Social Psychology Journal

Name: Kok Ka Shing

I.D: 0323553

Subject: Social Psychology

Lecturer: Mr Thiruchelvam Shankar

Session: Monday 8AM

Program: FNBE March Intake 2015

Submission Date: 30th November 2015

Chapter 1

Social Facilitation

I believe that social facilitation affects almost everyone in their daily lives. Based on my personal understanding of social facilitation is that we will likely perform better at our task at hand when we are in the presence of other people. There are 2 types of social facilitation, the first one is the co-action effect and the other is the audience effect. Social facilitation brings out our inner competitiveness, our desire to win that is why we do well when we are around other people compared to when we are alone. It gives us a little boost when we are doing our work when we are around people and we want to look good to the others that is also why we perform better. But all of this also depends at the task at hand and if it is too complex we might feel too much pressure and fail at it.

An experiment was done on the subject of social facilitation. This experiment was done by Norman Triplett whom pioneered in the field of social facilitation research in the year 1898 where he had found that cyclist had faster race times when in presences of other cyclist. He theorised that they were faster because the presence of the other cyclist made them more competitive. The concept of social facilitation can also be applied to education. For example, a study group formed by the students can help raise each other’s knowledge as it can offer each individual member an advantage compared to when they are working alone. Some group members can help enhance other member’s motivation and to help them stay focused to study and help them achieve their academic goal. If a group study is done right, students could outperform those that are not in a study group.

I personally can relate to the concept of social facilitation and it was during form 2 when I was training for my badminton inter house competition. I have to admit that I was not very good at badminton or for any other sport in general but badminton was my best so I stuck with it. I was the average kind of player among my friends as some of them are way better compared to me. The week before the competition, those that will compete in the competition will stay back in school and have training sessions. When I was playing in those sessions I generally felt no pressure and I had also noticed I was playing better because I was playing against my friends and some of my friends are also by the side lines looking at our match.

During the day of the competition, I was paired up with a girl from the same house but I do not know who she was. The worst part is that she told me that she was not very good in badminton and that she was taking over for her friend because she had a cold on that day. At this point I taught I was doomed because we were facing a fairly strong opponent and to make matters worse, I was the only hope for my house to secure a last win in order for us to enter the finals. At that moment I could feel it, the pressure is real. I said to myself that I am not willing to lose as I was also considered the type that hates losing and it is also because my teammates and my friends were watching by the side lines.

As we were on the last set, my opponent was beating me 19-18. I was only 3 points away from winning the game. I heard all of my friends and teammates yelling and giving me and my partner support. So I told myself I could do it and also at the same time motivate my partner to also give her support. In the end, we won the game by a close 23-21. I had never felt so accomplished in my life. With that win we went into the finals. My teammates and I fought even harder in the finals but we lost. But on the bright side we still won the second place. When we received our medals on stage, I felt so proud wearing the medal on my neck.

In conclusion, social facilitation could be a good thing or a bad thing as it all depends on the situation. But for me, I think that social facilitation is a good thing as it can give me an extra boost when I need it and also help coach me on how to deal with social pressure which could proof very helpful in the near future.

Chapter 2

Self

Everyone will at one point ask this question, what is self? What does it mean? Well, the self is a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, the individual person. “To be that self which one truly is” by Soren Kierkegaard is the words I would use as the aim of my life.

When I entered secondary school, I had a tendency to think of how people will think of me and how they judge me. That is why I always try to be nice and kind to others so that in return the will like me back. I did all of this because the attention that I receive back is what I was looking for. The others will always perceive me as the nice guy who will always help you. But little did I know that when I do all this, I am actually putting on a façade which is the exact opposite of my life’s aim. Another reason that I did all of this is because I also had a low self-esteem at the time which will naturally create this kind of characteristic which will make me think that I can enhance my self-esteem by doing all of that. All of this also sounds like Charles Horton Cooley’s theory of the looking-glass self.

At one point in secondary school, I had to put on a façade for my parents to see that I am the good son that get good grades. But at one point I stoop so low that when I did poorly for my test for the “Bahasa Malaysia” Language, I had to lie to keep my façade intact so I just told my parents that I got a B for my test but in actual fact I flunked that test. After they believed it, I thought it was over, that I successfully gotten away with it. Because of that I kept using the same lie whenever I flunk any test. Worst of all, I even had the guts to alter my report card before I showed it to my parents. There is an old Chinese saying that “paper will not be able to cover fire” as I had to make up a bigger lie in order to cover up the previous lie and one day that very lie would be revealed as a fake .

Well that one day happened 4 months down the road as it was when my parents got suspicious that why had I not shown them any of my test papers. They confronted me and asked me for all of my previous test papers that is when I knew that my façade that I put in front of my parents had been shattered as I could not show them that whatever result I got on the report card was real. It was one of the worst days of my life. Because of that incident, I could not face my parents for a week. In that week I did a lot of thinking about why have I done this and how can I make sure that in the future I would not make the same mistake.

As I muster up all my courage to go and talk about it to my parents, I learned from them that releasing the feeling of acceptance may not feel good and it may make me feel weak but it is part of the process in life that you are letting yourself be in a changing process that puts you’re a step forward to being your true self. This was the signal telling me to put down my façade and be my actual self. Ever since then my self-esteem rose as I did not care about how the others think about me and judge me. I did what I wanted to do and not what I am supposed to do.

That event gave me a wake up call that I needed as after that I did a lot of self-exploration in order to develop myself and also to free myself from whatever that threatens myself. This may not be easy and it may not be fun but it is necessary in order for me to find myself on who I truly am and what is my purpose in life. I am 18 now and this is just the beginning of my life and nobody is perfect but I will continue to do more self-exploration to discover more about my true self.

Chapter 3

Stereotyping

What is the first thing that comes into our minds when it comes to the word stereotyping? All Indians are drunkards? All blondes are dumb? Well it is something like that. The definition of the word stereotyping is an individual who over generalized a particular group of people thinking that they share a common feature. Stereotyping is happening everywhere and anywhere around the globe, which is quite sad but there are some good parts about it. This is because it is a form of categorization that can help simplify certain information, thus making information more identifiable for people to recall and react. Besides that, there are also many types of stereotyping, for example will be race, sex, age, religion and vice versa. But in this journal, I will be talking on the stereotyping on race and my personal experience with it.

This actually happened not long ago, it was when I visited Melbourne, Australia with my family last year during my form 5 mid-year break. My first impression of Australia was a country with the famous Sydney opera house and its lands filled with kangaroo’s and koalas. I was very excited to go there as it will be my first time going to a non-Asian country for a family holiday. Well, all of that changed when I met some of the locals there. I am not trying to stereotype that all Australians are racist, but some of them are. To my surprise the first local I met there was incredibly racist and rude and all I wanted was to ask directions to the Queen Victoria Market because my family and I were lost. He replied me with this and I quote him “fuck off you slit eyed fuck”. I was so stunned by his words and at the same time I was very angry as well. The thought of punching him in the face but I knew I was not in my own country so I just told him okay then left to find another person who is willing to show me the way to the market. I thought that I was just plain unlucky meeting that guy because I have never encounter anyone who was racist to me throughout that day.

The next day, we boarded a tram car in order to get to the Bourke Street Mall that is located in the city centre. My parents and my sister had found a seat in the tram except me. When we were stationed at the next stop I saw an empty spot as some of the passengers were leaving the tram. When I approached the empty seat the guy next to it told me it was not for me. At this point I was confused because it wasn’t like a priority seat or anything so I asked him why and he would not let me sit next to him. His answer was simple, I hate Asians. I told him that there are no more empty seats in the tram and that was the only seat left and he replied I do not care. In my mind I was cursing every kind of profanity at him but in the end I just stood near where my parents were sitting until we arrived at our stop.

A few days later, I had met up with one of my friend who migrated to Melbourne 2 years ago. I asked her why do the locals hate Asians? She told me that is because many Asians are emigrating to their country and they do not like it. So this creates an instant response to many of the locals there that they hate Asians. This leads to another term in stereotyping called the perseverance effect. This is when a schema is formed and that schema is that we hate Asians and it is also hard for some people to change that schema.

There were more racist encounters during my trip to Melbourne but I have also met some of the kindest people in my life over there as well. The point is, we cannot just simply make judgement on a group of people based on one idiotic person in the entire group. If we were to be so judgemental, we will be no different from them. We will be on the same level as them. I have learned a few things from my trip to Melbourne and when I got back to Malaysia, I feel like I was a changed person. I learned how to hold in my anger as I was quite a hot head and most importantly I learned not to stereotype people too quickly and only judge them when I have all the information about them.

Chapter 5

Conditioning

The word “conditioning” has many meanings, but in the world of physiology it means a behavioural process whereby a response becomes more frequent or predictable in an environment as a result of reinforcement. There is also not only one type of conditioning, classical conditioning and operant conditioning is an example of the few types of conditioning. Everybody is different, that same rule is applied to conditioning where everyone is conditioned in a different way, some may be good and others may be bad.

In my early days as a young boy, I have always hated eating eggs. I dislike everything about it, the smell, taste, looks and vice versa. Till this very day, I still hate them. The smell of it triggers some kind of automatic reaction in me that gives me the feeling that I am going to throw up. I have this kind of response is because of classical conditioning. I started hating eggs because when I was a kid, I had ate a piece of fried egg as my side dish and when I took a bite I felt something crunchy. First I thought that it was just a piece of shell, but when I spat out the crunchy bits I realised that it was a fly and not a piece of egg shell. That gave me a nightmare for almost a week and I almost had no appetite to eat anything for that entire week. Ever since then I started hating eggs because of this event.

When I was young, I always love to watch what the adults will do, for example will be my dad changing the light bulb or when my mom will wash the air-conditioning filter. Thinks like that tend to interest me a lot. By doing that I am also unconsciously doing something called observational learning. My dad always loved to crack all of his knuckles when he was done with whatever that he was doing. That is why I too have the same habit as my dad. I asked him what was the reason he was doing it and he said it was for rewarding himself for finishing his work.

Classical conditioning can also be implied on other things such as advertising, this is also related to another term that is also under classical conditioning called the mere exposure effect. This effect was first discovered by Robert Zajonc when he performed a series of experiments and this term states that people will tend to better like thing that are exposed to them frequently or things that are familiar to us. The mere exposure effect is used in the advertising world because we do not even need to purposely memorise the advertisements as a simple repetition is enough to leave a memory trace in our mind and thus unconsciously affecting our behaviour towards a certain product. Take a famous brand headphone brand like Beats by Dr.Dre for example. Do you think that people buy that particular brand of headphones not for the extreme sound or build quality? The answer is no. People buy those headphones simply that is because they advertise their brand so much on social media that people will think of those pair of headphones on a celebrities neck whenever their thoughts is about headphones. As there is so much advertisement about it that the more times we see it, the more we like it.

Another type of conditioning will be operant conditioning. The way that operant conditioning works is by using reinforcement or punishment to strengthen or weaken a particular behavior. This theory is discovered by the father of operant conditioning, B.F

Skinner. When I was in primary school, my parents will give me a reward like 5 bucks for each A I get in every exam and as I got older the reward got larger. This was to keep my interest to study more and to get good grades. They are giving me a form of positive reinforcement in order for me to increase my behavior and at the same time I am also giving myself a form of positive negative reinforcement called active avoidance. In order for me to get the reward from my parents, I have to continue to study for me not to get bad grades. I had also received both positive and negative punishment when I was young. For example, there was one time I was playing football in the living room and I accidently broke a vase and it was my mom’s favorite vase. When she got home and she saw the vase was missing she asked me what had happened to it. She scolded me and asked me to go to my room and ever since then I did not dare to play football anywhere near a vase ever again.

Chapter 7

Ageism

Ageism is a type of stereotyping and discrimination against a certain individual or a group of individuals on the based on their age. This could be applied to all ages, but people mostly stereotype this term for only young or old people. Individuals whom practices ageism normally treat those who are young or old with disrespect and make them feel unwelcome and uncomfortable. Ageism has some negative impacts on the victims confidence, job, prospects and most importantly the quality of their lives.

This reminds me of one of my own stories when I was in form 3. It was after my important exam which is called “Penilaian Menengah Rendah” or PMR. We had a long break ahead for almost two and a half months and because of it my friend and I taught it was going to be too boring just to stay at home and do nothing. So we decided that we should set a date to go to the shopping complex called One Utama which is located in Bandar Utama to look a part-time job. This way we could kill our boredom and at the same time also make a little pocket money for ourselves.

It seems fun at first, I was excited and pumped up as it was going to be my first time applying for a part-time job. We took a taxi there as none of us could drive nor any of our parents were free as it was a weekday and all of our parents were working. When we arrived, we had agree on a plan earlier that is to go from the top floor to the bottom floor of the shopping complex as that way we would not get mixed up on which shop that we had asked for any vacancy. There were a total of 4 floors to cover and we started on the second floor. We went shop by shop that had a vacancy sign on their display window to ask for a job, but very few of them wanted to entertain us and said that we were too young. Those that did said to fill out the job application form and they would call us back. At this point I was thinking why a 15 year old can’t apply for a part time job even when the law says that we should be able to work.

It took us almost 5 hours to completely cover the entire mall and at about dinner time we got three calls saying that they would hire us and asked us to go to their shop for an interview. Out of the three, the highest paying shop would pay us RM900 for a basic salary for a month while the others only offered us around RM600-700 for a month. The reason they were giving us such low salary is because we were young. I had the temptation to ask what does our age have to do with the salary that they were giving. It wasn’t fair for us because when we saw the vacancy sign on their display windows it clearly states that the basic salary was going to be around RM1000-1200. In the end my friend and I just went ahead with the job that was willing to pay us the highest.

We started work two days later in a winter clothing shop and even if we were not happy with the salary we got, we were still pretty excited to feel how working feels like and to meet all of our co-workers. Everyone treated the both of us nicely except the manager. She constantly looked down on us about our abilities to get things done or to push sales and all of that is due to yet again out age. At that point my aim was to prove the manager wrong.

Within a month, my friend and I manage to get a combined sale of over RM48000. That was the first time we had ever heard our manager praised us and we felt good about ourselves.

All of this proves age is just another number and why should anyone young or old be doubted of their abilities just because of their age. An elderly person could lose their job because of someone saying that their old and that they should just retire and sit at home or they could be treated differently in an eating establishment by giving them a lower quality of services. Many overcome this kind of stereotyping by just ignoring it and live the live that they want, but for some it is very hard to overcome this problem as the may have other problems at hand. Everyone young or old should be treated fairly and we should leave this kind of stereotyping attitude behind in order for everyone to live a better life.