Personality Test from July 2015

Introversion and its characteristics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZKttOPueeY

I have done a few online personality tests and introversion seemed to be persistently stealing the spotlight.

So, I did some googling and searching on the internet to find some public-level explanations of introversion. One of the results was this leisure video on 10 signs of an introvert. Although I can be certain that most, if not all, of the items are not backed by scientific studies, but I can relate to most of it. The list is as follows:

1. Likes meeting people in small number
2. Solo hobbies
3. Not in favour of small and unimportant talks
4. Uncomfortable, tired and annoyed around loud people
5. Don’t like attention
6. Don’t like to waste other people’s time
7. Favour written words compared to verbal communication
8. More productive working alone
9. Filter the thoughts before saying it
10. Practices privacy

I just do it, bro: Observing and Non-observing

If you ask "why do you pray eventhough you can't see the being you are worshipping?" randomly to people who claim to belong to a religious groups,

a possible answer by a non-observing person could be "I just do it, bro",

and a possible answer by an observing person also could be "I just do it, bro".

Although the possible answers are the same, there are two differences in terms of motivation that can be addressed. 

One is in terms of degree of disclosure. 

On one hand, the non-observing person is being fully honest on expressing his lack of rationale (all out). On the other hand, the observing person would say that to avoid being boastful by explaining his intrinsic motivation (partially out). 

Second is in terms of an attempt to be concise in speech.

In this case, the non-observing person would say that when he means, "i just do it because everyone is doing it" while the observing person would say that when he means, "i just do it because in my knowledge, it pleases Him".

Career test

This is the result of a career test i took. I found it on the suggested posts section on FB. Not sure about reliability of it but i just clicked on the post called "Universum Career Test" just because i have the time to do it. Haha

Annnnd smore...

Moreeeee

Things I do

Altruism and Helping Behaviour

Excerpts derived from “Altruism and Helping Behaviour” by Batson, Van Lange, Ahmad and Lishner (2007)

Some forms of helping behaviour:

1. Stay up all night to comfort a friend who has just suffered a broken relationship,
2. Send money to rescue famine victims halfway around the world,
3. Stop on a busy highway to push a friend’s - even a stranger’s car out of a snowdrift.

Such examples are heartwarming and inspiring. For social psychologists, they are also a puzzle because they raise the question of motives. Why do we spend so much of our time, money and energy on others?

The long debate has raged for centuries from Plato and Aristotle, to St Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Adam Smith and Friedrich Nietzsche. The majority view is that everything that we do including everything we do for others, is always done to benefit ourselves; we are unremitting egoists.

In Donald Campbell’s 1975 Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association:

He summarized that, “ psychology and psychiatry […] not only describe man as sefishly motivated, but implicitly and explicitly teach that he ought to be so.

Three rewards that a helper may seek are:

1. Reciprocity credit - self benefit of knowing that the person you have benefited owes you one.
2. Mood enhancement - we are more likely to help someone when we feel bad because we know that we can give ourselves a pat on the back when we do something nice like helping and this will make us feel better. Besides that, people who felt bad because they had accidentally harmed someone were more likely to elicit helping behaviour.
3. Empathic joy - the feeling of pleasure at seeing the person in need experience relief. The counterpart of this feeling is empathic costs. These are the discomfort you anticipate feeling because of the empathy you will feel for the person in need as they continue to suffer. 

True altruism:

Reviewing the empathy-alruism research, as well as recent literature in sociology, economics, political science and biology, Pivialin and Charng (1990) concluded true altruism - acting with the goal of benefiting another - does exists and is a part of human nature.

Speculatively hypothesised, the most plausible answer for its existence relates empathic feelings to parenting in higher mammals, in which offspring live for some time in a very vulnerable state. As a result, it may promote one’s reproductive potential, not by increasing the number of offspring but by increasing the chance of their survival.

Collectivism: Benefiting another to benefit a group

Collectivism - a motivation to benefit a particular group as a whole. The ultimate goal is not to increase one’s own welfare but to increase the welfare of the group. 

The collectivist motivation is a product of group identity. It is viewed as an enlightened version of egoism.

Of two designs in one night and a recognition from an influential figure

My most hectic schedule for this term is on thursday. On a normal basis, i deliberately choose to be unproductive after my classes end on a hectic day. But last thursday, i was unable to get my rest. I need to finish two illustrations in one night and on top of that, i have do some work for the society that i involved in. These are finished products.

This is a very simple design. The background is white and it does not have a lot of things going on. Just start forward message suitable for a small group meeting or sharing session.

As for this design, i tried the minimalistic style of poster design. This is my first time trying to emulate the style in an A4 sized art board. I really liked the end product and i am quite proud of myself. Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God). 

And on top of that, the design received a recognition from the president of UKEC (United Kingdom and Eire Council of Malaysian Students) who is also a senior in my university. That is a confident booster.

My #4 99designs contest entry

It was a t-shirt design contest that you are required to incorporate a joke about data. I came up with this.

My #3 99designs contest entry

Short and sweet. I made the polygon-style H logo myself and the idea of the multiple coloured background is to show that the logo can be incorporated in many different background. However the most outstanding ones are those in the bottom image. One is white, clean, simple and very suitable for the company's current image. And another one is very professional-looking dark blue. Elegant.

Diffusion of Responsibility

Excerpts derived from “Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility” by Darley and Latane (1968).

(Only, general information about diffusion of responsibility is discussed but not the details of the experiment)

Real life example of diffusion of responsibility:

In 1964, at least 38 witnesses had observed a young woman being stabbed to death in the middle of a street in a residential section of a New York city. None attempted to intervene or call the police.

This may occur due to conscienceless and inhumane lack of intervention. Terms such as “dehumanization produced by the urban environment”, "depersonalized by living in the cold society," or “psychopaths” and “moral decay” are coined to explain the phenomenon.

Another factor is rational and irrational fears about what might happen to a person who does intervene. This fear exists in the form of public embarrassment, physical harm, involvement with police procedures, lost work days and jobs.

Two reasons on why any individual may have delayed or failed to help are:

1. the responsibility for helping was diffused among the observers,
2. there was also diffusion of any potential blame for not taking action.

When only one bystander is present in an emergency, if help is to come, it must come from him. Thus, any pressure to intervene focuses uniquely on him.

When there are several observers present, the responsibility for intervention is shared among all the onlookers and is not unique to any one. As a result, no one helps. And in this case the potential blame is also diffused to the observers.

There are two types of intervention:

1. Direct intervention - such as breaking up a fight, extinguishing a fire, swimming out to save a drowner. This often requires skill, knowledge, or physical power. and may involve danger. Research results by Berkowitz seem to suggest that males are more responsible than females for this kind of direct intervention.
2. Indirect intervention - to report it to someone qualified to handle it, such as the police. For this type of intervention, sex or medical competence does not appear to affect one's qualifications or responsibilities. Anybody, male or female, medically trained or not, can find the experimenter.

The experiment’s key finding:

It is also important to note however, this experiment seem to indicate that such personality variables may not be as important as these explanations suggest. 

Alienation, Machiavellianism, acceptance of social responsibility and authoritarianism are often cited in these explanations.Yet they did not predict the speed or likelihood of help. In sharp contrast, the perceived number of bystanders did.

Language

Language is one of the branch of cognitive processes alongside memory, perception, thought, reasoning judgement and action. The primary form of language is speech and the secondary is written language.

Language is a way of presenting and describing. One can use language to frame an event and shift the focus of an event. For example:

1. The dog is chasing the cat. (Focus is dog)

2. The cat is being chased by the dog. (Focus is cat)

Language is considered a cognitive process because language requires words recognition, understanding of syntax, goals and forming a plan.

1. Syntax - the sentence's order: a question, or a statement, etc.

2. Goals - understanding speaker's objective: what is his point?

3. Plan - response

Language has form:

Dual articulation - a stream of speech can be divided into meaningful signs (...the dog chases the cat...), which can be further subdivided into meaningless elements (cat, dog, chase). 

So, the first step is listing out the words and secondly shuffle it to make sense of it. And shuffling can be done in many different ways. 

"The finite number of components combining to produce an infinite arrangement of novel utterances is an important property of human language."

Language has meaning: 

It is about a subject. It has reference and aboutness.

Language has link between form and meaning:

1. Arbitrariness - For example, 'cat' means cat in English language and 'cat' means paint in Malay language.

2. Productivity - by knowing word and grammar, you can create a new word. 

Language has cognition continuity:

1. Onomatopoeia - word that resembles the source of the sound it describes. For example, "meow", "moo" and "bang". In other languages, "meow" is "nyan" (Japanese) and "yaong" (Korean).

2. Compound nouns - you can put two words together.

3. Sound symbolism - low pitched sound for large (big, large, gross) and high pitched sound for small (teeny, tiny, petit)

Animal communication also involves dialect and accent. For example, songbirds in different region has different song. The same goes to whale song. As for primate language teaching, vervet monkeys can assign different 'alarm'/noise to different predator. However, at best the can only have language comprehension of a two-year-old.

The tool used for capturing sound is called spectrogram. 

Verbal sound is made by manipulating air pressure in the larynx (contraction and relaxation) and moving the tongue to allow certain amount of air to pass through. However, the tongue moves in between sounds and as you are making a sound, your tongue is simultaneously moving to the next sound. This is called co-articulation.

In human being, the fundamental frequency and pitch for male is usually lower for male than female. However, until the age of 60 male's fundamental frequency and pitch gets higher and female's gets lower.

My #2 99designs contest entry

This second contest was a hectic one!

It was a Facebook banner for a heath coach.

My first design was eliminated for too much overall design. So i made three more.

At first i came up with this as a solution for a simpler design.

Then my friend adviced me to simplify my first design. Maybe the red is too messy.

My #1 99designs contest entry

I really enjoy graphic designing!

As a spirit to broaden my portfolio in graphic designing, I challenged myself to enter online designing contest. I found the website, 99designs.com a long time ago but abandoned it until recently. I assigned my name as IzzathaikalMY and I was ready to go!

My first contest was a sponsored ads for Facebook to promote a book called, unWorking. The book is said to be similar to Tim Ferriss' book 4-Hour Workweek or Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad. So i designed something of my own based on my own interpretation.

I came out with something like this.

And also, two more derivations.

Long story short, my designs were eliminated. But overall it was a fun process.

I kinda like the inverted pawn myself :D

On Immortality

One will die or more precisely one should die. The only way to become immortal is to leave a legacy that outlives one's age. 

RM35.27

Alhamdulillah,
My first ever trade in Malaysian market (Bursa Malaysia) was a success. It was sort of a trial actually, to get the taste of what trading really is. My friend consulted me on the actions i need to take.

As for my first investment, i bought 120 lots of Systech stock at RM0.23 and managed to sell it at RM0.235. It was not a big number to be honest but fairly reasonable for a first trade.

I am lucky to befriended those who are inclined towards politics, economy and all of the scary stuffs. They taught me a lot.

How to start investing:
1. Have interest. Search for investment classes.
2. Open a CDS account - I chose Malacca Securities. Only your IC and bank statement are required.
3. Pump in your money - preferably above RM5k to minimize the transaction cost.
4. If you open at Malacca Securities, download M+ online app - easier on the go.
5. Continue to learn from the more experienced.
6. Download KLSE Screener app - for easier transaction calculation

Things to learn as a start:
1. Market opens from 9am to 5pm (GMT +8), on a break from 12pm to 2.30pm.
2. Familiarize yourself with the tools - e.g., Bursa Marketplace website.
3. Leverage on technical analysis - learn to make sense of the graphs.
4. Search for Shariah compliant counters only - for muslims.

Go Area & No-Go Area

Since religion deals a lot with moral compass, spirituality and philosophy, 

one can say that religion exists simply to facilitate us to become a good person.

Religion by nature has an orientation. "Okay, this is good and this is bad" despite the possibility of a grey area that is highly malleable by the general population's perception. 

Other branches of knowledge on the other hand have no orientation. Some options may suppress the basic feeling of guilt and shame. 

Take chemistry for example. One can be a great chemist who cures cancer or an evil chemist who helps to produce weapon of mass destruction. In both cases, the acquired knowledge of chemistry is utilized. 

Acquiring only other branches of knowledge besides religion is not enough to become a good person. 

Dishoroning Our Upmost Superior Quality

It is widely believed that the earth is in a balanced ecosystem, then humankind breeds and cause destruction.

To simplify the idea, let's assume the total number of species on earth before humankind was 10 000 000. 

And then by any means, humankind arrived and the number was added by one.  

10 000 000 + 1 = 10 000 001

And then BOOM! The balance of the ecosystem started to decline. 

That is quite illogical. I don't think it is the mere presence of us, the humankind, that should be blamed. 

It is our deliberate and conscious choice to become greedy, dishonoring our large frontal lobe. 

Big 5 Personality Test (30/6/2015)

I didn't check on the website thoroughly but I think this result (and the test itself) is legit.