SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
JOURNAL
Name
Student ID
Session
Subject
Course
Submission date
Jason Goh Kok Wei
0323392
Monday 3.30-5.30pm
PSY30203
FNBE
30 November 2015
Concept 1: Schema
Schema, plural schemata or schemas, are a cognitive structure that is used to
identify and process information. The word schema is Greek in origin, which
translates into shape, or plan. A schema is a mental concept that informs a
person about what to expect from a situation or experience, based on past life
experiences, which are then stored in memory. Think of it as a template, or
algorithm, that one might use to compare with. In a way, sort of like a
framework.
Role schemas help people understand a social environment or situation,
which then helps the person adjust accordingly and engage to the demands
of said situation. A person might behave differently in school than at a friendly
gathering with family members. As a personal example, I behave in a
respectful manner towards people in charge such as lecturers, teachers and
such, but may be more playful and noisy when dealing with peers. Using a
computer as an example, it’s like a mental computer, where it has an index
file where each different file represents a different schema of information.
There are also self-schemas, which affect how one would react. For example,
if I believe I am a quiet and introverted person, I would behave as such while
meeting people. It is a personal schema that can only be affected by one’s
self. A good personal example would be how I was quite conservative during
high school, whereas I told myself to be more outgoing when I went to
college. Schemas about locations include how one may feel when going to a
place, for example one must behave quietly in the library, or how I know what
to expect when going into a haunted house.
A new schema can be created when, for example a child might see a tiger at
the zoo and think that it is a cat. The parents would then correct the child
saying how cats and tigers while looking similar, are different animals. Cats
being small and tame whilst tigers being large and wild. The child will then
create a new schema for tigers and use that as a reference in the future.
From this, we also should know that schemas can be modified. While the
same child goes on and sees a tiger cub, she might still think that it is a cat,
seeing how it is small. The parents then tell the child that even though small,
the cub is still a tiger and not a cat. The child will then update her schema for
tigers and again use it as future references.
Racism and stereotypes are a good example of a schema. First I’d like to add
that the following examples are purely just for illustration purposes. Asians
are stereotypically known for being good at maths, or being terrible drivers,
people like to joke about Americans being fat, and Jews being cheap and so
on. This can be a basis for a schema in a person’s head. However, upon
meeting someone from that said race, the schema could be modified. As a
kid, I used to think that there was only one race in Malaysia, and people who
smoke gets darker skin. I thought that smoking “burns” the inside of the body,
causing the skin to turn dark, meaning, Indians smoked a lot. I didn’t know
about Malays and Indians then. In my defence however, I went to a Chinese
kindergarten, meaning all the kids were Chinese, or light skinned. And I
always saw Malays and Indians smoking. Seldom Chinese. Thus reinforcing
this belief.
Schemas can also be applied to gender. We first get exposed to it in the
hospital. Boys are covered with blue blankets while girls in pink. Society
believes in separate entities that constitutes “male” and “female”. This
includes attitudes, behaviours and such. A child brought up from a typical
traditional Chinese background might see women as “second classed” whose
role is to serve the men. And a girl born into such a family might believe that
her goal in life is to get married to a successful man and serve him and take
care of his kids. This shows society’s view on women, reflecting on the
younger generation. These days, women are more independent and stand up
for themselves, rather than being the passive and submissive women that
their ancestors were. A boy might identify himself as strong, big and typical
boyish traits, this ultimately leads to things such as refusing to cry as it is “not
manly”, or refusing to eat strawberry ice-cream because its pink and it’s for
girls. As a kid I didn’t want to even play with girls fearing that it would taint my
“boyishness”.
Schemas are the “shortcuts” of our mind and while helping us, might
sometimes do harm as well as I earlier mentioned racism. We should be
warry of what goes on in our mind as it affects us in our everyday life.
Concept 2: Attitudes
Attitudes are classified into two different types. Implicit attitudes, and explicit
attitudes. Implicit attitudes forms without our conscious awareness and occurs
almost automatically without our consent. Explicit attitudes, however, is an attitude
that one would recognize and be able to control freely. Attitudes start as a feeling or
emotion, evoked by an external stimulus, which can occur from whatever situation
we are in. Our brain then decides on what actions to take or not to take in that
circumstance.
An attitude about a situation can be, take for example the new LRT rail track.
Because of this, workers had to cut down trees to make way for the new tracks. A
person with one attitude could think that would be a necessary sacrifice as it would
be good to have more public transport and less air polluting vehicles on the road.
Someone else with another attitude might think as trees are cut down the
environment would get destroyed. Both pretty much ends up thinking about the
environment, but both of them go about in different ways. This could be because the
first one had experiences with air pollution and how bad it can be, and the second
could have experienced deforestation and such.
An implicit attitude is our subconscious mind. If someone compliments Person A,
Person A might react in a way where you are proud. Although he tells himself to be
humble, and he think that he comes across as humble, he might not look that way as
his subconscious mind behaves differently and might look a little bit more arrogant.
Again, it could be the past experiences that he previously had to behave in this
certain way, for example as a kid maybe he was highly praised by his parents for
small accomplishments, thus causing him to be proud of what he does. T
An explicit attitude, would be, using Person A as an example once again, him telling
himself to be humble and not brag about his accomplishments. This leads to him
thanking the person complimenting him and maybe complimenting the person in
return. An explicit attitude requires the person to be able to change himself as he
sees fit, thus changing his attitude and outlook of the world.
Asides implicit attitudes and explicit attitudes, there are also three components of
attitudes, or rather, the ABCs of attitude. A being Affective, B being Behavioural, C
being Cognitive. Affective attitudes are emotional based components which are to
say, how one would feel in a situation. Behavioural attitude are action based
components, or, what one would do in a given situation. The action of a person.
Cognitive attitudes are more logical and technical, being the knowledge based
component of the three. It is what one knows before anything else.
To further elaborate, phobias are an example of an affective component of attitude.
If a girl has a very bad phobia of cockroaches, and sees a cockroach, that girl would
automatically react with disgust and fear upon seeing a cockroach. Behavioural
components is the action that takes place after the girl sees the cockroach. Would
she run? Would she scream? If a person has a fond memory of something, that
person would remember how it felt and welcome similar situations. Cognitive
components refers to the thoughts and beliefs of a situation. Coming back to the girl
with a cockroach phobia, the girl would believe all cockroaches are dirty and
disgusting. This is not true, there are some cockroaches, for example, the
Madagascar hissing roach, that are clean and does not even fly. However the girl
has already hardwired the belief that all cockroaches are dirty and thus reacting in
that way.
Psychologists define attitudes as a learned tendency to evaluate situations and
things in specific ways. Attitudes can be formed through experience, and emerge
because of personal experiences, or even observation of other situations. Social life
also has a huge impact on attitudes. One’s attitude might change to comply to what
the social environment considers as norm.
There are ways people take advantage of attitude, like how a business might
condition you to think a certain way about their product. A shampoo commercial
might lead you to believe using their product would make your hair smoother and
silkier, causing you to change your attitude of the product in favour of it. Peer
pressure is another good example of how someone totally against smoking can pick
up a cigarette to feel included in a group. Children learn many attitudes by observing
their parents as well.
In conclusion, attitudes are evaluations formed by people about objects, ideas,
events, and even other peoples. It may be positive or negative, and can really affect
a person on how he behaves and also how others see a person.
Concept 3: Self-concept
In layman terms, self-concept is the mental representation of one’s self. It’s how you
look to yourself and the beliefs that you hold about yourself. When someone asks
you to describe yourself, this would be what you would answer in return. Is may also
be thought of as a collection of self-schemas or schemata. Also can be known as
self-image.
There are several theories that are based on the insights of sociologist “George
Herbert Mead” and also psychologist “William James”. Both these theories describe
the subjective self as the “I” and the objective self as the “me” to further elaborate, “I’
initiates social action and interaction. “I” would respond to objects in a given
situation. “I” is impulsive, spontaneous and does not necessarily represent a socially
acceptable behaviour. “Me”, on the other hand, imagines the self as an object in a
given situation. It acts sort of like a conscience, providing “I” with guidance and
essentially would negotiate with the “I” for a more appropriate and socially
acceptable behaviour.
How much you value yourself is known as self-esteem or self-worth. Self-esteem
would refer to which we approve and accept ourselves, and how much we value
ourselves. A high self-esteem would mean we have a positive image of ourselves
and can lead to confidence, self-acceptance, and optimism. But can also lead to
overconfidence and arrogance if it happens to be in excess. On the other hand, low
self-esteem is having a negative view of ourselves. It can lead to lack of confidence,
wanting to be someone else, pessimism and such.
An ideal self is what one would want to be. It is the role-model of a person. A
persons’ ideal self may not necessarily be consistent with the life and experiences
that the person has. Examples can be an introverted and quiet person wanting to be
more talkative and social. The similarities between a persons’ ideal self and actual
self is called the state of congruence, and it is believed that for a person to achieve
their ideal left, they must work on their state of congruence to grow closer to one’s
goal.
Self-concept is learned. Nobody is born with their own self-concept. Of course, it
only means that our self-concept can be shaped and altered. It can also be affected
by external sources in different environments. Because of this, self-concept is a
product of development and socialization. Self-perception may be different from
what one thinks of himself than what he actually looks like to others. Whilst one
person may think of himself as humble, others may perceive him as proud and
arrogant.
Some animals, orangutans, chimpanzees, and also perhaps dolphins, can recognize
themselves as an individual. There was a study where researchers placed a dot of
red paint on the forehead of anesthetized chimpanzees, then placed the
chimpanzees in front of mirrors. When the chimpanzees woke up and saw
themselves in the mirror, they touched the dot on their forehead, and not the dot on
the chimpanzee in the mirror. Because of this, it is said that we can say that
chimpanzees understood that they were looking at themselves and not at another
chimpanzee, thus assuming that they have the ability to recognize themselves as
individuals. Most other animals including dogs, cats, and even monkeys, never
actually realize that they are looking at themselves in the mirror.
The same experiment was carried out on infants and it was found that they
recognize themselves in the same way that chimpanzees do. However it takes a
while but most do this by the age of 18 months. Children’s knowledge of self,
develops and increase as they grow older. At about 5 or 6, during kindergarten,
children would have realized that they are each unique and special individuals, who
other people are looking and judging them, the same way that they themselves are
looking and judging others. And this skill will eventually develop even further as they
grow older.
Self-concept is a skill that humans should treasure and cherish as it is one of the
things that makes humans, human. Not only that, each self-concept is as unique and
special as the person who has it. Making it that much more special.
Concept 4: Persuasive Messages
Persuasive messages are the attempts to influence others attitudes or behaviours.
There are two different routes that one can take to persuasion. The central route,
with the attending to and the evaluating a given message. Its processing creates
opinions that are quite resistant to change. A person is likely to rely on the message
and his own reflections, and the more cognitive effort put into it makes more
entrenched positions. Also, the peripheral route, which is the attending to external
cues, for example, the attractiveness of the speaker. Speaking from personal
experience. I would most likely listen to a pretty and attractive girl rather than a fat
ugly man. This involves a lack of motivation to attend to the message.
Take my trip to Langkawi for example. I can take the central route to choosing a
hotel by looking at good deals online, or reading good reviews from known sources,
or I can take the peripheral route and consider the hotel from advertisements, or the
fact that some close friends will be having their holiday at the same place. There are
several factors that can influence which route we take. When we hear the source,
which is to say the entity of which we are receiving a persuasive message from, be it
a person or an organization, we judge them by their attractiveness. The more
attractive the person is, the more persuasive they can get, with limits, of course.
There is also their credibility that can also increase or decrease a person’s
persuasive ability. One effect it has is called the sleeper effect, which is the
persuasive impact of a non-credible source that actually increases over time.
Some sources use fear as an approach to attempt to persuade others to avoid
certain behaviours such as smoking and taking drugs. They might show a picture of
a smoker’s lung or what heroine might do to you in hopes that that might trigger a
warning in your head causing you to stop. However, it is proven that positive
persuasion can be more effective at persuasion that it’s fear-based counterpart. The
effectiveness of either one however, might be mediated by cultural norms. For
example, Americans tend to be more likely to respond to positive valences whilst the
Japanese might be more likely to respond to fear-based or negative ones.
Personally I feel as though I respond to positive valence as I find I perform better
under the likelihood of a reward rather than a threat.
Proximity is another very important factor in persuasion. How near a certain object is
towards us in time and space will affect how we can be persuade, be it central
processing, or the peripheral route. Typically, a greater proximity would increase the
central route processing and vice-versa.
Robert Cialdini has six different weapons of influence. The first of which is
reciprocation, where a person feeling indebted would feel as though he has to pay
back his debt. If someone were to buy me a drink or my lunch, I would then feel
obligated to return the favour another day. Secondly, commitment and consistency.
At home, I would have to do my chores and duties. This creates a commitment to
these chores and ultimately create obligation to the point where I would feel guilty
when I don’t do my job. The theory behind it is that procuring a commitment would
create obligation, and the person will then act in a way where it is consistent with
that commitment. RSVP’ing on Facebook is also a good example on commitment.
The third weapon of influence is social proof. There was an experiment conducted
where 5 monkeys were placed in a cage, and a banana was placed in there as well.
Every time a monkey were to reach out for the banana, the four other monkeys
would get splashed with a bucket of water. This continued on for a while, and soon
whenever a monkey reached for the banana, the other monkeys would beat that
monkey up. After a while, one monkey was switched out, with another new one put
in. As expected, reached for the banana. The other monkeys of course, beat it up.
After that another monkey was switched out and the same thing happened. This
continued on and on until all the original monkeys were switched out, the result,
whenever a monkey reached for the banana, the others would beat that monkey up.
No one knew why, but that was “just the way it works around here”.
Liking. We generally say “yes” to those we like, and “no” to those who don’t. When
someone I don’t really like asks me for a favour I normally wouldn’t do it and make
up some form of excuse. Next comes authority. Where we feel obligated to perform
favours for those in authority above us. It does not necessarily have to be an
authority position or figure, as it can even be perceived authority. Finally, we have
scarcity, where people normally will want something that they can’t have. Limited
time offers are the perfect example for this. I once heard saw a long line in a mall
and asked one lady what they were queuing up for, and she didn’t know. She said
she heard there was free stuff.
Basically persuasion is a very useful skill we can use to make our lives easier. It is
not necessarily manipulation but rather the receiving end would do it more or less
willingly. An easier approach rather than manipulation.
Concept 5: Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.
Stereotypes are a general belief about a certain group of people. It can be negative or
positive. An example of stereotypes are that black people run really fast or Mexicans are all
illegal immigrants. Stereotypes runs the risk of evolving into prejudicial and eventually might
lead to discrimination. Prejudice is more of a negative attitude towards a certain group of
people, and discrimination is the negative behaviours directed at a specific group of people
ostracising is an example of this.
Stereotypes are not only harmful in their own right. Although they can do damage by
eventually fostering prejudice and eventually discrimination. All three, stereotyping,
prejudice, and discrimination, often go together, hand-in-hand, although it is still possible to
have one without the other.
Racism is discrimination against a specific race. It is the belief that a certain race possess
certain characteristics specific to that very race. This can lead to believing that a race is
superior or inferior to other races and thus causing negativity between the races. Though
progress has been made since centuries ago, racism and sexism still remains a very
significant problem. Many people nowadays still use racist humour and laugh about it.
Admittedly, I do that to. Personally I quite enjoy these jokes although it may be offensive to
others. I even like racist humour against my own race as well as I think laughter is still a
useful tool to bring people together.
Sexism is also an issue, as for example members of the female gender are known to be
gentle and such. Most common cases are when males think they are superior to females
although not necessarily true. Whilst these statements can be true, it is also possible that
members of the same sex can go against each other for example when a male is not
“manly” and is weak, other males might ask him to “man up” and such. There are gender
prejudice where people treat other people unequally due to their gender. People have an
idea on how men and woman should behave and whenever someone goes out of line,
people usually find it wrong. These prejudices are based on peoples’ ideas on how men and
woman should act and behave. It can be formed early on in life, and is mostly based on
social and cultural beliefs. Studies have shown that children learn typical gender roles from
a very young age. An example is how new-born boys and girls are put into blue and pink
blankets respectively. Personally, I was typically brought up to like cars and robots as a boy
and was against playing with dolls and such.
This is a hypothetical example of sex discrimination.
Number
Number
Percentage
of Applicants of Job Offers Offered Jobs
Department A
Women
500
50
10%
Men
1000
100
10%
Women
1000
50
5%
Men
500
25
5%
Women
1500
100
6.67%
Men
1500
125
8.33%
Department B
Combined Total
Many of our habits and attitudes are learnt at home. And especially parents and guardians,
they are a very big source of information and influence over our behaviour and attitude in
life. Peers such as classmates and friends from the same cliques also shape our attitudes
as if I had not joined my certain group of friends, I might not have been exposed to racist
humour and thus maybe not enjoy it as much. Authoritative figures also contributes to all of
this.
Certain moods and emotions bring out prejudice. Not only bad moods but also good moods,
as typically someone in a bad mood might pay too much attention to tiny little details around
them. But someone with a good mood on the other hand, might think less carefully and thus
being prejudiced towards something. Both positive and negative emotions can interfere with
our normal thought processors. Having a bias towards another group of people.
Discrimination and stereotyping can affect our behaviour towards someone. Other dangers
of stereotyping includes affecting the behaviours of others, as well as influencing our own
perception of other people. The confirmation bias applies to this as we might only see what
we want to see in a certain race and/or other groups. It is the “belief that causes itself to b
Contact between different groups might have them see the good in each other and lessen
stereotyping and prejudice. Equal contact between groups is also essential. Ultimately
achieving peace between each other.