person, that person becomes a schema driven memory that triggers the anger in you. I have gone

through certain bad experiences working with some people which caused me to not wanting to

work with them in future projects. At the same time, during the time of working with my group

mates, some of them didn’t contribute much to the project. This resulted in me classifying and

branding them as lazy people. Therefore, whenever I have future projects, a schema driven

memory is triggered in me reminding me of my past experiences with the previous group mates,

resulting in me avoiding them as my group mates.

Besides that, whenever I walked in a KFC restaurant, it will remind me of my younger days

when I used to hang out with my uncle. It brings the happy memories and moments back to when

I was a young boy. Therefore what I learnt also is that schema can make one person feel a

positive and happy feeling.

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3rd March 2014

Schema

Another good example of schema is stereotyping. These are all scenarios of schema

driven memories. From my understanding on schema, whatever that we experience in the past

will shape our schema about things. For example, after working with people that didn’t

contribute much to a project, I created a stereotype towards them as lazy people. I remember

working once with Egbert and Bryan Lum, the two 16 years old then. They were quite lazy in my

opinion and didn’t really contribute much other than complaining how “perfect” if should have

been. During meetings, they didn’t turn up or were talking to other people and playing with their

card of deck. In the beginning I was alright but it soon got to my nerves and I began to despise

their behavior. These resulted in me creating a schema on them by stereotyping them as

annoying and lazy.

On the other hand, schema is also known as a cognitive structure that is used to identify

and process information, it operates like a mental index file where each index card represents a

different category of information. For example, whenever I think of a car, things like steering

wheels, 2 or 4 doors, gear and so on comes to mind. That was the information that was stored in

my mind whenever I thought of a car. In the meantime, it may not necessarily be true, because

the formula 1 car does not comes with a door.

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Besides that, whenever I thought of hackers, an imaginary image of someone bypassing

through securities, stealing information, and all sort of things associated with bad and evil comes

to mind. Although, a hacker may not be necessarily be bad. This is because hacking itself is a

skill required by computer programmers.

I remember always having thoughts that a hacker could be hacking my computer whenever I

switched it on. When I was younger, malicious viruses and malwares are always bloating around

my parent’s computer. It frightens me to even touch the computer as I was afraid the viruses in

the computer would alter my parent’s working documents in the computer. This is because my

father has been scolding me for playing games in his computer and resulting in his computer not

working the way it was previously.

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1st May 2014

Mental Representation

Mr Shankar started his topic on The Self: Who am I and how other individual sees me.

He first went about explaining the meaning of self-concept. Based on the lecturers’ definition of

self-concept, it is a mental representation or overall sense of “you” which includes the various

beliefs the individual hold about one self. It is also how an individual describe him or herself. To

add on, it may also be thought of as a collection of self-schema. Based from my understanding, if

a girl is constantly being praised as a pretty girl, soon enough she will develop a mental

representation and self-schema of herself as a pretty girl.

Mental representation is a subjective reality, an object or an event or a person is neutral, it

has no meaning, if you do a mental representation, the object has got a reality. This basically

means, through our experiences from accumulated events on a particular subject, will shape our

thinking and thoughts about that subject in the way it is to us. For example, because of my past

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experiences of using bottles for storing and drinking water whenever I am thirsty, my brain will

interpret a bottle of water as a thirst quencher. Another life example I experienced would be

because of my past experiences of being constantly canned when I was younger in Lick Hung

Chinese primary school, my brain will interpret that Lick Hung Chinese primary school as a

torturing and stressful place to study in. This also will lead me to not wanting to return to that

school as I have a negative mental representation of Lick Hung primary school. Besides that, I

remember once having forced to answer a mathematic question in front of the whole class. Being

a student with a bad grade in mathematics when I was younger, it was kind of like a life

threatening situation when I was forced to answer the question. This is because failing to answer

it correctly would mean having to face the stroke of the teacher and few more hours of extra

tuition classes. Therefore, I have built a mental representation of fear when being challenged to

do a mathematic question even till date.

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1st May 2014

Mental Representation

I had always had a mental representation of myself as a smart guy, cheerful guy and a good

looking person. How did I get myself to think that I am smart? The reason could be because

many people like my relatives always say that I am a smart guy. Besides my relatives, my

mother’s friend will always say that I am smart looking person. At times, in school, my friends

will also say that I look smart. Maybe because I am wearing a spectacle and look a little nerdy

which resulted in people labelling me as smart?

On the other hand, I also had a mental representation of myself as a cheerful guy that could cheer

people’s day up. My mother used to say that I have a cheerful personality that could brighten up

the family’s day. Besides that, my good friend’s loves inviting me to gatherings and they always

praise me for being a cheerful person.

Moreover, I had a mental representation of myself being a good looking person. Ever since I was

young, my grandmother, my mother’s friend, my relatives, my school teachers and even some of

my friends used to say that I was good looking. Because of this very reason, I developed a

mental representation of myself as being a good looking person. This surely has also impacted

my self-esteem.

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1st May 2014

Halo Effect

Beautiful people like movie stars can make a good impression rather quickly. It is also

followed by a positive qualities being attributed to them. For example, a movie star that is

beautiful is also viewed with other positive qualities being attributed to them like generous, a

great singer and so on which may or may not be true. In contrary, a rapist will be viewed and

attributed with negative qualities like pervert, mentally retarded and so on.

I would like to explore on the Halo Effect and how it might have affected me. The halo

effect is a cognitive bias that influences our view on someone and attributing other positive or

negative qualities with that individual. For example, whenever a pretty girl passes by my sight in

university, I attribute all sort of positive qualities on her like gentleness, compassionate, joyous

and so on. Also whenever I see a girl that dresses openly like wearing a low cut top, I will

attribute her with qualities like slutty, bitchy, mean girl, clubbing girl and so on. On the other

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hand, Halo effect also affected how I chose my friends. For example, when I first met Egbert, I

already had the impression and perception of him being childish, selfish, self-centered, attention

seeker and impatient. Therefore, I chose to avoid him at all cost. The friend that I chose to seek

out is someone that is respectful, caring and generally comfortable to be with.

The halo effect surely can affect the way we think whether or not we are aware of it. I

also remembered the days in high school when my friends labelled me as a rich kid just because I

looked smart, handsome and speak quite well. On the other hand, the halo effect also affected me

in areas like my grades in university. For example, because of Mr Joe’s perception of how

capable the girl’s groups were, he graded them with an A+ over my group’s work. Mr Joe is

acting on the halo effect he had upon the girl’s group as being more hardworking, dedicated and

committed. This brings about injustice and unfairness especially in the grading of project grades

by certain lecturers that tend to favor girls over boys. Because of this very reason, the halo effect

is also taking place in my mind on my views of Mr Joe as an unfair, bias, injustice and a pervert

lecturer.

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1st May 2014

Halo Effect

I remember when I was younger, one my mother’s friend, Aunty Christine used to praise

me as a cute and good looking boy. She also associated and said that I am a talented smart boy

that could draw really well. Even though my drawings at that time could and may not even be as

good as the average kids. This is what we call the halo effect taking place either consciously or

unconsciously to my mother’s friend. Still, this could have been for the better. Because, the

praise that Aunty Christine gave me of being able to draw fairly well, has led me to improve

myself even further to impress them far greater. Moreover, Aunty Christine used to praise me as

being a smart boy too. When I was younger and back in primary school, I had always been the

boy with the lowest scores in most subjects in class. This reason may or may not be associated

with my IQ levels and intelligence, but more so to the language barrier I am facing in school.

Being a boy that was brought up in an English speaking home environment and sent to study in a

Chinese primary school will definitely hinder me from getting the best results among peers in my

class. But all in all, the point is that Aunty Christine praised me for being a talented smart boy

even though she didn’t know much about how I performed academically in school. Perhaps she

heard it through word of mouth from my mother or perhaps she just want to impress my mother

by praising her son. However due to the praise given by Aunty Christine, it kept a pressure on

me to perform greater and I had developed better drawing skills and become the Joshua today.

So I would say that the Halo Effect itself had impacted my life in one way or another.

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7th May 2014

Confirmation Bias

Schema was explained as a mental framework on one’s experiences and consist certain

problem. We are going on discussing with the trouble regarding schemas, which is the confirmation bias.

The confirmation bias refers to the tendency to selectively search for and consider information that

confirms one’s belief. Like evolution, creationism and so on is a confirmation bias. For example, the

belief in millions of years which are presented in magazines, mass media, school’s textbooks may bring

up people with the mindset that the earth is really that old (which may or may not be true and couldn’t

yet be 100% proven) is an example of confirmation bias. I also hold up a confirmation bias by agreeing

to everything the bible states as a well-documented history. At the same time, I believe that God is real,

He exists and that He formed the earth and created every living thing. Therefore, even though the

newspaper, media, textbooks and many people have tried to convince me on the Darwin’s theory, I

rejected the idea and only believed in my beliefs. No matter how much “scientific” research and data

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that has tried to prove the non-existent of God, I still believe in the existence of God. By not accepting

other theories and beliefs, I definitely am practicing confirmation biasness.

Another good example would be the Hang Jebat, Hang Tuah and olden heroes which are taught

in schools to be local warriors. It is considered a confirmation bias because the historian in Malaysia had

no evidence and yet concluded that the warriors were local. However, according to written history, the

warriors came from China.

Confirmation bias is also shown within my family, for example, no matter what bad things my

older sister’s daughter (also known as my niece) does, my older sister will be defensive and protect her

daughter against any accusations. Whenever my niece does something wrong like drawing and coloring

the walls, sofa and my books, my older sister will defend her daughter stating that we siblings were the

same when we were younger. This clearly indicates confirmation bias as, even though knowing that

vandalizing property at home is a bad value, my older sister didn’t rectify and analyze the situation

clearly and went straight to siding with her daughter. In my opinion, this kind of confirmation biasness

can sometimes lead to further problems if not dealt with immediately. For example, whenever the child

does something wrong, the parent should take full responsibility and teach the child there and then on

the spot. This is because by doing as so, the child will learn his or her mistake and will grow up learning

to be responsible by not repeating the mistake like vandalizing or other inappropriate actions in future.

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7th May 2014

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is always and constantly happening around us, sometimes I tend to act

and interpret information in a way that confirms only my beliefs. In family’s situation, schools

and politics it takes place. In Malaysia itself, it is already taking place.

I have the tendency to interpret that all China’s electronic gadgets are cheap, faulty at

some point and might even explode. Therefore, I only succumb to buy electronic gadgets coming

from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, United States and other countries other than from China. With this, I

had already practice confirmation bias. It is because of my interpretation of China’s electronic

gadgets as cheap and faulty that led me to not buy their products. However, it might not be true

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as most electronic gadgets itself are produced and manufactured in China and given a label by an

American company and so on.

There’s one popular phrase that goes like this, one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.

The point is that because of China’s reputation of producing fakes and incidents that took place

before like the explosion of phones, I had already took on a confirmation bias towards buying

phones from brands other than from China.