Settings : 10 September 2010

Location : SJK (c) Shan Tao, Kota Kinabalu

Entry 1: Social Facilitation, Chapter 1

Social Facilitation is defined as an improvement in doing a simple task when

other people are watching you. Individual contributions can be identified in social

facilitation. Social Facilitation was first studied by Norman Triplett in 1898. He

noticed that the speed of cyclist in a racing is faster than the speed the cyclist alone

ride. Apart from that, Norman Triplett also doing an experiment on child and fishing

reels. Child are requested to wind in a given amount of fishing line alone and in pairs

but working alone. Norman Triplett conclude that children work faster in the presence

of partner than alone.

For example, I took part in a track running in his sport day of primary school

when I was 12. I wasn’t a good in running at all. I liked to play computer games or

sitting on the chair playing chess only rather than exercise or jogging. There were five

teams were participated in the sport day was according the class we studied in. As a

result, I was participated as yellow team. However, my class was an elite class, so all

people could said that we were book worms and also not good in sport. Our team

always got the “champion” in the five teams which mean always be the last team

because most of book worms didn’t stamina and potential in sport.

I still remember that our sport day was held two weeks before UPSR, so as we

didn’t have much time to focus on the sport day. However, each team was forced to

participate in the sport day. Four people were needed to participate in 4 x 100 relay

competition. My P.E teacher only asked the suggestions from us and started chose

those she thought were good in sport will had the chance to participate in sport

without any trail because lack of time. I was shock when I know that I was chose to

be the candidate in the relay competition because I couldn’t even run fast at all.

So, I decided to spend about half an hour for my training every weekend with

my friends since there was still left about 3 weeks before the sport day. I tried to push

myself with fastest speed in my training so that I will able to perform well in the

competition. But still not as quick as my friends. Then, I was thinking that I was just a

candidate of my team so I won’t have chance to participate unless there was special

incident happened. So, I just tried to jog and accompany my friends rather than using

my full stamina in this training.

However, on the sport day, I was informed that I will replaced one of my team

member who was injured in other competition. I was took part in 4 x 100 meters relay

competition as the third runner. I was nervous because I never thought I won’t really

participated in a competition in the sport day.

When the teacher pressed the starting pistol and race started, our team was

losing at beginning because previous two runner of our team weren’t faster than other

team members. We were behind almost 50 meter to other team. I was tense because

don’t want to pull back our team and also disappointed my team member. Before

relay baton was passed to me, our team was the slowest team. At that time, I just keep

thinking that I need to keep rushing. When the relay baton was passed to my hand, I

started to rush with my full speed and surpassed all teams one by one who were

leading in front of me. When I passed the relay baton to the fourth runner, I had

surpass four team. However, the fourth runner of my team was then lost to the red

team as their team got the fastest runner who participated in the relay competitions the

fourth runner. At the end, our team managed to become the first runner up.

My friends asked me how did I able to surpass other team even my teacher

also wondering after the competition but still don’t know how to answer them because

it was impossible for me to able to surpass other team member. Some of them were

basketball player or badminton player which mean they will had a stamina and faster

speed compared to me. During P.E class, every time the teacher asked us for jogging

for 100 meter, I wasn’t able to run quickly but only with average speed.

I think social facilitation occurred in this situation because I was performing

well in the presence of others. Besides that, my contributions can be identified in this

racing. This is because an extra competitiveness when I was running. My performance

was better in the racing competition compare to my training.

Settings : 21 – 27 October 2013

Location : Country garden miles YinTan in HuiZhou, China

Entry 2: Self efficacy, Chapter 2

Self – efficacy is defined as an individual belief in his or her ability to achieve

certain goals. Self – efficacy also can be described as extent of one’s ability to

complete a certain task by just belief his or her own self. Albert Bandura is a famous

psychologist who defined self-efficacy first in 1977. He classified self-efficacy as the

mind's self-regulatory function. The theory of self-efficacy lies at the centre of

Bandura’s social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory is about the role of

observational learning and social experience in the process of development of

personality.

Self-efficacy drives our motivation. If we have high self-efficacy, we able to

handle a difficult task and also see those tasks as challenges, while if we have low

self-efficacy, we will probably try to avoid those hard tasks. For example, two boys

Charles and John are friend since they was young. Charles is a top student in the

class, he gets a high score in every test and exam. Besides that, Charles is also a good

basketball player and a runner. John always fails in his tests and exams because he

thinks study is hard for him. He doesn’t participate any activity in school but only stay

in front of the mobile screen and television. This show that Charles has a high self-

efficacy because he can handle his study and extracurricular activities but John can’t

handle either his study or his extracurricular activities because he has a low self-

efficacy who don’t belief his own self.

It remind me of my friend who play Chinese Chess has a high self-efficacy. I

knew him since we were classmate in primary one. He wasn’t a Chinese but a

Muslim. However, he started play Chinese chess when he was primary three. We

trained chess every time we were free. He was a chess addict. I still remember when

he was 11, he kept reading chess book and trained hard until he didn’t do his

homework and he always punished by teachers. He became most famous in school

because he didn’t do his homework. However after 3 years of training, he won the

champion in National Primary School Chinese Chess Competition in Selangor when

he was just 12.Then he became a player never underestimated by others since he won

the champion. He was continue his chess journey until now. He won a lot of

competition in not only in Sabah but also in other places.

But the most unforgettable competition that he had participated that in my

mind is his first time participate in the World Chinese Chess Championship. He was

just 16 when he participate in the World Chinese Chess Championship. He was the

youngest who represent Malaysia to participate this competition and also the youngest

among all contestant in this competition ever. The competition was combined of

Chinese and non-Chinese together to compete but they will separate the ranking of

Chinese and non-Chinese at the end of competition. Because of he was a Muslim, he

participated the non-Chinese group.

The competition is held in 5 days with 9 rounds of game. Almost all of the

contestant was master or grandmaster ranking came from all countries such as China,

Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and others, apart from those also have more than 20

years’ experience. Also, some non-Chinese contestants came from England, Japan

and others. However, he was the youngest and not much of experience compare to

others in the competition.

He won 1 game and draw 3 games after the 4th round. He told me that he was

in an inferior and disadvantage situation in every game he played but until the end he

managed to draw the game because the contestant were too professional. All

contestants won’t decide to draw with him easily because they think he was just a

teenage who didn’t have much experience than them. He also told me that he played

every game about 4 hours unlike the competition in Sabah which every game only one

and half hours only. Unfortunately he suffered a heavy headache and diarrhoea in the

middle of the 5th round game. He versus a grandmaster from Hong Kong. Although he

lost the game but he didn’t give up at all but still continue his competition. He still

believed himself that he will get top 5 in non-Chinese group although he lost 1 game.

Until the end, he won 3 rounds, draw 4 rounds and lose 2 rounds in 9 rounds

of game and able to get 2nd runner up in non – Chinese group of World Chinese Chess

Championship and won 10000 RMB. He became the youngest non-Chinese

contestant who able to get top 3 in the world. He also won the name of master in this

game and became the youngest who managed to earn the name of master.

This is because he was a high self-efficacy person, highly belief himself who

able to handle a difficult situation even he was in a poor condition. If he was a low

self-efficacy person, he would give up in the middle of the game facing lot of

professional even he wasn’t in a bad condition.

Settings : 5.00-6.00 P.M., 7 August 2015

Location : Sunway Pyramid, Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur

Entry 3: Heuristic, Chapter 3

In psychology, heuristic is a mental shortcut and simple rules that reduce

mental effort. Heuristic allows us to judge or make a simple decision quickly without

using a lot of time to analysis and explore. For example, heuristic helps us think what

we eat for lunch, spaghetti or porridge. Heuristic can help us to speed up to find out a

solution but it can’t always give an accurate decision.

Availability heuristic was first studied by Amos Tversky and Daniel

Kahneman in 1973. Availability heuristic judges the probability of events by how

easily an example come out from your mind. Availability heuristic help us to make

decision quickly based on our experience that is available in our minds or recall an

example rather than exploring all the alternatives. For example, sharks or falling out

of beds are likely to kill us? Mostly all of us know that sharks are dangerous, and

heard news about people attacked by the sharks. In this situation, we probably will

feel that sharks are likely to kill us. However, according to research the rate of falling

out of bed kills 450 people annually in US.

Representativeness heuristic was first described by psychologists Tversky and

Kahneman in the 1970s. Representativeness heuristic is our assessment of how likely

an occurrence is based on how much it resembles our expectation for a model of that

event. For example, a kid play in the playground every day. He played and chased by

his friend. Unfortunately, he stepped in a small hole and he fell down. On the next

day, he probably will he will avoid from the hole because the representativeness

heuristic give him a previous event that there is a hole that will cause him fell down.

Recently, a woman, Xian Liu Jian has been crushed to death because of the

collapse of the escalator in order to save her child at department store in China. She

was crushed by the rolling mechanism of the escalator when she step on a metal

footplate covering the machinery. After research of this incident, they officially

announced that the incident was caused by shoddy construction and poor building

maintenance. The scene was then recorded by the security-camera video and uploaded

online. Soon after, a technical staff also shared a video of how to stop the escalator in

emergency and avoid stepping on the middle part of metal footplate covering the

machinery. People was starting aware of the dangerous of using escalator and avoid

the step on the middle part of metal footplate because of the incident in China.

There was an incident that show an example of heuristic that happened in

Sunway Pyramid. I took bus to Sunway Pyramid after EPC class to meet with my

sister who already reach there after her class. There was a group of teenage walking

slowly in front of me. I tried to bypass them but almost reach the escalator besides

Popular so I decided not to do.

When I was using the escalator on the way down to Popular, the escalator

suddenly stopped in the middle of transport me going down to next floor. Probably

cause by short circuit or some technical issue. This situation forced us to walk by our

own instead of continue waiting the technical staff to repair and reboot the escalator.

However, I heard a sound from a group of teenage in front of me. One of a girl said

that she was so scare and not dare to walk the escalator. I was so curious and

wondering that she never meet this situation in her life before. It was just malfunction

of the escalator and nothing to be afraid of. Then, the girl said that she recalled the

incident that happened in China. I guessed she was trying to talk about the girl using

the escalator crushed to death in China. Then, she hold her friend tightly and

continued to walk. Until she reached the end of the escalator, she managed to jump

over the metal footplate. At the moment, I was thinking that how could the metal plate

collapsed and escalator able to crushed her when the escalator was malfunction. Was

she acting too exaggeratedly or she was just a timid girl? After that, she recovered

herself and continued shopping with her friends while I continue to walk to popular to

meet with my sister.

Because of the heuristic, she didn’t even think wisely about the shock incident

that happen in front of her. She didn’t consider the malfunction of the escalator was

caused by other technical issues but she only thought and recalled the horrible

incident that happened in China which brought to the death of the victim.

Conclusion, heuristic is a mental shortcut that allow us to think quickly and

easier in a situation. However, if we over rely heuristic, we can’t judge anything

problem and situation with a same scene because heuristic may cause lot of mistakes.

Settings : 22 March 2014

Location : Kian Kok Middle School

Entry 4: Halo Effect, Chapter 4

Halo effect is a type of cognitive bias which the observer’s impression toward

a person and influences the observer’s feeling about the person’s characteristic. The

term of halo effect was named by Edward Thorndike. It defines that if the observer

likes an aspect of a person or object, the he will have a positive concept towards it,

while if the observer doesn’t like an aspect of a person or object, then he will have a

negative concept towards it. For example, when you first met a girl in a restaurant and

she was pretty and wore a beautiful dress, you probably think she will be a nice and

kind. There was an ugly guy had his dinner on the next table with a dirty clothes and

tattoos, you will think he was a bad guy.

Viviana, a classmate that was transferred to our class from China last year.

She was beautiful with delicate features. I remembered when she first came to school,

and my class monitor was the first knew and got the information from our form

teacher that there was a new classmate was going to join our class and he was so

excited. He even called his friend went downstair to see her when she still filling the

form at the secretariat. After that, they came back with exhilarate, and called another

group people went downstair to meet her and at the end almost half of the boys in the

class was totally lost their minds when they saw her.

Since I didn’t meet her purposely at the secretariat and I first saw her at the

classroom. She was really beautiful but not as exaggerate as those boys told us. She

was polite and nice when she tried to introduce herself in front of the class. I thought

she was a good student when I saw her.

Our history teacher, Mdm. Liew was the strictest teacher among other subject

teachers. Viviana didn’t get the books in her first day class because the stationery was

out of stock. One of my male friend initiavely went to another class to borrow history

textbook for her. Mdm. Liew came into the class and talked to her. History teacher

knew that she was not going to take the course history because she never learn

Melayu before in China and she was going to study for UEC only. However Mdm.

Liew saw a history textbook and wondering why she got it. After her explanation,

Mdm. Liew said “Chew Deang, why do you help her borrow the textbook? She not

going to take this subject. If you can study history initiavely like you went another

class borrowed the book then I’m very glad. ” Viviana became the famous person in

our school in that month.

Viviana told me that she had already learnt additional math, biology,

chemistry and physic in the SPM syllabus that the teachers were teaching when she

was 14 in China, which means she already knew everything that we going to learn and

she was nothing to learn but did it as revision only. She able to answer every

questions from our Chinese teacher even the Classical Chinese part, is the hardest part

in SPM syllabus. So I concluded that she will be the top student in our class and a

diligent student.

However I started to change my mind of her after several month. She didn’t do

her homework even Chinese subject which was easiest subject for her. She failed her

biology, chemistry and physic tests and exams. My biology teacher complaint her

during my tuition. She said that she needed to give a special biology question for her

with Chinese language as she said she don’t know how to answer those question in

English language so as she failed her test. However, when my biology teacher came

out a question with Chinese language, she still not able to answer those question and

also failed. My biology teacher told me that she already tired to give special question

with Chinese language for her because she said Viviana was lazy to study but not she

was stupid. My biology teacher also told us that Viviana already learnt all syllabus

when she was in China but she still failed her tests with D or E grades only.

Start from September, she kept escaped classes using she was sick as excuses

and couldn’t able went to class. She was stayed at the hostel but we saw her walking

around at school. She always slept during class and scold by the teacher. However she

didn’t change her attitude at the end.

In this society, we always assign positive traits from other people’s faces

which are more attractive. Good guy will always has a handsome face, kind-hearted

girl will always with a beautiful face. This cognitive bias causing a lot of

misunderstand and discrimination. I was wrong to determine that Viviana was a

diligent and nice student and also will be top student by judging her on the first day I

look at her.

Settings : May 2014

Location : Kian Kok Middle School

Entry 5: Classical Conditioning, Chapter 5

Classical conditioning involves learning a new behaviour via the process of

association. In simple words, classical conditioning happens when two stimuli are

paired together, they may come to elicit the same response. This was first discovered

by Ivan Pavlov when his salivating dog saw its food. He first gave his dog food and

his dog started salivating, then he whistled to his dog but the dog didn’t salivate. He

tried to blow the whistle and gave his dog food at the same time and the dog started

salivating. Next, he whistled and his dog will kept salivating. The food was an

unconditioned stimulus when the dog first saw it and the dog came out with an

unconditioned response. Then Ivan Pavlov blew the whistle, the whistle acted as a

neutral stimulus and the dog didn’t give any response. However, when the dog hear

the whistle and food together, it started giving an unconditioned response. After

conditioning, when Ivan Pavlov blew the whistle, the dog would think of its meals

and start salivating with a conditioned response. Another experiment was done by

Watson and Rayner using little Albert and a rat as experiment.

My history teacher, Mdm. Liew was the strictest teacher when I was studied in

Form 5. Although she was the strictest teacher but her class was so boring because of

the subject and her teaching style. She liked to read out the words from textbook only.

This cause lot of us were boring during her class and even some of us had fell asleep.

When she caught someone who didn’t pay attention during her class, and he or she

will deducted mark as a punishment. Since I don’t want to lose any of my mark, so I

decided to pay attention to her during history class. She also liked to call someone

came out and talked about things that she taught us that day after her teaching. If

someone unable to say it out, then we will be deducted marks.

During one of history class, she finished her teaching quicker than before. She

stood in front the class and started looked at us. I thought I was not sleeping during

her class so I had nothing to afraid from her to called me. When she scanned the

whole class, I accidently eye to eye contacted with her and she called me out. I was

afraid and shocked because the guy sitting besides me was sleeping the whole period

but she still called me out. I wasn’t fully understand what she had taught just now.

Then I slowly walked to in front and tried to delay as slow as possible. But when I

looked at my watch, it almost left 20 minutes and I thought I was doom. Every

questions she asked me I couldn’t answer because I was a vacuum cleaner that can

absorbed everything in a short period. She came out with five question but I still

unable to answer and I was scold by her with that 20 minutes left. I thought if I was

not eye to eye contacted with her then I won’t scold by her.

Almost 2 months later, same thing happened in her class again, she had told us

that she will finished with the last 3 pages to the next chapter. I tried not to eye to eye

contact with her so I was safe from being called out to answer her question. Suddenly,

she scold my friend next to me who slept during her class. She came out one question

from the textbook and my friend couldn’t able to answer it. Then she said “If you

don’t know the answer, then the person next to you will help you. If both of you also

don’t know then both of you will be deduct marks”. I was shocked and tried to find

the answer from the textbook but I was stopped by Mdm. Liew. She said if I paid

attention during her class I would know the answer. I was thinking in mind that how

could I remember the name of the Sultan if there was lot of Sultan in the same chapter

and you just taught us today. At the end, both of us were scold and deducted marks.

After that, I was so nervous during every of her class. It could be described as

lying on the floor but still killed by the assassin’s snapshot who try to kill others. This

situation can be defined as classical conditioning. Before she calling me out and

answer her question in front of the class, I was no conditioned response as I never

being nervous during her class. However the day after she called me out and another

incident that had been scold by her at the end were unconditioned stimulus causing

me afraid of her and her class. After all, during the history class, which acts as a

conditioned stimulus, I will kept thinking would be scold and deducted mark and this

would be the conditioned response.