PSY2234 Social & Personality Psychology: Group Influence (Part 1) 2024 PDF

PSY2234 Social & Personality Psychology: Group Influence (part 1) Associate Professor Trevor Case Lecture outline Group Influence (part 1) ― Groups ― The presence of others ― Social facilitation ― Social loafing 2 Essential Reading...

PSY2234 Social & Personality Psychology: Group Influence (part 1) Associate Professor Trevor Case Lecture outline Group Influence (part 1) ― Groups ― The presence of others ― Social facilitation ― Social loafing 2 Essential Reading Gilovich et al. (2024) Ch.12 ― NOTE: The exam questions are taken from the lecture material, tutorials, and the readings 3 What is a Group? Group ― Two or more people ― Interact with and influence each other ― Perceive one another as “us” Advantages? ― Protection from predators & aggressive humans ― Efficient food gathering ― Child rearing assistance Evolved psychological need to belong Note: Group lifestyle not always beneficial for large mammals ― Orangutans (eat ripe fruit; scattered distribution; lack of tree-dwelling predators) 4 The presence of others TRIPLETT (1898) Triplett watched bicycle racing against the clock or against other competitors ― Noticed they were faster when competing against other riders ― But problem of self-selection (some like competition and others like racing against the clock) ― So, needed a controlled experiment to get to the bottom of this 5 The presence of others TRIPLETT (1898) Triplett had 40 children wind a 4m closed-circuit of silk cord using a fishing reel as fast as they could. A flag was attached to each cord and the children had to wind it through 4 circuits, which were timed. He found that they wound faster when they performed with another child (in pairs) 6 Social Facilitation Same for simple cognitive tasks ― free associations in response to stimulus words (e.g., Allport, 1920) ― participants performed better if 3 to 5 others were present ― even when they were working independently (were not competing with, rewarding or punishing the participant) Allport called this tendency for the presence of others to improve a person’s performance, social facilitation. 7 Social Facilitation Social facilitation in lower animals ― Individual ants moved more sand when they worked in groups of two or three than individually (Chen, 1937) ― Also, many animals (e.g., dogs, Ross & Ross, 1949; fish, Uematsu, 1970) eat more when in presence of others But other experiments found the presence of others hindered performance ― Refuting complex philosophical arguments (e.g., Allport, 1920) So, sometimes the presence of others facilitated performance, but for other tasks it hindered performance. 8 Social Facilitation RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTIONS Zajonc (1965) The presence of others increase arousal; people are unpredictable so we need to be alert and aroused in order to react to what they might do ― arousal will have differential effects on simple and complex tasks ― when arousal is high, performance on simple tasks improves, but performance on complex tasks decreases Dominant responses are those that have been extremely well learned and are therefore the ones most likely to be made by an animal or person in a given situation 9 Zajonc et al. (1969) 140 Complex maze 120 100 Running time 80 60 40 Simple maze 20 0 Alone In pairs 10 Zajonc et al. (1969) 11 Why does arousal increase? Mere presence – more alert and motivated when others are around, especially if they are strangers Evaluation apprehension: looking bad in the eyes of others – Male joggers sped past woman facing them, but unaffected by woman with back to them (Worringham & Messick,1983) – Size and status of audience affects anxiety of students performing a learning task. Evaluation apprehension in cockroaches? 12 Mere presence or evaluation apprehension? MARKUS (1978) 1. Take off shoes 2. Put lab socks over their own socks 3. Put on oversized shoes & lab coat 4. After 10 mins, change back DV: Timed through one-way mirror Familiar task: own shoes Unfamiliar task: lab coat, socks & shoes 13 Why does arousal increase? MARKUS (1978) 40 35 Own shoes 30 Time in seconds Lab clothing 25 20 15 10 5 0 Alone Repair man Attentive person (Mere presence) (evaluation apprehension) 14 Stereotype threat and social facilitation BEN-ZEEV ET AL(2005) Stereotype threat is the risk of underperformance experienced by individuals when they fear confirming negative stereotypes e.g., ― priming the stereotype, “Women are poor at maths” ― produces poorer maths performance (Spencer et al., 1999) Ben-Zeev et al. ― Just like social facilitation findings, anxiety (arousal) from stereotype threat could enhance performance on easy tasks and hinder performance on difficult tasks ― Participants: Women who previous rated that doing well in maths was important to them ― Procedure: Told that they would soon be taking a difficult maths test…. 15 Stereotype threat and social facilitation BEN-ZEEV ET AL(2005) IVs Threat condition ― Threat (told nothing: maths gender stereotype threat is already present) vs ― No-threat (told that this maths test has been found to have no gender differences in performance) Task difficulty condition ― Well-learned task (write full name in cursive repeatedly for 20-secs vs ― Novel task (write first name BACKWARDS in cursive repeatedly for 20-secs) DV: number of of completions 16 Individuals working toward a group goal The presence of others increases the probability that the dominant response will occur But what about when people are cooperating on a task? Does performance improve? 17 Ringlemann (1913) French agricultural engineer gathered his data in 1880s interested in worker performance depending on the method use to push or pull a load comparison of individual and group performance was only of secondary interest 18 Ringlemann (1913) Found that effort decreased per worker with the increase in the number of ‘workers’ Put this down to coordination loss as occurs in multi-cylinder engines Not motivation loss 19 Ingham et al. (1974) Study on “Visual feedback and performance” ― pulling alone or with up to 5 others (only one real participant) ― all wore blindfolds ― confederate standing in position #2 was trained to take the slack and sway on the rope without pulling to fool the S into thinking there were others pulling behind. ― The E manipulated how many people the S “believed” were pulling on the rope Participants pulled 18% harder when they knew they were pulling alone, compared to when they believed 2 others were pulling behind them ― believing 3, 4, 5 other participants were pulling didn’t decrease pulling any further 20 Social Loafing LATANÉ ET AL. (1979) Social loafing was coined by Latané and his colleagues, who conducted an experiment with similar results to the rope-pulling task. ― 6 blindfolded participants ― Earphones of clapping and yelling IV: participants believed they were alone or in group DV: participants asked to clap and yell as loudly as they could 1/3 louder alone than those who believed there were 5 others shouting and clapping 21 Social Loafing Social impact theory (Latané et al.) ― social pressure directed toward a group is divided among its members ― as group size increases (up to about 6-8), each individual feels under less pressure to contribute his or her maximum effort Swimming relays (Williams et al. 1989) ― Identifiability 22 End of group influence part 1 23