School of Architecture, Building and Design

PSYC 103 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

REPORT Assignment 3

NAME

JOLENE HOR WEI FERN TANG KAR JUN HO TZE HOOI LEE WAI YOONG

(0313751) (0314075) (0314179) (0314123)

COURSE

FOUNDATION IN NATURAL AND BUILT ENVIRONMENTS

LECTURER

MR. SHANGKAR

Report
For this group project, we were assigned to film a short video that is based on the 5 concepts that we have learnt during our Social Psychology Class. After having a discussion, our group has decided to focus more on the theories and concepts in Chapter 2 which is The Self: Who Am I and How Do Others See Me? We made a list of concepts and theories that we thought would be best to do and after that we picked the five best concepts which would suit the video well. Amongst the theories and concept that we have chosen is Social Comparison, False Consensus, Motivation, Unrealistic Optimism and lastly Self-Serving Biases. In this assignment, we have divided all our group works amongst each other. Wai Yoong was in charged with directing and editing the video, Jolene was in charged with coming up with various concepts that we would use for our video, Kar Jun was in charged with writing/producing the script with Jolene and, lastly, Tze Hooi was in charged with giving ideas to improve the script/storyline, and voicing the lecturer. All of us will be acting in the video and we were very excited about it as it was our second time doing a video assignment. Even though the assignment was fun, it came with several sets of problems which were, the time and date that we should start to film the video. All of us have different timetables, so free time is very scarce, unless if we come in the morning which is before our classes or at night, which is after our classes. We decided to film it at 8am in the morning. Also, venue problems, most of the class were occupied. So we had to retake a lot of video scenes because of people entering the classrooms unintentionally interrupting our video shoot. Our first scene was in LT 19, our second scene was in a discussion room in the Taylors Library.

We came up with a story that takes place in a university. The reason why we choose to do so was, since we are all students, it will be easier to relate to all these theories and concepts. We tried our best to make sure that it was relatable to students so that it will be easier for them to understand the concepts which are being used in the video. Our objective of the project was not only to discover the best way of implementing the theories and concepts that we have learnt in our Social Psychology class, but to also express and convey our message in our video in a way to make it more interesting so that the viewers do not get bored of watching it. We choose Taylors Lakeside University as the main setting of the short film as it was an easy meeting point for all of our group members since everyone lived very far apart from each other and it would be more convenient for us to take the video and not having to be late for our classes. The story is about two Asian Students and two White Students grouping together to complete their Physics group project. Since Asians and White students students come from different social backgrounds, we were able to implement these theories and concepts effectively in our video. We created 5 characters which is the lecturer, 2 Asian Students (Ah Weng and Ah Cheng) and 2 White Students(Elizabeth and Henry). Tze Hooi and Wai Yoong will play as the Asian Students, while Jolene and Kar Jun will play as the White Students. The story takes off when the lecturer tells the whole class about the group assignment. They were to form a group consisting of 4 people. However, since there were only 4 people in the class, they had to work together. The 2 White Students Elizabeth and Henry made a social comparison and stereotyped the Asian students to be better than them at studies. Social comparison means using a standard to compare it with themselves. Stereotyping on the other hand means to group people based on a formulaic conception, which is, The whites made an upward social comparison by thinking highly about the Asian Students. Thus, they decided to group up with the Asian students. The Asian students, Ah Weng and Ah Cheng other hand had no choice but to accept working with the White Students. They made themselves feel better by putting the Whites in the same category with Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. The Asians put Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs as a

standard for the Whites, therefore assuming that Elizabeth and Henry were very smart as well.

The story continues and showed the concept of false consensus. False consensus is defined as the tendency to overestimate the number of people who act or think as we do. The scene takes place in a discussion room when the four of them was doing some calculations for the Physics project. Ah Cheng gives Elizabeth and Henry some easy physics equations to solve. Ah Cheng had False Consensus as he overestimated the Whites, thinking that their maths standard is up to par with his. He thought that the math equations that he gave Elizabeth and Henry was easy, but the whites felt otherwise. He made an assumption that they would know how to solve it. Henry as usual, was sleeping while Elizabeth tried to solve the questions. The next scene is when Elizabeth was trying to fix the Physics project but she was having some difficulties. She then goes up to Ah Cheng and Ah Weng who were watching football and Henry was as sleeping. She asked them to assist her in solving the problem. Ah Cheng and Ah Weng then tells Elizabeth that watching football is an intrinsic motivation as they are doing it for enjoyment and doing their work is an extrinsic motivation because they are obligated to do so. Intrinsic motivation means taking a certain action for the sake of enjoyment and extrinsic motivation means taking a certain action in response to external pressure or obligation. After that, the group sat together to complete their project. They discussed about the possible ways of fixing their project. Everyone had no idea and they were all feeling a little bit down. Then, Elizabeth had an epiphany, she told them that she had an idea. She told them not to worry as the unicorns from heaven will come from Mars and will send elves and dwarfs that will help them fix the project. From this, Elizabeth showed unrealistic optimism. Unrealistic optimism means the bias that causes a person to believe that they are less at risk of experiencing a negative situation. Elizabeth shows this concept in a different way. She thinks that all these unrealistic beings from fantasy stories and movies will be able to help the group to fix the

problem and escape from this negative situation. While this was all happening, Henry was fast asleep. The last scene shows the lecturer saying that the group had done well and did a good job on the project. Henry took all the credit and said that it was all his hard work that made the group project a success. This was not true as he was sleeping most of the time. Henrys character showed self-serving biases as he took all the credit and said that the group project was such a big success because of all this hard work. Self-serving biases is defined as the tendency to attribute positive effects or successful behaviors to dispositional factors. Ah Weng and Ah Cheng also showed some self-serving biases as they too felt that it was their hard work that made the project a success. From this assignment, we have learned more about each chosen concept as we had to do further research on it in order to include the concepts in out video. We also learn a bit of video taking skills and video editing skills as we had to put the film together. Aside from that, working in a group we got to know our group mates better and improve our team work skills. All in all, this was a very beneficial assignment and it was also very enjoyable.