1) The document discusses topics from social psychology lectures and readings, including self-concept, positive thinking, color psychology, and attitudes.
2) It describes an exercise where students wrote down how they define themselves, and how people tend to see themselves as the center of attention more than others do.
3) Key points from readings on color psychology are discussed, such as how color can carry meaning and influence behavior, and how red is often used in branding to attract customers.
2. Social Psychology – Journal 1
A title of self-concept was learnt on the first lecture in social psychology class. We were told
to define ourselves with the words “I am …..” at the starting of the class. After that, Miss Ang
our lecturer told us that without realizing we could have written about more than 100
answers. The way we define ourselves in the answer are our self-schemes. The examples are
I am shy, I am underweight and many more. People tend to see themselves at the centre of
the stage and it is called the spotlight effect. Such as the times that we fell on the ground and
thought that everybody around was laughing at us but in conclusion, only a part of the
people was looking at us. We tend to expect a bunch of people looking at us all the time and
felt embarrassed after a humiliating act but the reaction was not as bad as we expected.
Other than that, we can describe our social identity through self and culture. Everybody’s
personal identity is different but some traits may be the same.
Another topic that I learned from the class was the power of positive thinking. There was a
book that I read a few years ago which had a connection with positive thinking. The book
was “the secret” written by Rhonda Byrne. The book talks about positive thinking can create
life-changing results such as increasing in health, happiness and wealth.
3. Social Psychology – Journal 2
In the previous social psychology class, I leant about the topic vision. The structure
of the eye is a very interesting. Every part of the eye has its own function. A disorder of vision
can cause a person to not see things as clear as a normal eye.
The next topic that I learnt from the class was the effect of colour. In psychology,
colour can affect or show a person’s feeling. Everybody’s effects towards a colour are
different. For example, the colour red may look violent to a person but another person may
say red looks romantic. The effect of every colour may be different to everybody. I am also
taught that the colour red is more attracting to the eye than other colours.
After further research on the topic colour psychology, the general model of colour
psychology relies on six basic principles. They are colour can carry specific meaning, colour
meaning is either based in learned meaning or biologically innate meaning, the perception of
a colour causes evaluation automatically by the person perceiving, the evaluation process
forces colour motivated behavior, colour usually exerts its influence automatically and colour
meaning and effect has to do with context as well.
In class, I also learnt that colours can also be used to attract business. Such as the
fast food business McDonald, the brand name which is in red makes customers feel hungry
and eat more. Other than food, games which hold a name in red is also more popular than
other games title with other colours such as the game Mario.
4. Social Psychology – Journal 3
The visual system is an interesting topic. Reversible images are pictures that are
compatible with two interpretations that can shift back and forth. The amazing pair of eyes
shows us different sides of the reversible images. These images give the principle reason
that people’s experience of the world is subjective. The visual illusion makes the eye sees
things in a different way. Even though both things are the same but the eye gives an illusion
that looks like they are different in size or shape.
The next topic is about attitudes. According to the slides, attitudes are positive or
negative evaluations towards something. There are three types of theories of attitude
change in learning. They are evaluative conditioning, operant conditioning and
observational conditioning.