University Psychology: Learning Journal 2 - Self, Prejudice, Love

This Learning Journal 2 reflects on key psychology concepts discussed in lectures. The student analyzes their experiences in relation to topics like self and identity, including self-esteem and self-schemas, and how these impact their life in a new cultural environment. The journal then explores prejudice and discrimination, connecting theoretical concepts to real-world observations of racism, ethnicity, and face-ism. Finally, the journal delves into the topics of love and attractiveness, examining factors contributing to attraction and the reasons behind relationship breakups, and how these concepts can affect an individual's mental health and quality of life. The student uses the concepts learned to reflect on their own experiences and provides insights into their understanding of the material. The author also highlights the importance of balancing personal experiences with theoretical frameworks. The assignment is a reflection on the student's learning and application of psychological principles.

Running head: LEARNING JOURNAL 2
LEARNING JOURNAL 2
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Reflection from learning journal 1 that I used in learning journal 2:
The previous experience of learning journal was not great, as I had expected. I was not aware
how to reflect effectively and at the same time align the information of textbooks. Lecture notes
and other in my reflective piece. Therefore, while handling writing my own experiences, I could
not connect with the theories that I have studied in class. Therefore, the main purpose of the
assignment as provided by our professor was not met and he was upset. Moreover, my
assignment was highly descriptive with very little connections that I could establish with the
theories in class. Therefore, I learnt that while writing the reflective piece in learning journal 2, I
have to develop a proper balance of the experiences I had in my life and proper application of
theories and learning from the class to analyse my experiences. Striking the proper balance of the
experiences, I had and the application of the knowledge in the class is the main criteria of the
assignments on learning journal and therefore, this should be my first priority when writing the
learning journal 2. Secondly, I had faced great issues while expressing myself in English
language. This is mainly because English is not my first language as I have come from a
different nation. The English language that I have used for writing the assignment did not have a
flow and there were many construction issues as well. My professors had also pointed this out
when he corrected my assignment. Therefore, I have to be very careful about grammar,
construction issues and at the same time, ensure that my writing has flow making the assignment
readable. These two are the main points that I have to be careful about in my learning journal 2.

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Reflection 1: Self and identity:
Before attending the lecture on the topic of self and identity, I had never considered the
word “self” to be so significant and having the power to later our lives and though processes.
Until today, nothing had made me question about the importance of self until I attended the
lecture. I realised that there are many layers of the word self and it is extremely important for an
individual to have detailed idea about the different layers that help in development of self like
self esteem, self concept, self knowledge as well as social self (Myers and Zinkiwicz 2016).
Although, the professor had gone through detailed discussion about each of the concept, there
were specific subtopics that interested me. I realised that self-esteem mainly describes the overall
sense of self worth or personal value. It is mainly the opinion that an individual develops about
himself. The lecture helped me to understand that self–esteem mainly helps to affect how a
person thinks about himself and can thereby relate with other people. It mainly helps individuals
to live life to dull potential. The lecture taught us that self-esteem is the sum of our self-schemas
as well as possible selves. I came to develop idea about the concept of self-schema that act as a
contributing part of the development of self-esteem. It can be defined as the long lasting as well
as the stable set of memories that help in the summarisation of the beliefs of the person,
experiences and even generalisation about self in the specific behavioural domains. I came to
understand self-schemas which are actually cognitive generalisation about oneself hat are mainly
derived from the past. These mainly help to organise and thereby guide the processing of self-
related information (Holt et al. 2015). Once we develop self-schema about ourselves, we mainly
follow a tendency for that schema to be maintained by bias in what we attend to, as well as a bias
in what we remember and even bias in what we are prepared to accept as true about ourselves. I
had been able to relate this concept with my “self” and had therefore been able to understand the

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main reasons that were resulting in my low self-esteem. I belong to a different nation where there
is altogether a different set of culture, behaviour, religion, ethnicity, language and many others.
The communication styles, the thinking patters, the education models, the ways of making
friendships and many others are different in this nation in comparison to my own nation.
Therefore, I had developed self-schema about my choices, preferences, ability, likes and dislikes
and many others that had created an entirely different ideas about my environment and
surrounding. When I had come to the new environment, my self-schema could not become
accustomed with the new environment. Without my knowledge, my self-schema was guiding me
through my previously conceived information of my own land for which I could not adapt
successfully to the new nation and its cultures. This affected my self-esteem when I had to go
through repeated failures in my social life as well as in my academic and professional life.
Therefore, I could relate the concept of self-esteem with my own experience in the present
society and derived meaning form it. For developing my self-esteem, I would use self-
discrepancy theory. I would use the theory to reflect on my actual self that will state how I am
currently, and then move on to the idea self that will tell me how I would aspire to be in the
future. I would also reflect on the “ought” self where I will reflect how I think is should be.
These steps will help me to adapt to a surrounding culture and develop my concept of self.
Reflection 2: Prejudice and discrimination:
This topic was particularly interesting me to as I had myself faced severe discrimination
in the first few months while reading in the university. The lecture has helped us to know that
prejudice is developed when preconceived negative judgements is formed by people or group
about anther individual or a different group. Discrimination on the other hand is mainly the
behavioural expression of the prejudice that is harboured by the individuals against others

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(Myers and Passmore 2015). Previously, I had no idea that there is much difference between the
two words and used to use it often as synonyms. These lectures helped me to identify each of the
components that results in development of prejudice as well as discrimination. Moreover, I had
been able to understand the foundation of the main basis of the occurrence of prejudice as well as
discrimination in every nation and communities in them. The different types of basis are racism,
ethnicity as well as cultural identity. not only that, I was also quite surprised to see that even age
can become one of the main reason for the occurrence of prejudice. Besides, sexual preferences
as well as orientation, health statuses are also some of the important factors on which
discrimination is based. Physical, sensory, intellectual as well as psychiatric disabilities are also
seen to form the basis of discrimination. I can relate the targets that I have studied in the lectures
with different occurrences that take place surrounding me. The first issue that I was quite
shocked to see the behaviours of the Australian students towards the native of the nations.
Ethnicity of the Aboriginal students is quite different from the non-indigenous Australians.
Previously I had heard that the non-natives are highly prejudiced about the lifestyle choices of
the aboriginals but is saw real evidences in front of my eyes. I saw some of the non-natives
talking about their skin colour and using the skin colour to categorise them as aboriginals. They
were laughing over the fact that most of the aboriginal people suffer from poverty and fail to
achieve education in their lives. This incident clearly showed me that ethnicity and racism indeed
resulted in development of prejudices about the aboriginals in the non-natives. They
discriminated the students by not allowing them to sit with them or inviting them for lunch.
Moreover, I have suffered the concept of face-ism during my first months in the university.
Discrimination based on the facial prominence was present a subtopic in the class and it
interested me a lot. I understood that even I had also discriminated people based on face-ism in

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my life but I was never aware of this. Higher the facial prominence, the individual is considered
to be more intelligent, more capable more intellectual and more successful. I realised that when I
go through newspapers, magazines or many others in my leisure times, I also judge the
personalities of the people without even knowing them. I just go on the face value and become
judgemental about the person and therefore, in a way, I become an active participant in
developing prejudice on the aspect of face-ism. Moreover, I have also been victimised based on
my cultural identity as well as my language. I have poor English communication skills and
therefore, I had been often laughed at the minor mistakes I made at speaking in the university.
Therefore, the concepts helped me to understand and dissect my experiences effectively.
Reflection 3:
The third interesting topic that I have studied is love and attractiveness. These aspects are
usually related with the mental stability and quality lives of individuals are usually seen to be
paid much importance to live a happy live. These studies have provided importance some of the
major concepts like dynamics of attraction, the different factors that result in attraction as well as
the different types of love like intimacy, passion as well as commitment. It has also given a
detailed discussion about the “breaking u” phases in relationship and has also provided an
important discussion on the topic of loneliness that may be transient, chronic as we as
transitional. The subtopic of breakup is mainly explained as the termination of an intimate
relationship due to different factors or forms of reasons other than death. Until date, I have seen
many of my friends getting into relationships. Some of them have stayed together, while others
have broken up and entered into new relationship. However, I have never conducted an in-depth
thinking into this matter and have never paid importance on the reason that lead to break up. The
lecture classes that had been conducted by my professor had helped us to think into the matter

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and thereby I found out that there are indeed certain reasons that result in creation of issues in
relations, breaking of hearts and people coming out from the relationships. One of the most
important reasons for breaking up is that the individual partners get bored with the relationship.
There are also other interactive factors like differences in interests, differences in backgrounds as
well as differences in intelligence. Reasons like conflicting sexual attitudes, conflicting marriage
ideas are also some other interactive factors that result in break up (Myers and Karantzas 2016).
The non-interactive factors that also result in the break up are the desires to be independent,
interest in someone else. Living too far apart as well as pressure from parents and families are
also other reasons for breakup. Therefore, such lecture helped me to conduct an in-depth analysis
of the different personal emotional turmoil that individuals go through in the relationships. If we
try to analyse the situation in details, it can be seen that often various types of personal issues are
often seen to affect males as well as females to a deep level. Such turmoil often gives very hard
time to the individuals when they may suffer from different types of mental health issues and
mental instability. It tends to destroy proper quality life and happiness of the individuals and
makes them prone to self-harm also in many cases. The knowledge that I have gathered would
help me to not only develop myself but would also help me to guide my friends as well as my
acquaintances. I might help them to cope up with the situation helping them to underhand the
psychology that plays in human beings when they take such decisions. It would help me to
provide them good quality life and hep them to come out of dark phase.
Reflection on the leaning journal 2:
The topics that had been taught are intricately associated with not only everyday life of
individuals but also with the development of self. These topics would be helpful for me to
understand the scientific field and develop knowledge about the nature as well as the cause of the

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individual behaviours in different types of social situations. These topics would be extremely
helpful to me as the knowledge that I have gathered would help me to become an expert social
psychologist. I had been able to understand the different ways by which thoughts, feelings,
intentions, gaols as well as beliefs are developed by people of the society. It also helped me to
understand the different psychological factors that are seen to influence our interactions with
others. Therefore, I will be able to develop ways by which I can help the society become a better
place for all the living beings where social and emotional turmoil will be lessened and people
will look forward to live happy lives. The academic writing skill that I had to exhibit would also
help me in the future if i become a researcher. Development of professional academic language
is very important for successful career in professionals would and this leaning journal has helped
me to achieve the first few steps easily.

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References:
Holt, N., Bremner, A., Sutherland, E., Vliek, M., Passer, M.W. and Smith, R.E., 2015.
Psychology: the science of mind and behaviour.-. LondonMcGraw-Hill
Education9780077169848.
Myers, D. G. and Zinkiewicz, L., 2016. Prejudice: Disliking others. In T. Griffin (Ed.), 101557:
The individual in society, (3rd ed., pp. 190-233). North Ryde, Australia: McGraw-Hill Australia.
Myers, D. G. & Karantzas, G., 2016. Attraction and intimacy: Liking and loving others. In T.
Griffin (Ed.), 101557: The individual in society, (3rd ed., pp. 272-321). North Ryde,
Australia:McGraw-Hill Australia.
Myers, D. G. & Passmore, N., 2016. Helping and prosocial behaviour. In T. Griffin (Ed.),
101557:The individual in society, (3rd ed., pp. 323-368). North Ryde, Australia: McGraw-Hill
Australia.