okayyyy!!! this is the LAST post! boy m i happpy! =D



topic..
friendship....!


what a way to end off. friends!!! its such an issential in life. to everyone. i definitely can't live without friends and i don't think you can too. so.. have you ever wonder, what makes you be friend with one and not the other? well, it sure did for me. =)

when we are a kid, we find ourself, we find friends. these friends form the basis of our friends in future. many of friendship theories focuses on children due to this fact that many formation of friendship happens during childhood. children also spend most of their time in school, at the neighbourhood, being around many other children. it is seen that children need to learn to develop close relationship since young. it kinda forms the foundation. =)

children usually form close friendship when they are in school. it is seen that they will befriend with people of the same age, gender, race, interest etc. in adolescense, what bring friendship closer or what brings one befriend someone has got to do with the similarity in attitute, life goal and intelligence. this 3 are building blocks to adulthood friendship.

i was from an all girls school for TEN years. yes.. so, i guess all my friends will be off the same sex and pretty much race since chinese is the majority. children are seen to conform to peers at the early age. a study done show that children till the age of about 14years will conform to their peers. at about 15 years old, there is a drop in peer influence and wanting more atonomy. now.. this is important!!!

we seen that many students in singapore going astray like playing truant, vandalism, stealing!? using new languages etc.. well..this pretty much explains it. i would believe that when these kids are from a certain group when they are young, they will break out of it when they are about 15years old as they start to discover about themself more. example, gender identity, their life goals etc. maybe, we should look into the type of friends to help as understand why there is an increase in certain type of action of a certain age. also, as children grow, they break out from their little circle as they become more sensitive to social norms and their motivation to be accepted by their peers increases.

now, does this explan why u make some friends and lose some when you were younger?! =D

Announcement

Singapore will be holding the world netball championship in 2011!! Bigger announcement!! The netball nation games will be here soon- August to September 2008! Three cheers!!!

Last year, I went to the 5 nations championship. It was awesome!! Plus, Singapore won and was crowned the overall champion 2 years in a roll!! The atmosphere was intense. Sitting at the stand, my teammates and I felt the adrenaline rush of the players! I love attending games like this one. =D

I played a number of competition but never played anything that big scale. I will not totally understand this but i think, players will feel the intensity and the pressure if there is a huge crowd cheering for them. I don't really like it when people start cheering for the team. To me, I believe that by cheering for the team you support, it will not benefit them as they will be more nervous and hence, not bring able to perform to their best. Moreover, this will also place pressure to the other team, making them feel pretty much ostracized. In any case, I feel that both teams will be off a disadvantage and, it is just not really wise to do that.

in the textbook, it is said that the presence of other people improved performance on a simple task but worsened performance on a difficult task. it is proposed that the presence of other people is physiologically arousing- faster heart rate for example. this could be due to the fact that they are anxious to perform well in front of others.

I am, once again.. WRONG!!!!! Triplett conducted a study and concluded that people perform better in the presence of others- an effect that became known as social facilitation where it is defined as the effects of the presence of other people on individual performance on simple tasks and impaired performance on complex tasks. With this theory, can i say that team Singapore has been winning during the nation cup because it is played locally and there are many supporters, therefore, they are able to perform better? Also, because they have been training and participating in so many netball games, the game is a simple task and therefore, they are able to perform? Zajonc found out that it has got to do with the level of complexity of the task to the participants.

This is interesting. Now, Zajonc hypothesised that the presence of other people increases the probability of the dominant responses on a task. let it be simple...! when a task is well-learned, results will typically improve in front of an audience whereas performance on the complex task will worsen the performance in from of an audience. maybe thats why team Singapore can do well cuz the level of complexity is pretty low and to them its a well-learned task!!! can i then say that the netballers are able to attain and retain the champion title for 2 years due to the fact that the game is held in singapore, there are alot of supporters and they train alot?

So, what do you say abt Social Facilitation in this context? Agree with me!?

I’m doing psychopathology this semester and one of the criteria for the course is to have a group presentation. My group, consisting of 4 people decided to do on anorexia (AN). Now, this is a topic so familiar to us all right?

Let me share yet another story. I never understand how people can be anorexic. Seriously, the food in Singapore is too good!!! Adding on, there are wonderful foods in the world yet to be explored and tasted. With that sentence, ha, I think it can pretty much explain my size now hur. Haha.

Back to the topic- I can’t revel too much on the group’s presentation. It will only spoil the fun. So, you just got to wait for the day of psychopathology presentation. In a nutshell, we have a case study, and in this case, the patient went into anorexia due to pressure. This pressure is mainly internal pressure- voices in her head telling her that she is fat even when she is already super skinny.

More and more people are admitted to hospitals due to being a victim to anorexia. In our society now, more people want to have that perfect body. Let me post this question to you- what is THAT perfect body?

You now have a task/homework from me. Go take a magazine, flip it open and ask yourself, the person that you see in the magazine, is it photo shopped? Let me tell you that most photos are photo shopped in magazines. What is wrong with our own figure without it being photo shopped!? More and more girls look at it and want to be just like the person that they see in the magazine. Anorexic patients will constantly see that they are fat when they are so very skinny already.

My point here is not to give you a talk on psychopathology but something more social. I feel that anorexic happens because of attribution. Let me do a little bit of recap from lecture. Attribution is the causal judgments about why an event or behavior occurred.

Let me put it in this way so that you can understand me better. What is the reason for someone to want to go on a diet or just simply, lose weight? I would suppose it is the way the society paint the picture of people being of a certain size. For example, what made me want to lose weight was because I realize that when I go shopping, I have to avoid some shops because I cannot pull off those nice clothes. I realize now that I attribute my size with internally meaning that I blame it on myself for eating too much and not exercising and hence, I am fat.

Let me twist that around a little so that you can see both sides off the theory. External attribution will then be me putting blame on the manufacturer for producing small cutting and sizes clothes. When one blames it on themselves (internal attribution) for not being able to wear certain kind of clothes, they go on diet- starving, exercising, whatever to bring the number on the scale down. However, in extreme cases, some of them can become anorexic.

Now, think it this way. IF, no one bothered about how one looked, or rather, no one pin pointed about people being of a certain size, will anorexia ever occur? I know anorexic is a mental thing and all and have nothing got to do with social- think it this way and maybe it could come up to be social.

Yet another question- What will you say when you see an anorexic person? Will you say that it is due to situation or self?

A song by Simple Plan just sums it all up pretty much.

Tell me what's wrong with society
When everywhere I look, I see
Young girls dying to be on TV
They won't stop till they've reached their dreams
Diet pills, surgery
Photo shopped pictures in magazines
Telling them how they should be
It doesn't make sense to me

Let me tell you a story about me. =) As funny as this may sound, I have only been to a club once. My perception of clubbing before I clubbed was that it is bad and only “popular” people club. Since I am not popular in school, why should I go clubbing? All of my friends club at least once in their life. Some of my friends go clubbing when they reach the legal age of 18; some others go clubbing even before 18 years old. Anyway, I first went clubbing on my nineteenth birthday. Nobody believes me if I told them that I’ve never been to clubbing till I reached 19.

Thinking back on the day that I said yes to clubbing, I felt that I had to agree to it instead of wanting to go on my own accord. After reading a little of the textbook, I found out that I was behaving in the theory of conformity.

We all know about conformity- It is the change of one’s behavior to ‘fit in’ into situations and the change of behavior is caused by another person or a group. In the case mentioned above, I conformed to clubbing with friends will probably be due to wanting acceptance from the group and to fit in to the social norms.

To me, clubbing was a wrong thing to do. If I know that it is wrong, why did I still go besides following the social norms? In the textbook, it mentioned that there is some research done which provided answers that took me by surprise. It was mentioned that people often go along with the incorrect answer when they are faced with situations that they know are wrong. Hence, even when clubbing to me was wrong, I went on with it just because.

I will end off this post with yet another thought. Does conformity occur due to pressure- regardless of peer, societal or cultural factors?

I have been travelling on the MRT alot lately. If u know me, you will know that i don't travel using the train often. from my place, getting to where ever is easy with bus! AND its cheaper too!! Many weird things can happen in the train. From people rushing to get a seat, to people squeezing in to get a space in the train. And the extrem? People getting squshed at the door and there is ALOT of space in the center of the cabin. Anyway, i guess, with these sentence, u will kinda guess what issue i will be addressing.

I would like to review on this one trip from Redhill station to Pasir Ris station. I sat at a corner seat and i just did what Chermaine does best- sleep. It was the during peak hour and when the train reach City Hall and Raffles Place, there was the rush of working adults into the cabins and yes, i woke up. Anyway, I looked around to find that people are very uncomfortable when they are all "sardine" up. I was glad that I got a space for myself and well, continued to look around for interesting things to think about since my journey is so so long.

At that point of time, something caught my eye. The little poster below the map in train cabins.

What I found really interesting is that this poster looks really funny. Think about it this way, this picture shows an elderly and a pregnant lady and with a young kid and people giving up their seats for them. They are the people "who needs it more than I do". Anyway, I think that many Singaporeans have the misconception that people who needs the seat more then they do is when they are either old or pregnant and with a young kid. i found this very interesting to think about.

I was still thinking about how Singaporeans might have misunderstood the poster when a pregnant lady and her husband stepped into the cabin. At that point in time, i was really really excited to see what is going to happen. I know I have to give up my seat to her but have remain seated. Now, did the poster serve as a reminder to people to give up their seats or are they just a "decorative" item on the train walls?

Let me just further elaborate the situation. All seats at that cabin were taken. Now, directly opposite me sat an elderly couple, beside me and a couple more seats away from me sat some teenagers whom i presume were younger than i am. I pretended to "study" Social psych. ha!

I waited for one stop before i gave my seat up to her. I am very sure that the teenagers did see her coming into the train. Now, what made them not give up their seat?! Do they in the first place have to give up their seat? (well, the poster said so!) Anyway, when i gave up my seat to her, i got stared at. Was what i did something wrong? did i just cross over that thin line of being socially accepted and being what i was told to do? well, this is something to think about! =)

On my way home, something terrible happened! i thought that the situation in the morning was bad enough! A pregnant lady not having a seat?! Well, it just gets worst! I was to alight at Tiong Bahru station. The train was pretty pack when i saw at the end of the cabin that i m in was an elderly couple standing there (as shown in the picture below). Now,what is going on?! People not wanting to give up their seats? OR are they are just waiting for someone to give up their seats for them? I've concluded (pretty much) that whatever "ungracious" act of Singaporeans in the train can be theorized with THE BYSTANDER EFFECT!

We all know what the bystander effect is- That the higher the number of people, the lesser it is for something to happen. Hence, in this case, the higher the number of people in the cabin, the less likely will people who need seats get a seat! Adding on to this, when there is more people, the less chance it is for one to feel te need and responsibility to react or act in situations.

Anyway, I was pretty annoyed with what i saw. I realised after that infront of me stood an elderly lady. She is pretty fit tho. =) I got off my seat at Outram station. Just decided that i should give her my seat. But what is shocking is when i stood up to offer that elderly lady my seat, a mother of 2, ask her daughter to quickly take "my" seat because it is dangerous for her to play her DS lite while standing. This was just too much for me to handle. i was so close to asking that little girl to give up the seat for the elderly lady. Thank God that elderly lady stopped me. =S

Chermaine. =)