PSYCHOLOGY“JUST ANDY” - BY INKED

Members :Rebecca Marie Tanduba 0322757The Wei Hong 0323743Joseph Soh 0323887Isaac Chew Jian Chuen 0322030

CONCEPTS•STEREOTYPING•CONFIRMATION BIAS•BIRGING•SOCIAL LOAFING•COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING

STEREOTYPINGIn social psychology, a stereotype is a thought that can be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality. However, this is only a fundamental psychological definition of a stereotype. Within psychology and spanning across other disciplines, there are different conceptualizations and theories of stereotyping that provide their own expanded definition. Some of these definitions share commonalities, though each one may also harbor unique aspects that may contradict the others.

CONFIRMATION BIASConfirmation bias is the brain’s tendency to look for information which supports your initial hunch and ignores everything else that contradicts it. Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study. Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or under weigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis. Your brain is so judgemental.

BIRGINGYou feel fantastic when your favourite football team or tennis player has a great result. It’s as though you have triumphed personally.You wear your club’s shirt throughout the weekend, read all the newspaper and internet match reports, watch Match of the Day and initiate conversations about the game with both fellow and rival fans.This is known as ‘Basking in Reflected Glory’ (or BIRGing). It is the process through which we let the world know that we are associated with a successful club while experiencing a warm glow as we mentally revisit the experience.

SOCIAL LOAFING

In Social Psychology,Social loafing is the phenomenon of people exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group compared to when they work alone.Social loafing can be mainly explained by the “free-rider” theory and the resulting “sucker effect”. - “Free-rider” theory : An individual’s reduction in effort in order to avoid pulling the weight of a fellow group member.- “Sucker effect” : People feel that others in the group will leave them to do all the work while they take the credit.

COUNTERFACTUAL THINKINGCounterfactual thinking is a concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred; something that is contrary to what actually happened. Counterfactual thinking is exactly as it states: "counter to the facts." These thoughts consist of the "What if?" and the "If I had only..." that occur when thinking of how things could have turned out differently. Counterfactual thoughts are things that could never possibly happen in reality, because they solely pertain to events that have occurred in the past.