psychology journal

Name: Chan Pei Shan

Student ID: 0318350

Group: Monday 4pm – 7pm

Subject and Course: Social Psychology, FNBE

Submission Date: 10th November 2014

21th September 2014, 22:47

Journal One, 1st entry: Social Learning Perspective (Chapter 1)

Social Learning Perspective is when an individual’s behaviour gets influenced

by observing others. This perspective had occurred in my life numerous times, one of

them was a serious factor about being hygienic in our household, and that was

developed from my mother, and since a very young age.

Since the out broke of SARS, the deadly disease that killed millions, my

mother had been practicing a more hygienic lifestyle since then. I still remembered

that my mother was very strict about hygienic matters that even if that practice was

inconvenience, she would still go on with it. A few examples of the practices were

washing her feet before entering the house because the feet is the dirtiest part of our

body, as she told us, and it even went to the extent that she would not touch anything

that was held by many people in public, for example in the malls, travelling on the

escalator, she would not hold the handle as it was held by many people before and we

never know who might touch them.

Even though initially, our whole family thought that she was thinking too much

and should just let the matter go, but as time passed, as I watched my mother being a

“clean freak” for so many years, I eventually developed her hygienic lifestyle together

with my whole family, and it even influenced our relatives too! There were times

nowadays when I was eating with a bunch of friends out in the mall and I would wipe

my utensils nonchalantly, and my

friends would look at me weird, but how

could I changed my behaviour of being

more hygienic easily after watching my

mother doing it for around 11 years?


Journal One, 2nd entry: Social Facilitation (Chapter 1)

Social Facilitation is when one’s performance is enhanced with the presence of

others. Before entering Taylor’s University and taking the Architecture course, I

usually drew on my own just for fun. And normally, I wouldn’t really put a lot of

effort into my drawing, because I was always too lazy to draw a masterpiece and have

to check for any flaws. I wouldn’t try my best because I felt like there was no

competition back then and no need for me to put extra effort into drawing.

When I first got into the course and knowing all my classmates, I wasn’t too

motivated to use extra effort when it comes it drawing because I thought everyone’s

drawing skills wouldn’t be ultimately good upon mine, but it was until when the first

drawing project came and then it was when I found out how good majority of my

classmates were at drawing, and because of that, I was motivated to always do my

best in drawing and designing projects. There were times when I even thought of

taking up drawing classes so my skills could level with my friends.

Because of the presence of my classmates, my performance of drawing and

designing had enhanced, and unlike the old me who wouldn’t care much, the current

me is more motivated to do my best in the class projects.


Journal Two, 1st entry: Extrinsic Motivation (Chapter 2)

Extrinsic Motivation is when one makes an action in response to external

pressure, but doing it could earn themselves a reward or could be a punishment. It is

said to inhibit behaviours if used at the wrong time, but that was not the case for me.

So my father had always been an enthusiastic “jogger”, and he always

encouraged us, his family to jog with him, even though when we did, only he felt the

pleasure of jogging while my mother, brother and I were all feeling like we were

barbequed under the evening hot sun. My father especially asked me to jog more often

with him because I was rather chubby back then. But of course, for a chubby girl to

run was definitely the most painful thing to do.

The chubby me back then has another hobby, which was reading, and I loved

reading a lot. I would really do anything to buy any new books or just borrowing them

from my school.

There was this once when my dad and I were jogging and I barely jogged half

of our routine and I was already giving up because that day was extremely hot and I

felt like a roasted chicken already. But then my father suggested, if I were to jog for

one whole routine and a little more, he would buy 3 more books for me, and then

instantly, I took the challenge and ran all the way, even though by the end point I was

already feeling like I was half-dying.

Then of course in the end, my dad did keep his promise and bought me 3 more

new books the other time we went to a bookstore. And this was how me doing action

that caused extreme pressure but in return I got my reward.


Journal Two, 2nd entry: Intrinsic Motivation (Chapter 2)

Intrinsic Motivation is when one does an action for the sake of enjoyment,

which leads them to be more fully engaged and also to greater curiosity and pleasure.

Unlike the previous entry where jogging or just exercising in general is an intrinsic

motivation of mine, what I usually do for enjoyment is reading and also writing, and

sometimes I would also watch some shows.

Back in high school where classes were usually finished at the same time every

day, I would normally go home and read a book first if I had a book in line waiting for

me to be read. I wouldn’t really read books in my school because it was quite noisy

and because I was easily distracted by noise, I would feel more of annoyed than

pleasure to read.

Sometimes I read not only for the sake of enjoyment, but rather it sometimes

gave me more ideas on my writing. Since I was an enthusiastic writer, I would write

too if I had finished some of my books to read. Even though I read much lesser now

than back when I was in high school, but currently I still enjoys writing as much as

before. From reading novels to some online stories, the genre of my stories were

constantly alternating from action stories to mysteries and even to horror. I was

usually so enjoyed in writing to the point where I would stay up late just to finish a

certain part of my stories.

Last but not least was watching shows. I usually watched comedies because for

one main reason, I loved watching funny things, nonetheless movies or TV shows. I

usually watched movies during the weekend nights when there was nothing to do

because they were enjoyable. Sometimes, I even watched some live show like The

Ellen show, those that were humorous.

5th October 2014, 11:37

Journal Three, 1st entry: The Illusion of Control (Chapter 3)

The illusion of control is the perception that uncontrollable events are

somehow controllable. That event of mine happened during an exam.

Last year when my family and I went to Australia, we went to this random

souvenir store and my brother was observing this toy vending machine alike thing

where you insert a coin in and twist a capsule out, but instead of a toy capsule, it gave

us “lucky pebble”. The “lucky pebbles” had different colours and would help provide

luck according to your horoscope colour of the pebble. Mine was a dark purple one.

Despite me not being superstitious person, I actually believed it.

So on my IGCSE exams last year, I studied hard and was still afraid of getting

scores below my expectations, and then to “improve” my luck, I had decided to bring

the “lucky pebble” along so that I could somehow get a high grade for all the exams.

Somehow, the first few exams really went pretty good and smooth, I wasn’t

entirely sure was it my own hard work to study or the boosting of the “lucky stone”,

but on the last third exam, invigilators came and checked on everyone’s pencil cases,

and mine was not entirely transparent, so the invigilator had to check more thoroughly.

When she saw my stone, she held it up and gave it a confusing look, but put it back

into my pencil without questioning me. After she left touching the stone, I felt like the

rest of the exams did not went as good as before. And that had totally got me believing

that my lucky stone had lost all its “lucky power” and leaving me with no luck.

5th October 2014, 23.33

Journal Three, 2nd entry: The Availability Heuristic (Chapter 3)

The availability Heuristic is one’s assessment of how likely is an occurrence

based on an example of an event that can be recalled. This was applied in my life ever

since the earthquake that happened in Japan Fukushima that caused a nuclear disaster.

It was a horrifying and sad incident, and even though I was few years ago, even until

now I still refused to visit Tokyo due to the radiation in their air.

I had visited Japan twice on 2008 and 2010, one was Tokyo while the other

was Hokkaido, respectively. I visited both this places, and I still missed them so much,

and was planning to spend my vacation there again when I am older, because on both

the trips I was quite young.

But the year after I visited Hokkaido, which was 2011, the severe earthquake

happened, and news had spread it was dangerous to visit Japan due to not only their

dangerous earthquake but also the radiation that had spread through streets and

everywhere, especially in Tokyo. From what I heard and read on news, there were

even tourists who went Tokyo for a vacation after that incident and unfortunately

returned with a body carrying mutated cells. What people had warned the most were

young girls who had not have babies to visit there because that will affect their future

kid’s growth.

Of course, I was really afraid of biologically harmful things that disturbed my

own health, so I highly disagreed my family from visiting Japan again even though I

still love Japan and yet to visit there once more maybe 10 years later. But nevertheless

the earthquake or the radiation, both of them were still discouraging me from visiting

Japan.

26th October 2014, 12:39

Journal Four, 1st entry: The Name-Letter Effect (Chapter 5)

The name-letter effect is the tendency of one to show a preference towards

something named with the same letter as our name. In my case, I did have quite some

preference towards some objects starting with the letter “p” since my name is Pei Shan.

Since I was a book lover, again as I mentioned before, I had a lot of books on

my bookshelf, and truth was I only favoured a few particular books. Other than those

really interesting books I truly loved, like <The Hunger Games> trilogy by Suzanne

Collins and <Pride and Prejudice> by Jane Austen, a few more books I loved

particularly was <Possessed> by Niki Valentine and <Pharaoh> by David Gibbins,

mostly they were titled with capital “p”. Sometimes I even had the tendency to buy

books titled with a capital “p”.

One more preference was when I was young and had thought of getting myself

an English name instead of people calling me my actual name all the time. Whenever I

asked my family or friends, I particularly asked them to pick one starting the letter “p”,

and I once had chosen the name “Paige” due to its starting letter, but in the end I had

decided to stick with my original name.

Another preference I remembered was involving the names of plants. Back in

high school in Biology class we had an assignment relating plants and were to

research for three different plants. I still remembered I particularly chose plants with

capital letter “p” in their scientific names. Even though no one really questioned about

my plants have all “p” as capital letters in their scientific names, but I somehow did

felt special for plants like that.

26 October 2014, 12:56

Journal Four, 2nd entry: Balance Theory (Chapter 5)

Fritz Heider’s balance theory stated that people desire “cognitive consistency”,

meaning that one feel more comfortable with people who share the same attitudes,

called balanced state, than those that does not, unbalanced state.

Since I was more of a shy and quiet child when I was young, I usually spent

time more with quieter people because they made me more comfortable and at least all

quiet people felt more comfortable being just quiet. On the other hand loud and

outgoing people made me nervous just by sitting next to them, because I had to make

extra effort to speak or they would make a wrong impression on me.

But other than being quiet, when I was chatting up with someone, I would be

more comfortable if we were talking about a similar topic we both liked, maybe like

about some books that we both we interested in, or better yet about movies we both

had watched and loved them.

There was one year where I went to Europe for a vacation trip, and in my tour

group, I met this girl who is the same age as me and we became friends fast after a

random chat we had about the trip, and we became quite close due to both our

interests in reading and writing, and also the fact that she was a Hunger Games fan

like me, and it was very easy talking

to her, despite us not even meeting

each other at all, it all happened

during a trip, which was a

coincidence and a very memorable

trip. Even until now, we occasionally

meet up and hang out together, which

was really unusual to have such a

lasting friendship.

1st November 2014, 22:31

Journal Five, 1st entry: Influences Route (Chapter 6)

There are a few influences routes that one will take in order to be persuaded

about a certain matter, and I had 3 experiences of 3 different routes of persuasion.

The first influence route is about the issues we care deeply about are resistant

to persuasion. I had been using an IPhone since four years ago, and kind of being a

bias person, I liked IPhone over other smartphones a lot, and my IPhone was truly like

my life, and honestly it was something I cared a lot about, because my life relied so

much on it. Because I had built such good impression on IPhones, no matter how

much my friends convinced me that Samsung smartphones were much better than

IPhones, I wouldn’t be persuaded.

The second influence route is according to a fear-based appeal, where the

message is designed to have a negative valance in order to prevent some actions. I was

extremely afraid of deaths caused by self-harming human acts and would obey any

messages that encourages us not to try those acts, for example taking drugs and

smoking. Newspapers, websites and radios all had told us how much deaths had been

caused due to these inappropriate acts and that was why I would never attempt to take

drugs or smoke.

The last is positive valence messages, which was the opposite of fear based

appeals. On the other hand, I was also easily persuaded by positive messages that will

produce a good outcome on us. For example whenever I listened to radio and heard

about how exercising is extremely important and sparing a little time in our lives is

worth it, and I, with just a short advertisement like that, would be totally persuaded

and promised myself to exercise more as it meant that I would be more healthy and

lived a longer life.

3rd November 2014, 23:10

Journal Five, 2nd entry: Cialdini’s 6 Weapons of Influence (Chapter 6)

Cialdini had come up with a theory stating that there are 6 weapons of

influencing someone. To relate to my experience I had chosen 3 weapons to explain

that was involved in my life.

The first is reciprocation, meaning people are more persuaded to repay an act to

another person in order to avoid feeling indebted. So I tend to have this feeling quite

often, but also my belief on good things happening to only good people, I would help

people thinking that in the future I deserved to be helped by others as well.

The other is social proof, which is the bandwagon effect, which means people

follow other’s action or thoughts as an indication of what is true or right, and if

majority contradicts to an action, others will believe that action should be true. Since

my brother was a car lover, I kind of get some knowledge of what made a car good.

We talked once about when many people were asked what car do they liked, their

answer would mostly be expensive and flashy cars like Ferrari or Porshe just because

people think these are the cars everyone should like, when there was a much deeper

meaning into knowing what was a good car.

Lastly, liking is also another weapon, that states that we generally say “yes” to

people we like and “no” to people we don’t like. There was this once when I was with

my mother buying some products in a pharmacy that sells daily items as well, and this

salesgirl was standing very freely by the counter and when we asked for her help to

check the stock about a certain product we were looking for, she went into the storage

reluctantly and return with not only an annoyed expression but answered very rudely.

In frustration, we both left the pharmacy without buying anything.

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