I liked the feeling of natural air blowing at my hair as I rode the bus back from school back then, so I voiced my displeasure. I wrote a letter to SBSTransit (known as just SBS back then) expressing my distaste for how air-conditioned buses will pamper Singaporeans in general and cause more environmental pollution.

It was written on pink Hello Kitty paper, and I dropped it off at the information booth at the bus interchange while on my way back from school.

I didn’t expect a reply. But less than two weeks later, I received a postcard from SBSTransit, thanking me for my feedback and that they’d look into it.

Unfortunately, the postcard was intercepted by my then-family maid who passed it on to my mother, remarking that I’ve become a meddlesome creature who was making trouble for big agencies. Both then interrogated me about what I had written in the original letter and lambasted me for it.

I was since then, barred from writing letters to ‘big government companies’ because I was merely being a busybody and they won’t listen to a small fry like me. I was immensely annoyed, but didn’t say anything.

Less than two years later (when I was 14), a new neighbour moved in – whose window directly faced my home’s dining room where I studied every afternoon. The neighbour proved to be a disturbing one. His/her son would without fail, blast his infernal techno music at full volume every afternoon. Either that, or he would practise his guitar playing with the window wide open.

And I was trying to study.

Bearing in mind I was no longer allowed to write to ‘big government agencies’, I wrote directly to the neighbour – basically telling him/her that his/her son had to shut the hell up for the comfort of the other residents in their vicinity and for the general peace and quiet of the neighbourhood.

There was the sound of loud yelling from that neighbour’s house one afternoon. Apparently that of the neighbour screaming at the son for the daily afternoon din. Subsequently, every afternoon was filled with the song of silence, with the son’s window clamped shut.

A few days later, mum pointed out the sudden silence, bemused. “Eh, our neighbour is no longer making noise ah?”

So I pointed out that it was because I wrote to them.

She went white.

Just imagine her response after that. (Hint: It borders on the line of hysterical.)

This story doesn’t have a moral. This memory just suddenly came back to me once fine day and I wanted to share this because you know, just because “you are a small fry” doesn’t mean that you can’t make a difference in today’s society.

Society generally frowns upon people who speak up more than they should. But if everyone keeps silent at everything, there wouldn’t be change. Be daring to speak up, no matter how young you are.

Psychology is a really awesome discipline. It looks deep into the human psyche, and the takeaways from the modules I took were largely relevant in real life. It enabled me to better understand the behavour and thought processes of the people around, and got me in touch with the inner-workings of my mind.

I still have the textbooks from both courses. Despite it being almost two years ago, I can still vividly recall how I could practically devour several chapters of the textbook in one sitting, even going to the point of reading the entire textbook despite several chapters being ‘not in the syllabus’.

Needless to say, I aced both courses. Fun stuff, really. (;

It was also through Psychology where I realized that there are many flaws in the way human beings reason. It remains a fact that the world is a judgmental place, and the bulk of it is the result of these flaws in reasoning.

Human beings do make use of a lot of ‘shortcuts’ methodologies when perceiving things around them. These shortcuts ARE useful – they do save us a lot of brain energy, and we come to conclusions much faster when using these shortcuts.

However, these shortcuts are often derived from the general ‘norms’ or typical observations of people – which often do not apply to all. Most of us make use of shortcuts so regularly to an extent we fail to realize that human beings are a broad, complex species with a myriad of values, mindsets and behavioral patterns that cannot be fitted into moulds.

Lemme’ share some of the most common reasoning errors!

The Fundamental Attribution Error

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency of people to make internal attributions* towards others when perceiving their behaviour, while making external attributions^ when perceiving their own.

* Internal attribution – to attribute behavour to a person’s disposition or personality.
^ External attribution – to attribute behaviour not to the person, but to external factors (eg. family problems) that may have caused him/her to behave this way.

Ah, this is the most common mistake of all, hence the word ‘fundamental’ in its name. I see this almost everywhere, especially how people tend to assume the worst of people based on what they observe, without attempting to understand people’s circumstances. Conversely, one would always want to preserve a positive impression of oneself to feel good about themselves.

Most of this stems from information latency – or what type of information is more easily brought to mind when perceiving something. If we are perceiving another person, we do not know that person’s background circumstances, which results in the behaviour (and the person) being more latent. As such, we are more inclined to make an internal (person-centric) attribution.

Whereas, when we are perceiving ourselves – we know our circumstances and background history best and that information is more latent to us than the behaviour we are exhibiting (which is in turn, more latent to the people observing us). As such, we lean towards making external (situation-centric) attributions of ourselves.

Of course, not to mention the intrinsic ego-centric nature of human beings to focus more on understanding themselves than other people, which leads to even more manifestations of the Fundamental Attribution Error!

Meanwhile, let’s move on to another!

Stereotyping

This describes the process of utilizing commonly-held beliefs and impressions (called ‘stereotypes’) when gauging another person’s behaviour.

Mentally, we have so many different moulds in which we classify people. Most of these moulds are derived from publicly-held perceptions, whereas other moulds may be the result of our past experiences … to the point where we find a distinctive pattern in which people behave, or the way certain ‘types’ of people behave.

In Singapore, the most common stereotypes are school-related. For example, students from St Joseph’s Institution are perceived to be ‘elitist’ (based on a recent debacle publicised a coupla’ times in recent-day newspapers), and that Students from Nanyang Girls High School ‘do not shave their armpits’.

(Before any current or former NYGH students come after me with a knife – this is not my opinion of the school but rather, I’m reiterating a widely-held stereotype!)

As a result, most people end up being misjudged simply because they fall into a certain ‘class’ of people – being part of a certain religion, race, school, organization … basically, any group. People end up being perceived to be doing this or thinking that just because they are part of a group who are ‘known’ for doing this or thinking that – when the former may not hold true for the person at all.

Again, here is where I reiterate that human beings are a complex species. With billions of people existing on Earth with several different attributes that define a human being, there can be trillions of different permutations when it comes to human behaviour. No matter how much we want to fit people into moulds because it makes reasoning so much easier, we have a realize that not all moulds apply to all, and certainly not all hold true!

Lemme now move on one last reasoning error – also pretty common, but not as ubiquitous as the other two mentioned above.

The Just World Phenomenon

This phenomenon describes the way some people hold on so strongly to “the world is just” belief, that when they witness something negative happening to another person, they rationalize it by thinking that the person must have done something to deserve it.

Bascially, this phenomenon amounts to people blaming others – who could have quite possibly been victims – for their plight.

I’ve come across several articles and forum postings describing or mentioning crime cases such as rape and robberies, and I never fail to come across an article response promoting the ‘Just World’ belief. Take a rape victim for example. It is common to hear people say things like ‘she shouldn’t have dressed so revealingly in the first place’ or ‘she should have known better than to come home so late’ – when in actuality, these two ‘reasons’ given are pretty common things done by most of us.

Recently, I’ve also stumbled upon a blog of a mother with a young child with cancer (I’m not going to link to that blog here to preserve their privacy) who wrote about how she’s been accused of ‘being a bad mother‘ which is ‘why her child has cancer’.

That – we all know – is one of the most unfair accusations of all.

I shall stop at three common reasoning errors. There are quite a lot more, but these are the three that manifest the most. I hope you guys had a blast reading about ‘em. (;

One thing about having done some psychology and knowing about all these reasoning errors is that it makes you more conscious about the way you think.

For me, I am especially conscious about the Fundamental Attribution Error and utilizing Stereotypes especially after knowing the dynamics behind how they work. As a result, I always try to give people the benefit of doubt because I believe every human being has at least one good quality in them, despite their actions.

I ain’t perfect, that’s for sure. At times, I slip into states of self-pity or people loathing especially during times of mental exhausion – which leaves little brain energy left to prevent Fundamental Attribution Errors (hurhur). But hey, at least I take the effort! (;

It gets a bit exhausting sometimes though, because reasoning errors are so common. EVERYONE is using them, to the point where sometimes I do wonder why I even bother trying since I’d gain nothing apart from becoming the odd one out.

However, I was never one to follow societal norms (its an ego thing), which is why I choose to persist, on top of the fact that it is the right thing to do – it being more conscious of other people and seeing beyond the surface rather than relying on mental shortcuts all the time.

Everyone should try it, in fact. It won’t solve the racial/religious/minority group disputes and hatred around the world, but you’d most certainly end up making more people happy. Nobody likes to be judged. Instead, they want to be understood!

Sidenote: Writing this entry makes me want to read my psychology textbooks all over again!

Prof walked into the office yesterday. (I work in a business facility in the basement of my alma mater’s campus.)

I heard her before I actually got to see her (because she and my co-worker boss – also an ex-student – exchanged greetings). I whirled around upon hearing that all too familiar voice, and it took me about five seconds before I actually recognized her.

Gosh, does she look different!

It’s about a year since I took her course in my final semester. She taught Asia Pacific Business, which concentrates on the latest business developments and trends in Asia – in particular, the recent boom in integrated resorts in Macau and Singapore. A really tough course, but rather interesting.

Demanding as she was, I do sense a fair amount of motherly-like love and concern from her. Especially during the 4 day, 3 night class trip to Macau when my heart condition acted up suddenly and I had to be flown back to Singapore as a precautionary measure. Troublesome as it was, she always ensured that there was someone with me. Plus, she constantly asked me how I was feeling, which was really appreciated.

I can still vividly recall having to sign a pseudo-indemnity ‘form’ upon my departure back to Singapore. (I flew back on my own eventually because I didn’t wanted to trouble the TAs or her.)

There was no actual indemnity form for such a case, so she had a hand-write one on the spot. In the middle of the streets of Macau no less, while the TAs and myself stood around and laughed at the situation.

Even after the final exams ended, she met my project group members and myself for a one-hour long chat where she asked us about our future plans, and even invited us to join her on the subsequent BSMs she was organizing.

I haven’t seen her since then … until yesterday.

She is still as open as she used to be – always available to hang out with her students and talk nineteen to the dozen. She stood around our (my co-worker boss and me) cubicles and chatted with us for almost fifteen minutes, updating us on her recent happenings and asking us about ours. Prior to her departure, she invited us for lunch one day so that we could all catch up.

It felt like last year all over again. A strange, warm and fuzzy feeling … minus the project deadlines and stress.

Strangely, I don’t recall the rest of my coursemates feeling the same way as I do about Prof. During that semester, it was complaints galore – from gender bias, students not knowing her requirements, occasionally contradicting herself, tough projects and yadda yadda.

I admit, I was one of those students who went along with the ‘not knowing her requirements’ complaint, because she does have pretty high expectations which she doesn’t really communicate fully. (Which come to think of it – is good for us. It challenges us to do the best we can since after all, we won’t be spoon-fed once we leave school to work, don’t we?)

During that semester, I remembered deeming Asia Pacific Business as one of my most ‘dangerous’ courses because my grades could swing anywhere. I can work my arse off on a project and still get less than a ‘B’. Frustrating as the grades aspect was, I cannot deny that it was one of the more interesting courses I’ve taken.

Since graduating, I kind of missed her.

Well, it’s kind of easy when you’re no longer a student – people would say. But even as a student in her course back then, my impressions of her were at least neutral.

She is a professor that is extremely passionate when she speaks, and you can tell she really knows her stuff. It helped a lot that she organized loads of industry talks, which wasn’t easy as it required loads of logistics and um, persuasion. (It takes a lot to get the CEO of some bigshot company to come down to speak to a bunch of students!)

Yet, she managed to pull it off. Unfortunately, without much credit from her students. But still.

Not to mention the logistics for the field trip – ensuring all the students got their flights, booking of hotel rooms, arranging tours and talks with the various integrated resorts in Macau. That, on top of her attempts at psyching the students up for the trip in the weeks preceding it.

Plus, I miss how she addresses her students as ‘peeps’ and ‘folks’ during class time.

Kudos to the (possibly the most misunderstood) professor.

And I look forward to the next time we get to meet. I can’t wait to hold an animated discussion about Resorts World Sentosa (which opened last month) with her.