Social Psychology: Introducing Social Psychology PDF

Because learning changes everything. ® Social Psychology 14th edition CHAPTER Introducing Social Psychology...

Because learning changes everything. ® Social Psychology 14th edition CHAPTER Introducing Social Psychology 8 Copyright 2022 © McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.  PREVIEW What is a group? Social facilitation: How are we affected by the presence of others? Social loafing: Do individuals exert less effort in a group? Deindividuation: When do people lose their sense of self in groups? Group polarization: Do groups intensify our opinions? Groupthink: Do groups hinder or assist good decisions? Influence of the minority: How do individuals influence the group? Concluding thoughts: Are groups bad for us? © McGraw Hill LLC 2  What Is a Group? Group: two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as “us.” Different groups help us meet different human needs. To affiliate. To achieve. To gain a social identity. © McGraw Hill LLC 3  Social Facilitation: How Are We Affected by the Presence of Others? We are affected by the presence of others. We are also affected by crowding—the presence of many others. Why are we aroused in the presence of others? © McGraw Hill LLC 4  The Presence of Others and Dominant Responses 1 Social facilitation: (1) Original meaning: the tendency of people to perform simple or well-learned tasks better when others are present. (2) Current meaning: the strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely) responses in the presence of others. In many cases, others’ presence boosts performance on easy tasks but impairs performance on difficult tasks. © McGraw Hill LLC 5  Figure 1 The Effects of Social Arousal Robert Zajonc reconciled apparently conflicting findings by proposing that arousal from others’ presence strengthens dominant responses (the correct responses only on easy or well-learned tasks). Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC 6  The Presence of Others and Dominant Responses 2 Social facilitation is an obvious explanation for the home advantage in sports. Home teams win approximately 6 in 10 games. Advantage is larger for teamwork-focused sports. Amazingly constant over time and across sports. There are other possible contributing factors, however. Officiating bias. Travel fatigue. Familiarity with the home context. Home-team crowd noise disruption. © McGraw Hill LLC 7  Table 1 Home Advantage in Major Team Sports Percentage of Sport Games Studied Home Games Won Baseball 120,576 55.6% American football 11,708 57.3% Ice hockey 50,739 56.5% Basketball 30,174 63.7% Soccer 40,380 67.4% © McGraw Hill LLC Source: Jeremy Jamieson (2010). 8  Crowding: The Presence of Many Others Effect of others’ presence increases with their number. Large audiences can interfere with even well-learned, automatic behaviors. Being in a crowd also intensifies positive or negative reactions. When they sit close together, friendly people are liked even more, and unfriendly people are disliked even more. Fun shared with others is more energizing—and fun. Crowding has a similar effect to being observed by a crowd: it enhances arousal. © McGraw Hill LLC 9  Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others? 1 Enhancement of dominant responses is strongest when people think they are being evaluated. Evaluation apprehension: concern for how others are evaluating us. We are also driven by distraction. When we wonder how co-actors are doing or how an audience is reacting, we become distracted—and this causes arousal. Mere presence of others can be arousing even when we are not evaluated or distracted. There may be an innate social arousal mechanism. © McGraw Hill LLC 10  Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert Less Effort in a Group? Social facilitation usually occurs when people work toward individual goals and when efforts can be individually evaluated. What happens when people pool their efforts toward a common goal and individuals are not accountable for their efforts? Example: class group projects on which all students get the same grade. © McGraw Hill LLC 11  Many Hands Make Light Work Collective effort is often less than the sum of individual efforts. Group members may be less motivated in additive tasks. Example: tug-of-war. Social loafing: the tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their effort toward a common goal than when they are individually accountable. Effort decreases as group size increases. Free riders: people who benefit from the group but give little in return. © McGraw Hill LLC 12  Figure 3 Effort Decreases as Group Size Increases A statistical digest of 49 studies, involving more than 4,000 participants, revealed that effort decreases (loafing increases) as the size of the group increases. Each dot represents the aggregate data from one of these studies. Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC Source: Williams et al., 1992. 13  Figure 4 Social Facilitation or Social Loafing? When individuals cannot be evaluated or held accountable, loafing becomes more likely. An individual swimmer is evaluated on her ability to win the race. In tug-of-war, no single person on the team is held accountable, so any one member might relax or loaf. Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC swimmers: ©imagenavi/Getty Images; tug-of-war: ©Thinkstock Images/Getty Images 14  Social Loafing in Everyday Life In workplace group experiments, employees produced more when their individual performance was posted. Social loafing is also evident in varied cultures. Example: private plots and collective farms under communism. Social loafing appears in donations of money and time. People in groups loaf less when the task is challenging, appealing, or involving. Groups also loaf less when members are friends or when they feel identified with or indispensable to the group. © McGraw Hill LLC 15  Deindividuation: When Do People Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups? When arousal and diffused responsibility combine, people may commit acts that range from a mild lessening of restraint to impulsive self-gratification to destructive social explosions. Deindividuation: loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension. Occurs in group situations that foster responsiveness to group norms, good or bad. Examples: violent protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and violent storming of the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. © McGraw Hill LLC 16  Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone 1 Group size is significant. Larger the group, the more its members lose self-awareness and become willing to commit atrocities. People’s attention is focused on the situation, not on themselves. “Everyone’s doing it” attitude—they attribute their behavior to the situation rather than to their own choices. © McGraw Hill LLC 17  Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone 2 Anonymity may lessen inhibitions. Makes one less self-conscious, more group-conscious, and more responsive to cues present in the situation—whether negative or positive. Note the Internet offers anonymity. Anonymous bullying over the internet and social media is common. © McGraw Hill LLC 18  Figure 6 Children were more likely to transgress by taking extra Halloween candy when in a group, when anonymous, and, especially, when deindividuated by the combination of group immersion and anonymity. Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC Source: Data from Diener et al., 1976. 19  Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone 3 Arousing and distracting people’s attention, even with minor actions, increases the likelihood of aggressive outbursts by large groups. Group shouting, chanting, clapping, and dancing hype people up and reduce self-consciousness. When we act in an impulsive way as a group, we are not thinking about our values; we are reacting to the immediate situation. Sometimes we seek deindividuating group experiences, such as with worship experiences. © McGraw Hill LLC 20  Diminished Self-Awareness Group experiences that diminish self-consciousness tend to disconnect behavior from attitudes. Opposite of deindividuation is self-awareness. Self-awareness: a self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself and makes people more sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions. Those who are self-aware exhibit increased self-control and are less likely to cheat. Circumstances that decrease self-awareness (as with alcohol) increase deindividuation; and deindividuation decreases in circumstances that increase self-awareness. © McGraw Hill LLC 21  Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions? Group polarization: group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies. Strengthening of the members’ average tendency, not a split within the group. © McGraw Hill LLC 22  The Case of the “Risky Shift” “Risky shift phenomenon”: group and individual decisions tend to be riskier after group discussion. Occurs not only when a group decides by consensus: After a brief discussion, individuals, too, will alter their decisions. Risky shift is not universal—some dilemmas lead people to be more cautious after discussion. Original “risky shift” dilemma: Should Helen expend time and energy on writing her novel? Dilemma that induced caution: Should Roger, with a low- paying job and two children, invest in the stock? © McGraw Hill LLC 23  Do Groups Intensify Opinions? 1 Discussion typically strengthens the average inclination of group members. Group polarization experiments: Bekafigo et al (2019)—Voters increased dislike of Donald Trump after group discussion. Mititoshi Isozaki (1984)—Japanese students’ judgments as jury in a traffic case. Shteynberg et al (2016)—judgments of political speech videos. Markus Brauer, et al. (2001)—French students’ dislike of someone after discussion of negative impressions. © McGraw Hill LLC 24  Figure 7 Group Polarization The group polarization hypothesis predicts that discussion will strengthen an attitude shared by group members. Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC 25  Figure 8 Discussion increased polarization between homogeneous groups of high- and low-prejudice high school students. Talking over racial issues increased prejudice in a high-prejudice group and decreased it in a low-prejudice group. Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC Source: Data from Myers & Bishop, 1970. 26  Do Groups Intensify Opinions? 2 Group polarization occurs in everyday life, where people associate mostly with others whose attitudes are similar to their own. In schools, the “accentuation effect.” In communities, as people self-segregate. In politics, where like-minded communities serve as political echo chambers. On the Internet, where we “selectively expose” ourselves to like-minded media. In terrorists organizations and in war. © McGraw Hill LLC 27  Figure 9 A Polarizing Society Democrats have increasingly agreed that “Racial discrimination is the main reason why many Black people can’t get ahead these days” (Pew, 2017). Republicans have become less likely to agree. Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC 28  Explaining Group Polarization Informational influence results from accepting evidence about reality. Arguments matter in and of themselves. Active participation produces more attitude change. Normative influence is based on a person’s desire to be accepted or admired by others. Social comparison: evaluating one’s opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with others. Pluralistic ignorance: a false impression of what most other people are thinking or feeling, or how they are responding. © McGraw Hill LLC 29  Figure 10 On “risky” dilemma items (such as the case of Helen), mere exposure to others’ judgments enhanced individuals’ risk-prone tendencies. On “cautious” dilemma items (such as the case of Roger), exposure to others’ judgments enhanced their cautiousness. Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC Source: Data from Myers, 1978. 30  Group Decision Making: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions? 1 In work groups, team spirit can increase motivation. When making decisions, however, close-knit groups may pay a price. Examples studied: Pearl Harbor. Bay of Pigs Invasion. Vietnam War. © McGraw Hill LLC 31  Group Decision Making: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions? 2 Decision-making groups can have a tendency to suppress dissent in the interest of group harmony. Groupthink: “the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action” (Janis, 1971). Irving Janis pointed to these characteristics: Amiable, cohesive group. Relative isolation of the group from dissenting viewpoints. Directive leader who signals what decision he or she favors. © McGraw Hill LLC 32  Symptoms of Groupthink 1 Janis identified eight groupthink symptoms. Two groupthink symptoms lead group members to overestimate their group’s might and right. (1) Illusion of invulnerability. (2) Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality. Group members also become closed-minded. (3) Rationalization. (4) Stereotyped view of opponent. © McGraw Hill LLC 33  Symptoms of Groupthink 2 Finally, the group suffers from pressures toward uniformity. (5) Conformity pressure. (6) Self-censorship. (7) Illusion of unanimity. (8) Mindguards—protecting a leader or group members from information that would call into question the effectiveness or morality of the group’s decisions. © McGraw Hill LLC 34  Figure 11 Theoretical Analysis of Groupthink In a groupthink-breeding situation, seeking concurrence leads to the emergence of groupthink symptoms and defective decision making. Access the text alternative for slide images. © McGraw Hill LLC Source: Adapted from Janis & Mann, 1977, p. 132. 35  Experimental Evidence for Groupthink Follow-ups have supported aspects of groupthink theory: Directive leadership is associated with poorer decisions. Groups do prefer supporting over challenging information. When members look to a group for acceptance, approval, and social identity, they may suppress disagreeable thoughts. Groups that make smart decisions have widely distributed conversation, with socially attuned members who take turns speaking. Groups with diverse perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Group success depends both on what group members know and how effectively they can share that information. © McGraw Hill LLC 36  Preventing Groupthink Janis’s recommendations: Be impartial. Encourage critical evaluation. Occasionally subdivide the group, then reunite to air differences. Welcome critiques from outside experts and associates. Before implementing, call a “second-chance” meeting to air any lingering doubts. © McGraw Hill LLC 37  When Groups Perform Better Not every group decision is flawed by groupthink; and multiple heads are often better than one. Three ways to enhance group brainstorming: Combine group and solitary brainstorming. Have group members interact by writing. Incorporate electronic brainstorming. © McGraw Hill LLC 38  The Influence of the Minority: How Do Individuals Influence the Group? Determinants of minority include consistency, self-confidence, and defection. More influential than a minority that wavers is a minority that sticks to its position. Minority slowness effect: a tendency for people with minority views to express those views less quickly that do people in the majority. Consistency and persistence convey self-confidence, and a minority that conveys self-confidence tends to raise doubts among the majority. Lone defector from the majority tends to be even more persuasive than a consistent minority voice. © McGraw Hill LLC 39  The Influence of Leaders Leadership: the process by which certain group members motivate and guide the group. Formal and informal group leaders exert disproportionate influence. Task leadership: organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals. Social leadership: builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support. Transformational leadership: enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration, exerts significant influence. © McGraw Hill LLC 40  Concluding Thoughts: Are Groups Bad for Us? Negative effects of groups are only half the truth. Other half is that we are group-dwelling creatures. We depend on one another for sustenance, support, and security. When our individual tendencies are positive, group interaction accentuates our best. Depending on which tendency a group is magnifying or disinhibiting, groups can be very, very bad or very, very good. © McGraw Hill LLC 41  Because learning changes everything. ® www.mheducation.com Copyright 2022 © McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.