Name : Gabriel Chin Jincheng

Student ID : 0320370

Subject : Social Psychology

Title : Journal Entry Social Psychology

Journal 01: Social Psychology

Entry 01: Confirmation Bias

“ Good Mangers are always bias for action “. Tom Peters said.

Supporting to this confirmation bias is a psychological phenomenon that explains why people

tend to seek out information that confirms their existing opinions and overlook or ignore

information that refutes their beliefs. Confirmation bias occurs when people filter out

potentially useful facts and opinions that don’t coincide with their preconceived notions. It

affects perceptions and decision making in all aspects of our lives and can cause us to make

less-than-optimal choices. Seeking out people and publications with different opinions than

our own can help us overcome confirmation bias and make better-informed decisions.

Confirmation bias can create problems for investors. When researching an investment,

someone might look for information that supports his or her beliefs about an investment and

fail to see information that presents different ideas. The result is a one-sided view of the

situation. Confirmation bias can cause investors to make poor decisions, whether it’s their

choice to purchase, expand, or sell timing.

 

For example, suppose an investor hears a rumour that a company is on the verge of

bankruptcy. Based on that information, the investor is considering selling the stock. When he

goes online to read the latest news about the company, he tends to read only the stories that

confirm the likely bankrupt and he misses a story about the new product the company just

launched that is expected to perform extremely well. Instead of holding the stock, he sells it

at a very low price just before it turns around and climbs to an all-time high.

 

Confirmation bias helps explain why markets do not always behave rationally. However, an

investor who is aware of confirmation bias may be able to overcome the tendency to seek out

information that supports his existing opinions and intentionally seek out contradictory

advice.

Conclusion, they are limiting themselves to other great possibilities and chances, the thoughts

that we can think off that goes against bias.

Journal 2: Social Psychology

Entry 1: Social Facilitation

“ Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has

learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people

who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours ”. Cesar Chavez said.

The tendency for people who are being watched or observed to perform better than they

would alone on simple tasks or tasks they know how to do very well due to repetition. This

theory also states that if the task is not simple, then there will be a larger margin of error

because of nervousness. Professor Robert Zajonc’s drive theory was the missing piece of the

puzzle. He found that several factors influenced peoples’ productivity directly. Some of these

things included: the audience’s attention level how closely are they watching me, can I get

away with slacking off? , whether the person observing is a man or a women, and simply the

person’s mood. Different levels of attention are paid to these factors and therefore they

directly influence how hard we work. Either way, if we are being watched our attention level

is higher because we are innately competitive.

For example where social facilitation occurs most frequently in gyms. What is more

competitive than a room filled with men and raging levels of testosterone. Every male in the

gym are constantly trying to outlift each other to obtain the center of attention in the gym.

Not only are they trying to outlift each other but they are too competing to see who has the

better physique. No man has claim to mention saying that they aren’t egoistic and proud. Men

tend to have an observer or more to witness him in a difficult task, the more the attention

level the more motivated the person will become such as lifting heavier weights with more

repetitions.

Conclusion social facilitation should be harnessed and trained so we can be more competitive

and improve performance levels.

Journal 3 : Social Cognition

Entry 1 : Stereotyping

 A stereotype is “...a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of

people.” (Cardwell, 1996).

One advantage of a stereotype is that it enables us to respond rapidly to situations because we

may have had a similar experience before. Advantage is that it makes us ignore differences

between individuals; therefore we think things about people that might not be true.The use of

stereotypes is a major way in which we simplify our social world; since they reduce the

amount of processing we have to do when we meet a new person.

By stereotyping we infer that a person has a whole range of characteristics and abilities that

we assume all members of that group have. Stereotypes lead to social categorization, which is

one of the reasons for prejudice attitudes which leads to in-groups and out-groups.Most

stereotypes probably tend to convey a negative impression.

Examples of stereotypes is racial stereotypes, such as all Asians have squinty small eyes and

we eat rice, or Africans being very fast and love eating fried chicken, Italians for their pasta,

Mexicans for their tacos and sombrero, middle eastern for being terrorist. This is very wrong

everybody should be treated the same and not to judge a book by its cover.

In conclusion we should abolish stereotyping, it the root of all bad ideas.

Journal 4: Social Perception

Entry 1: The 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. Essentially, your overall

impression of a person He is nice!, impacts your evaluations of that person's specific traits He

is buff!.

The halo effect is also known as the physical attractiveness stereotype and the what is

beautiful is good principle, the halo effect, at the most specific level, refers to the habitual

tendency of people to rate attractive individuals more favourably for their personality traits or

characteristics than those who are less attractive. Halo effect is also used in a more general

sense to describe the global impact of likeable personality, or some specific desirable trait, in

creating biased judgments of the target person on any dimension. Thus, feelings generally

overcome cognitions when we praise others.

Examples of the halo effect is when you first see a attractive person your perception of that

person is much more positive , thoughts such as “Oh she or he seems like a nice person”.

Meanwhile when first seeing a less attractive person your perception is very much influenced

and thoughts would take a more negative perspective. One would think he might be high or

he does not have a life. Other examples are such as companies using models who are very

beautiful to advertise their products to get the mass media to buy it. This is used to convince

that the product can improve your self- confidence by mimicking the model seen in the

advertisement.

Conclusion we should all be aware of the halo effect and the effects to it, but it still it difficult

to avoid letting the halo effect affect our behaviour, judgment and decisions.

JOURNAL 05: ATTITUDES

ENTRY 01: POST-DECISION DISSONANCE

“In ancient Rome, there was a poem about a dog who found two bones. He picked at one, he

licked the other. He went in circles. He dropped dead.” –DEVO

Some choices are hard to make, especially when the options we are faced with are nearly

equivalent. Nevertheless we manage to make decisions every day and, buyer’s remorse

notwithstanding, we frequently feel satisfied with our choices.Well, we tell ourselves, they

were somehow lacking anyway. But have we arrived at that conclusion through rational

consideration of each alternative’s objective value, or do we subjectively and retroactively

adjust the value we place on rejected options in order to feel better about the choice we made.

Cognitive dissonance makes us feel better. According to cognitive dissonance

theory (Festinger, 1957) these and other factors subconsciously and retroactively enhance the

options we choose to make us feel good about our choices, reduce task uncertainty and orient

us toward future actions.

For example making a decision to start foundation in natural built environment. I had to

depart home to start my studies, leaving my family, friends and loved ones behind. Here is

where i don’t have any doubts about my cause and drive to study to become an architect. In

my first few months of my foundation i was thinking that this course wasn’t for me because i

couldn’t handle the pressure it came from it. Staying up all night long doing assignments

sacrificing sleep. But once i submit work which I spent hours on I feel satisfied and more

motivated to achieve my dreams to be an architect.

In conclusion, our lives are full of ups and downs, our brains helps us function and create

more opportunities and chances in life.