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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT
NAME: Khor Seem Leng
STUDENT ID NO: 0315208
BATCH : FNBE April intake 2013
LECTURER: Ms Chia Yee ,Pang
SUBMISSION DATE: 21TH NOVEMBER 2013

2. Journal 1 – Self conception
The first thought that came across my mind when self conception was taught by our lecturer ,Ms
Ang was self-esteem, being how much assurance I have about myself .We were asked to list down
5 sentences about “ I am …." .The first thing that I whisper to myself was “ I am confidence in my
own way ”. I sincerely believe that although I am not the most intelligent kid nor the prettiest girl in
the class, I do possess my own uniqueness. And most importantly, it is my own way of looking at
myself or my own perceptions that builds up that confidence in me . For me, I wrote about personal
traits rather than social identity .Some of us have the same social identity, for example I am a
Christian. I remembered one of my school friends when the topic self conception was given to me.
I always try my very best to advise people that have low esteem in themselves. To me, no one is
perfect and we have to accept our weaknesses or flaws in order to improve ourselves. There was a
time when I have a guy friend who is quite short and he thinks that being short is something very
embarrassing. Hence, he won’t go around and mix with friends due to his height. In my opinion, he
is that type of people that are prone to having negative self-images and exaggerate his flaws /
weaknesses .He should learn to accept his imperfections by turning them into motivation to
succeed instead and not be easily influenced by the negative comments from others.
Besides that ,we also did touch about the spotlight effect where we tend to see ourselves at center
stage .For instance ,that was a time in college where I fell down from the stairs and there were a lot
of people watching along the corridor. I lost my feet balance and unceremoniously fell on my butt
.Nobody said anything, and my first thought to myself was that everyone was in actual fact
laughing at my carelessness and clumsiness

3. Journal 2 – Self-serving bias
This is one of my favourite topic as it somehow relates to me. I used to be someone who have low
self-esteem. During my secondary school, I often put the blame on my teachers as I always get
poor grades for my Chinese paper. I would sometimes even blame the government for setting such
a high standard for Chinese paper. After finishing my secondary school life, I soon realize that all
this while what I did was blaming everyone except for myself for the failure I encountered. It was
me who didn’t take Chinese paper seriously and not putting enough effort to work on it. I always
thought that I am already weak in this subject so I shouldn’t focus on it. Nevertheless, I was lucky
enough as I have parents who knew the importance of Chinese language and they were the one
who encouraged me not to give up on this subject because it may proves to be useful in the future.
This thought came into my mind when Ms Ang mentioned about this topic. I do have regrets about
it but I will just take it as one of the expensive lessons in life. From my research, I got to know that
self-serving bias is a situation where people tend to attribute positive events to their own character
and attribute negative events to external factors. It’s commonly known as cognitive bias that has
been extensively studied in social psychology .One of the way to avoid self-serving attribution bias
is to have awareness and be mindful at all times. When you learn about common cognitive biases,
you will start to notice that you yourself are doing them, and self-corrective measures ought to be
taken.

4. Journal 3 – Vision
As usual, class starts sharp at 1 pm. The topic for the day was about vision .The beginning of the
lecture was all about the structure of our eyes in which the lecturer explained it in a really detail
form. It reminded me of the high school times where we used to have biology lessons. At first, I
thought that the lecture for that day would be all about scientific stuff, but obviously I was wrong .
We continued our lecture with the next topic about colours. Colour can dramatically affect moods,
feelings, and emotions. It is a powerful communication tool and can be used to signal action,
influence mood, and also cause physiological reactions. Certain colors have been associated with
increased blood pressure, increased metabolism, and eyestrain .This topic drew my attention as it
is related to my group's psychology assignment ( how colour affect the mood of a person ).I got a
better understanding about the different colour that will affect the emotion. Overall, it really did
help a lot for the group assignment as well as for myself. I went back that day and did further
research about the psychological effects of colour .The one thing that I discovered through my
research was that installing blue-colored streetlights can lead to a reduction of crime in those areas.
It started to get more interesting when Ms Ang proceeded on to the next part of lecture ( the visual
system ). It is something that is related to artistic architecture drawings .That topic was really an
eye-opener for me as I didn’t realize that there were so many different kinds of illusion.The one
that trigger me the most was the necker cube.I did struggle a lot though in the process of finding the
other inner dimension illusion. It was just simply amazing that just a simple cube could trick the
viewer’s point of view. I was totally inspired by that .

5. Journal 5 – Conformity and Group Behavior
As usual class started at 1 pm sharp .One of our classmates, Kelvin went to the toilet just when
class was about to start.Ms Chia team up with the students to prank Kelvin that went out. There
was a question about the length of 3 straight lines .We were told earlier by the lecturer to give the
same answer when asked and the answer is actually wrong. When the question was proposed to
Kelvin, he was confused. He obviously had a different answer in mind at that time which is the
correct answer but he became unsure of his answer as everyone else gave a different answer. At
last, being convinced by the answers from other coursemates, Kelvin changed his answer .Through
this simple research, we can see that Ms Chia is trying to highlight to the students the topic for the
day which was conformity . Conformity refers to any change in behavior caused by another person
or group; the individual acted in some way because of influence from others. However ,conformity
is limited to changes in behavior caused by other people; it does not refer to effects of other people
on internal concepts like attitudes or beliefs. In Kelvin’s case it is group pressures forcing him to
conform to the answers stated by the majority, something which nearly all of us do some of the
time .Undeniably , I am also one of those that are always tempted to conform to others. There was
once where my friends and I watched a movie. They kept saying that the movie was good and
interesting but deep down in my heart I actually felt that it was a boring movie .However, I
reluctantly pretended to agree with their reviews and opinions of the movie as I rather conform
than be the odd one out.

6. Journal 6 – Group Behavior
„Do I act differently when I‟m alone as compared to when I‟m around a crowd of people? ‟ This is
the first question which pops out of my mind after watching the video that Ms. Chia posted during
tutorial session. The video was about how people reacted when a little girl got “kidnapped” by a
stranger in a busy street .To my surprise, those people just walked past the little girl as if nothing
happened when she is actually in a vulnerable situation and in need of help desperately .That
video really made me teared as if I were to put myself in the little girl‟s shoes, it was really
heart-wrenching to see society nowadays couldn‟t care less for the life of an innocent child. For
my group‟s final project, we did the bystander effect on students where one of my teammates
acted to faint on the floor. I was in charge of debriefing the students who came up to help .It was
another saddening situation when we saw that there were students who just walked past the
victim without any intention at all to provide a lending hand .Based on our observation for this
project, we found out that when students walk in a group with their friends they tend to be braver in
approaching and helping out the victim. It shows how people tend to be followers and will only
get involved to help if they witness another person started to provide aid first. The negative impact
of this kind of behavior is that a group of people will just stand there, witness a crime and wonder
why nobody is helping instead of taking actions themselves.