For Vivian

Hi Vivian,
i've completed my 5 blog entries and 10 comments for the subject. My comments are usually signed as esther or esther hong for the blog entries i've commented on. The following is a list of the blogs that i have made comments on:

1) http://thisblogisforvivienwithane.blogspot.com/ by Julia (3 comments)

• altruism vs. egoism
• prejudice & discrimination (against overweight women)
• conformity

2) http://fallingchocolaterain.blogspot.com/ by Chocolate Rain (1 comment)

• counterfactual thinking

3) http://jazzygal-seah.blogspot.com/ by Seah (1 comment)

• blog entry about facebook

4) http://thejournalofamber.wordpress.com/ by Amber (1 comment)

• to whale or not to whale

5) http://myscrewed-uplife.blogspot.com/ by Pinky (2 comments)

• guys vs. girls
• in a fantasy world of her own

6) http://joelsocialpsy.blogspot.com/ by Joel (1 comment)

• stereotyping & influences

7) http://leovinechengtc.blogspot.com/ by Leovine (1 comment)

• self-fulfilling prophesy and teaching tips

Hope this helps to ease your burden of grading so many blogs and our comments =)

cognitive dissonance theory

We often feel uncomfortable when some of our beliefs contradict one another. The cognitive dissonance theory proposed by Leon Festinger stated that being aware of consistent beliefs (consonant cognitions) creates positive feelings in us. However, being aware of inconsistent beliefs (dissonant cognitions) creates negative feelings in us. In addition, the negative feelings produced as a result of our inconsistent beliefs serves as a motivator to change our current state, particularly cognitions that regulate an individual’s personal behaviour (Breckler, Olson, and Wiggins, 2006). Festinger characterized dissonance as a state of ‘aversive arousal’ which ignites our desire to decrease it by rationalizing that our former or present behaviour was logical. He suggested that one can decrease the dissonance faced by changing our behaviour, changing our cognitions (attitude), adding new consonant cognitions, decreasing the importance of one of the dissonant cognitions, and or increasing the importance of one of the consonant cognitions.
Using Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance, I applied his reasoning to my constant late nights to see whether it made sense. Although I believe that lack of sleep has a negative effect on my academic performance, I often keep late nights. These two beliefs are inconsistent with each other, therefore causing dissonance that elicits negative feelings in me. If I believe that keeping late nights affects my academic performance negatively, I should sleep early. However, having this belief did not stop me from keeping late nights frequently. I feel bad that I am performing below my maximum potential academically. Therefore, I changed my belief to keeping late nights will not affect my academic performance negatively (change cognition). I decided that I am a night owl so sleeping early is not an option (no change of behaviour). I also believe that it is alright to keep late nights since I am doing my assignments. That means that I will be able to finish my assignments earlier (adding consonant cognition).

Conformity

We are guided by social norms (e.g. behaving appropriately in class, being filial to your parents, constant need for self-improvement, being punctual for work) throughout our lives. When we deviate from these norms that are present within the culture, environment, family or social groups that we belong to, we often feel pressure from others to conform to the beliefs and values that members of the group believe in. This may manifest in the form of other members within the group persuading you to ‘go with the flow’, or if persuasion doesn’t work, say something like ‘why are you trying to make life difficult for yourself and other people around you?’ So what exactly constitutes conformity? Why do people conform?
Breckler, Olson, and Wiggins (2006) in the Social psychology ‘Alive’ textbook, defined conformity as any modification in behaviour of an individual caused by influence from others. Often, when we are presented with a novel or unique situation, we tend to look around at what others are doing to decide how we should behave. For example, when you went clubbing for the first time, you probably looked around at how other people in the club were behaving and then decided how you should behave to fit in with the crowd. Sometimes, following the crowd may be the best way to do things or at least to avoid looking stupid, especially when the situation is ambiguous and you feel doubtful of your own opinion. For example, you try to imitate other diners’ behaviour the first time you ate at a French restaurant because you didn’t know which cutlery to use for each course. According to the authors, conformity happens due to informational influences and normative influences. Informational influences are said to happen when individuals are motivated to be correct and to acquire precise information. That is depending on other people’s opinion or behaviour as a source of information which is thought to be practical in a certain situation, especially when the individual is uncertain about the right answer. Normative influences are said to happen when individuals are motivated by hankering after rewards or to avoid punishment. The individual may not consider the other person’s opinion or behaviour as correct, but want to be seen as likable or to avoid conflict within the group. The pressure to conform is especially evident in young children who want to be seen as ‘good’ and adolescents who feel the need to ‘fit in with their clique’.
Learning about the concept of conformity, I realized many examples of conformity took place within my kindergarten class that I used to teach. An example portraying informational influence on conformity occurred when I asked the children a question during lesson (e.g. Why do we need sunlight?). I would ask each of them for their opinion of what they thought was the correct answer. Those children who had some knowledge of the concept would shout out their answers. Sometimes, the children who did not know the answer would try to guess, but end up agreeing that their opinion was incorrect when some other classmates said out loud that their answer was wrong without even asking the teacher. There was one instance where I asked one child why he thought his answer was wrong when his classmates said so, even though I had not given him any feedback on whether his answer was right or wrong. He told me that was because the child who said so was clever and that he was afraid his classmates might not like him if he disagreed.
An example portraying normative influence on conformity occurred during the children’s free play time. The children were sharing a box of lego toys to play with while waiting for their turn to shower. There were a few pieces of lego they considered as special. Every time they laid hands on the lego box, they would scramble to gather as many special pieces as they could to make their lego construction look better than the rest. However, knowing that I would punish all of them (by not allowing them to play) if any of them complained that their friends were not sharing the special pieces, they came to a consensus to share the special pieces among a few of them. Unfortunately, one child was left out of the group and did not have any special piece to use. He went around to his other friends to try to borrow one piece but was rejected. So he came up to me sadly to tell me that his friends didn’t want to share the special pieces with him. Before I could say anything, one of the children quickly asked him to go over to join him and offered to share his special lego piece with the poor boy. The boy who offered to share was probably afraid that I might stop the whole class from playing, since one of them complained to me that the rest of the children were not sharing the special pieces of lego with him. Although the children didn’t agree with me at first that they should share the special lego pieces so everyone has a chance to use them, they did as they were told lest I stopped them from playing with the toys.

How affected are you by novel things?

People’s attitudes vary across factors such as time, mood, situations and environmental settings. A simple question such as ‘What is your attitude towards lizards?’ or ‘What is your attitude towards teenage abortion?’ can generate many different types of responses by various people. So what exactly is attitude? Attitude is defined as ‘an individual’s evaluation of a target along a good-bad dimension’ which involves a person’s general judgment about whether a target (e.g. object, person) is positive or negative (Breckler, Olson & Wiggins, 2006).

According to Breckler, Olson, and Wiggins (2006) in the Social psychology alive textbook, attitude has affective (feelings and emotions), behavioral (actions), and cognitive (beliefs) components. The mere exposure effect labeled by Robert Zajonc (1968) in his study refers to the inclination to have a positive liking for a novel object or person target due to repeated exposure. The concept of mere exposure challenges the classic saying of ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. He argued on the basis of his study that this saying should be altered to ‘familiarity breeds content’, which befits the findings of his study. He suggested a few possible reasons for this phenomenon. One reason that the mere exposure effect happens is because we are unsure how we should react to novel objects or situations, which causes us feelings of unpleasantness. However, as we become more knowledgeable/ familiar with the object or situation in question, we become more certain regarding how we should react to it, which reduces our feelings of unpleasantness and increases feelings of pleasantness. Another reason he suggested was our processing speed for perceiving and categorizing familiar objects, situations or people is faster and easier than if the objects, situations or people are not familiar to us. Therefore, through mere exposure, feelings of pleasantness can be linked to an object, situation or person by increasing the person’s positive attitude toward the object, situation or person.

Some examples of the mere exposure effect are:

• You dislike your new hairstyle after a haircut. However, you begin to like it after a few weeks when you’ve gotten used to it.
• Familiar fashion brand names like GUESS?, Chanel, and Espirit are usually seen as trustworthy and deliver high quality products.
• Your new colleague looks quite weird to you the first time you see him/her. However, after working with him/her for a few weeks, he/she looks more normal to you.

Back in my previous job as a childcare teacher, the children developed a fever over the Chinese song (lao shu ai da mi, 老鼠爱大米) sung by the singer Jocie Guo Mei Mei when it was released. Those of you who watch our local Chinese tv channels would recall the music video and song being played over and over. At first, the children did not seem to display any liking for the song which was played on the school bus. However, after being exposed to the song repeatedly on top of seeing the music video and advertisements on tv, they grew to like the song very much. They would tell the bus uncle to play that particular song repeatedly everyday, failing which they would pester the bus uncle until he gave in. They would all sing the song over and over again on the bus and even sing it to the teachers in school. It almost drove me crazy to hear the song everyday.

Another song that probably caught on by the mere exposure effect was the theme song for the cartoon movie, Madagascar. The children were singing the song so much that even their teacher (who was my classmate then) was influenced by them and started singing the song to our group of friends in school.

The what if's in life

Everyone has at some point of their life reflected back on their past behaviours or thoughts and asked themselves, ‘What might have happened if I didn’t do what I did?’ Or perhaps you’ve thought about how different your life would be if you had gone to a different university or wished that you had taken a different course of study. I know I did. Social research terms such phenomena as counterfactual thoughts.

According to Breckler, Olson, and Wiggins (2006) in the Social psychology alive textbook, counterfactual thoughts are people’s opinions on how past occurrences might have been different. They are so termed because they are the direct opposite of the facts. Most of all counterfactual thoughts have to do with how commonplace occurrences that might have turned out differently from what actually happened.

According to Kahneman and Miller (1986), counterfactual thoughts have a higher occurrence rate when the person is able to visualize how the event could have turned out differently easily without much mental struggle. Upward counterfactual thoughts are the most frequent type of counterfactual thoughts, which includes thinking about how past events, could have turned out more satisfactorily. It was noted that such thoughts usually occur after a negative outcome, where people would consider how the negative outcome could have been avoided. It is also a potential benefit when people come up with ways to prevent future occurrences of the negative outcome, which stems from people’s desire to improve themselves.

This brings back memories of the first statistics module, PY2103, I took in the first semester of my studies in JCUS. Being a ‘newbie’ in school, I was still trying to figure out life in university. It was unfortunate that I had no prior experience in statistics and could not understand what my lecturer was talking about in class. It didn’t help that I didn’t enjoy the lectures or tutorials, could fall asleep easily during lectures, and didn’t make enough effort to prepare for the mid term exam. As such, I failed my mid term exam miserably. Each time I reflected on this incident, I couldn’t help thinking that I should have approached my lecturer or other classmates for help earlier on instead of procrastinating. This was a wakeup call for me. After the exam, I managed to secure the help of a classmate, Louis, to help me with statistics. After weeks of him explaining everything the lecturer taught, including testing me to see how much I remembered and understood, I managed to pass my exam and complete the module successfully, albeit only obtaining a passing grade. Although I didn’t do as well as I would have liked to have achieved, I would probably have had to repeat the module had I not had the assistance from my helpful classmate.

From this experience, we’ve even became good friends. Thank you Louis, for all the help you’ve given me for the statistics modules =)

An interesting experience

We make many decisions daily, ranging from the mundane, such as 'Where should I go for lunch today?' or 'What shall I have for breakfast?', to those requiring complex cognitive processes, such as 'I can save about $2 per day if I walk home from school and exercise at the same time'. Most of these decisions are made quickly and effortlessly.



According to Breckler, Olson, and Wiggins (2006), we make common, everyday decisions based on heuristics, which are informal rules or shortcuts used for making decisions quickly. As we face many daily issues that require some form of decision-making or judgment, we do not resolve each situation with the same amount of energy or resources, lest we get mentally exhausted.



I recently met an international student who is currently studying in the MBA programme at JCUS. We were chatting halfway when he asked me to guess which country he was from. Based on his accent and skin colour, i guessed that he was from the Philippines, or China. However, I got a shock when he finally revealed that he was from India.



Firstly, he did not fit the stereotype of how a person from India should look like(e.g. dark skinned, indian accent). Secondly, using the representativeness heuristic, his facial features fit those of an individual from China, Philippines or other countries with fairer-skinned individuals compared to India, and I interpreted his accent as one from the minority groups in China. Therefore, it came as quite a surprise to me that he was from India instead. Well, it also shows that the heuristics that we use in daily life is not always accurate.