Podcast
Questions and Answers
What is social influence?
What is social influence?
What is automatic mimicry?
What is automatic mimicry?
What is the ideomotor action?
What is the ideomotor action?
Thinking about a behavior makes performing it more likely.
Informational social influence usually occurs when the situation is clear and unambiguous.
Informational social influence usually occurs when the situation is clear and unambiguous.
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What are the two types of social influence mentioned?
What are the two types of social influence mentioned?
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What effect does group size have on conformity?
What effect does group size have on conformity?
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What is the norm of reciprocity?
What is the norm of reciprocity?
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Majority influence involves pressure from the majority to conform, but __________ influence can arise from a consistent minority.
Majority influence involves pressure from the majority to conform, but __________ influence can arise from a consistent minority.
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How do women and men differ in conformity according to the provided content?
How do women and men differ in conformity according to the provided content?
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Study Notes
Social Influence
- Social Influence: refers to the ways in which people affect one another through changing attitudes, beliefs, feelings, or behavior, resulting from the real or imagined presence of others.
- Obedience: Doing as others command
- Compliance: Doing as others ask
- Conformity: Doing as others do
Automatic Mimicry
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Unconsciously Imitating Others: This is the automatic tendency to mirror the behavior of others
- Examples include yawning or laughing when others do.
- Empathy and Affiliation: People high in empathy or with a strong need to affiliate with others are more likely to automatically mimic others.
Mimicry Experiment
- Participants and Confederate: A participant described photographs alongside a confederate (someone posing as a participant)
- Confederate's Actions: The confederate made motions like rubbing their face or eyes.
- Participant's Mimicry: The real participant copied these motions.
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Possible Reasons for Mimicry:
- Ideomotor Action: Thinking about a behavior makes performing it more likely (seeing someone act makes you more likely to act similarly).
- Facilitating Smooth Interactions: People tend to like those similar to them, including those who mimic them. This promotes prosocial behavior and stronger bonds.
Information Social Influence
- Information as Guidance: Using other people's comments or actions as information about what is correct, proper, or effective.
Normative Social Influence
- Fitting In: Using other people's behavior as guides for how to fit in and avoid disapproval or social ridicule.
Autokinetic Illusion Experiment
- Stationary Light: Participants saw a stationary light in a dark room and estimated how much it moved on multiple trials.
- Group Estimates: Participants were then put in a room together and called out their estimates.
- Group Norm: Participants' estimates converged into a group norm, suggesting they used each other's answers to determine the "correct" answer to a difficult question.
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Reasons for Informational Social Influence:
- Desire to Be Right: Individuals want to be accurate in their judgments.
- Uncertainty: When unsure about our own knowledge or understanding, we rely on others for information.
Factors Influencing Information Social Influence
- Ambiguity or Difficulty: Informational social influence is more likely to occur in situations that are difficult or ambiguous (where we feel low in knowledge about a task).
Normative Social Influence
- Desire for Acceptance: Conformity driven by the desire to be liked or socially accepted, even when the situation is clear or ambiguous and our own beliefs differ.
- Social Repercussions: Fear of social disapproval, being laughed at, or shunned.
- Uncertainty: Individuals may be uncertain about their own opinions or how to behave in a situation.
- Dispersal of Risk: Conformity can be a way to minimize risk or uncertainty in social situations, especially if we are unsure of the correct course of action.
Factors Influencing Conformity
- Group Size: Conformity increases as group size increases, but levels off at a group size of three or four others.
- Group Unanimity: Conformity is higher when the group is unanimous in their opinions than when there is some dissent.
- Anonymity: Conformity is lower when participants can respond anonymously.
- Internalization: When individuals genuinely accept the group's beliefs or opinions as their own.
- Expertise and Status: Individuals are more likely to conform to those they perceive as having expertise or higher status.
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Culture: Cultures differ in the extent to which they value conformity.
- Tight vs Loose Cultures: Tight cultures have strong norms about behavior and less tolerance for deviation, while loose cultures have weaker norms and more tolerance for deviation.
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Gender:
- Women tend to conform more in areas like BBQ and car repair.
- Men tend to conform more in areas like cooking.
Majority vs. Minority Influence
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Minority Influence: Minorities can influence the majority opinion.
- Informational Influence: The majority may start to wonder if the minority has information they don't, leading them to reconsider their own opinions.
Compliance
- Reason/Cognitive: Appeals to the head and aims to change the way someone thinks (using logic).
- Emotion/Affective: Appeals to the heart and aims to change the way someone feels.
- Norms: Appeals to expectations and social standards.
Reason-Based Compliance
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Norm of Reciprocity: The tendency to help others who have helped us (exists across cultures and species).
- Painting/Coke Study: Demonstrated the norm of reciprocity by showing that participants were more likely to buy raffle tickets from a confederate who had previously given them a coke.
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Reciprocal Concessions/Door-In-the-Face Technique: Involves making a large request that is likely to be refused, then following it up with a smaller, more reasonable request. The feeling of obligation created by the initial concession increases the likelihood of compliance.
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