Social Influence PDF

Final Exam 3 Social Influence: The effects of other people on an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, values, or behavior. Social Learning: The capacity to learn from observing others - Self-efficacy: believing you can do something can motivate social behavior Social Learning Theory (Albert Bandura)...

Final Exam 3 Social Influence: The effects of other people on an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, values, or behavior. Social Learning: The capacity to learn from observing others - Self-efficacy: believing you can do something can motivate social behavior Social Learning Theory (Albert Bandura): we can be encouraged or discouraged to engage in both new and known behaviors, depending on the consequences of the action - more likely if the behavior observed fits the motivational state of the observer - Attention: The observer must pay attention to the behavior being modeled. - Retention: The observer must be able to remember the behavior. - Reproduction: The observer must have the ability to reproduce the behavior. - Motivation: The observer must have a reason to imitate the behavior (e.g., rewards, punishments) Chameleon Effect: The tendency to unconsciously mimic the nonverbal mannerisms of someone with whom you are interacting Focus Theory of Normative Conduct (Robert Cialdini): emphasizes the important role that salience plays in enhancing the influence of norms - Injunctive norm: A belief about what behaviors are generally approved of or disapproved of in one’s culture - Descriptive norm: A belief about what most people typically do - Dynamic norms: norms about how behavior is changing Social Contagion: The phenomenon whereby ideas, feelings, and behaviors seem to spread across people like wildfire - Mass Psychogenic Illness: this phenomenon occurs when an individual develops physical symptoms with no apparent physical cause, which then leads other people to feel convinced that they too have the same (psychologically generated) symptoms. Stanford Prison Experiment: Conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, this study assigned participants to the roles of guards and prisoners in a simulated prison environment. - Social roles significantly influence behavior; participants adapted to their roles quickly and dramatically. - Ethical implications of the study are profound, raising questions about participant welfare and informed consent. Sherif’s “autokinetic effect” studies on informational influence and conformity: - sought to study the possibility that even basic perceptions of events can be affected by efforts to bring one’s own perceptions in line with those of others. To do so, he took advantage of a perceptual illusion first noted by astronomers. If a small, stationary point of light is shown in a pitch-black room, it appears to move. This false perception of movement is known as the autokinetic effect - Conformity: The phenomenon whereby an individual alters beliefs, attitudes, or behavior to bring them in accordance with those of a majority. - Did people conform merely to agree with the group, a form of social influence called public compliance (? Or did their own sense of what they were seeing actually change, a form of social influence referred to as private acceptance (Conforming by altering  private beliefs as well as public behavior)? Subsequent research has shown that it was the latter. - Informational Influence: The process of using others as sources of information about the world. Minority Influence: The process by which dissenters (or numerical minorities) produce attitude change within a group, despite the risk of social rejection and disturbance of the status quo - The distinctiveness of the minority position captures attention and prompts deeper consideration. This can lead to lasting attitude change. - Minorities are generally disliked, so those holding a minority position may take longer to express their opinions. - The majority finds the minority position puzzling, which may lead to original thinking and diversified strategies for figuring out solutions. - Factors That Increase Minority Influence: Minority advocates being consistent and confident yet flexible; A defection from the majority; Identifying with the minority advocate Conversion Theory: The explanation that people are influenced by a minority because the minority’s distinctive position better captures their attention. Minority Slowness Effect: An effect that occurs when people who hold the minority position take longer to express their opinions Foot-in-the-Door Effect: A phenomenon whereby people are more likely to comply with a moderate request after having initially complied with a smaller request Door-in-the-face effect: A phenomenon whereby people are more likely to comply with a moderate request after they have first been presented with and refused to agree to a much larger request. Norm for social commitment: A belief whereby once we make a public agreement, we tend to stick to it even if circumstances change. Lowballing: A phenomenon in which after agreeing to an offer, people find it hard to break that commitment even if they later learn of some extra cost to the deal Social proof: A tendency to conform to what we believe respected others think and do. Elaboration likelihood model: A theory of persuasion which proposes that persuasive messages can influence attitudes by two different routes: central or peripheral. Central route to persuasion: A style of processing a persuasive message by a person who has both the ability and the motivation to think carefully about the message’s argument. Attitude change depends on the strength of the argument. Peripheral route to persuasion: A style of processing a persuasive message by a person who is not willing or able to put effort into thinking carefully about the message’s argument. Attitude change depends on the presence of peripheral cues. Peripheral cues: Aspects of communication that are irrelevant (that is, peripheral) to the true merits of the person, object, or position advocated in a message (e.g., a speaker’s physical attractiveness when attractiveness is irrelevant to the position). Source credibility: The degree to which the audience perceives a message’s source as expert and trustworthy. Sleeper effect: The phenomenon whereby people can remember a message but forget where it came from; thus, source credibility has a diminishing effect on attitudes over time. Attractiveness: Communicators can be persuasive when they are attractive, even if their credibility is low. Primacy effect: An effect that occurs when initially encountered information primarily influences attitudes (e.g., the first speaker in a policy debate influences the audience’s policy approval). Recency effect: An effect that occurs when recently encountered information primarily influences attitudes (e.g., a commercial viewed just before shopping influences a shopper’s choices). Mere exposure effect: An effect that occurs when people hold a positive attitude toward a stimulus simply because they have been exposed to it repeatedly. Balance theory: A theory which proposes that the motivation to maintain consistency among one’s thoughts colors how people form new attitudes and can also drive them to change existing attitudes. Need for cognition: Differences between people in their need to think about things critically and analytically. Promotion focus: A general tendency to think and act in ways oriented toward achieving positive outcomes. Prevention focus: A general tendency to think and act in ways oriented toward avoiding negative outcomes. Psychological reactance theory: A theory which proposes that people value thinking and acting freely. Therefore, situations that threaten their freedom arouse discomfort and prompt efforts to restore freedom. Inoculation: As with a vaccine, people can build up resistance by defending themselves against weaker arguments first. Attitudes Don’t Always Predict Behavior: Attitudes may not reflect gut-level feelings. One attitude may be trumped by other attitudes. Factors Affecting the Attitude–Behavior Link: - Attitudes that are directly relevant are better predictors of behavior than are attitudes that are less relevant. - Self-presentation may mask the influence of attitudes on behavior. - Implicit attitudes better predict subtle or spontaneous behavior than deliberative behavior. - Strong and accessible attitudes are most likely to guide behavior. How Attitudes Influence Behavior: - The theory of planned behavior proposes that attitudes, along with subjective norms and perceived behavioral control, form our intentions, which motivate behavior. - Attitudes also influence willingness to engage in a behavior, which plays a key role in decisions to engage in risky health behaviors. Exam 4 Chapter 9/Lecture 8: Research on entitativity and uncertainty-identity theory Entitativity: the degree to which a collection of people feels like a cohesive group; people share the same intuition that some groups are more “group-y;” solid entities - Common Bond: the degree to which group members interact with and depend on each other to meet their needs and attain their goals - Communal Sharing: the sense that “what’s mine is yours” - Market Pricing: “I will wash your back if you wash mine” - Common Identity: groups often form among individuals who share similar characteristics, and people also come to feel a certain “we-ness” or shared attachment to groups that they belong to - Sharing the same gender, appearance, ethnicity, or race (Ip, et al., 2006) - Sharing a symbol like a flag or a mascot (Callahan & Ledgerwood, 2016) - Supporting the same cause or working towards a shared goal - Shared threat or challenge; The group-binding power of a common enemy is so powerful that leaders sometimes invent an enemy figure—a “them”—to cement the perception of “us” and transform a collective into a group Uncertainty-identity theory: the theory that people join and identify with groups in order to reduce negative feelings of uncertainty about themselves and others - Reducing uncertainty… - Groups reinforce people’s faith in their cultural worldview and their valued place in it; as more people share a belief, the truer it seems to be - Groups reduce uncertainty by prescribing norms and roles (norms are rules for how all group members ought to behave; roles are expectations for how people who hold certain positions in a group ought to behave) The concept of in-group bias from the perspective of social identity theory Social Identity Theory: the theory that group identities are an important part of self-definition and a key source of self-esteem - The theory says that a person’s understanding of who they are is shaped by group memberships. If groups are a source of identity, and if people are motivated to view themselves in a positive light, then it follows that people would be motivated to view their groups positively as well. In-Group Bias: a tendency to favor groups we belong to more than those we don’t Social facilitation theory and the impact of the presence of others on performance Social Facilitation Theory: the theory that the presence of others increases a person’s dominant response- that is, the response that is most likely for that person for the task at hand; individual performance with an audience - if that task is a simple motor task (reeling in a fishing line) or something that you’ve practiced very well (playing a piano sonata for the thousandth time), your dominant or automatic response is to reel fast and play accurately. In these cases, having an audience likely will improve your performance - if the task is a complex one (finding the logical inconsistencies in a philosophical treatise) or one that you are only just beginning to learn (playing a piano sonata for the first time), the dominant  response will be to make mistakes; therefore, an audience will most likely impair your performance - Early research showed that an audience improves task performance, but further research clarified that having an audience increases one’s dominant response to a task…In humans, feeling challenged can boost performance, but feeling threatened can impair performance…The threat of social evaluation can absorb working memory capacity, leaving fewer cognitive resources for the task at hand…On well-learned motor tasks, social evaluation leads people to overthink their actions, impairing performance. Social loafing and related research Social Loafing: a tendency to exert less effort when performing as part of a collective group that when performing as an individual; performing together - The individual exerts less effort when performing as part of a group than as an individual. To avoid social loafing: - Monitor and evaluate performance. - Declare your own level of effort. - Distinguish disjunctive and conjunctive tasks. - Make the task more interesting or rewarding. - Maintain intragroup cohesion and intergroup competition. - In this study (Latané et al., 1979), participants were asked to clap or cheer as loudly as they could in different group sizes: alone, in pairs, in a group of four, or in a group of six. The researchers wanted to see how group size affected the volume of sound generated. If people acted independently, they would clap equally loud whether they were alone or in a group. However, the results showed that participants clapped the loudest when alone, and their volume decreased as group size increased. Interestingly, this decrease still occurred even though participants were in soundproof rooms and believed their sound would be combined with others'. This suggests that people tend to exert less effort in larger groups, a phenomenon known as "social loafing." - The biggest reason that people slack off in groups is that they feel less accountable. This means they feel that their contribution to the group’s outcome will not be recognized. If, in contrast, people feel solely responsible for a task, they put forth more effort. For example, when the clapping study was repeated so that participants believed their contribution to the total noise could be traced back to them, the social loafing effect disappeared (Williams et al., 1981). Deindividuation: when people feel anonymous, they are more likely to do what others around them are doing, for better or for worse Group polarization and how it occurs through informational and normative influence Group Polarization: a tendency for group discussion to shift group members toward an extreme position; after group discussion, group members’ initial leanings are intensified. This is caused by learning new information and trying to fit in - For example, if each individual member of the group initially leans toward a risky alternative prior to the group discussion, they shift toward an even riskier position after group discussion. But if group members initially prefer a more conservative alternative, group discussion shifts them toward extreme caution (Lamm et al., 1976). Informational and Normative Influence:  - The persuasive arguments theory (Burnstein & Vinokur, 1977) explains group polarization through the concept of informational influence, which occurs when you conform to others’ actions or attitudes because you believe they know something that you don’t - If we apply social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), we can explain group polarization as a result of normative social influence, which occurs when you conform to others’ actions or attitudes to be liked (Myers et al., 1980). Groupthink: What is it, its effects, the conditions under which it occurs, and how to reduce it Groupthink: a tendency toward flawed group decision-making when group members are so intent on preserving group harmony that they fail to analyze a problem quickly; group members intent on preserving group harming fail to analyze a problem completely and often make disastrous decisions - Groupthink is similar to group polarization but taken to the extreme, as if the group has become of one mind - Group members start to focus their attention on information that supports their position and ignore information that contradicts it - They stop testing their assumptions against reality, and they stop generating new perspectives on the problem at hand - Eventually they become convinced of the absolute truth and morality of their preferred course of action - They don’t stop to think what would happen if they made an error in reasoning - It is likely to occur when group members view group cohesion as being more important than anything else; also more likely when the group is isolated from outside sources of information and when a group’s powerful leader voices his or her views - Ways in which groups can avoid problems of group decision making/reduce groupthink: - Encouraging group diversity and allowing dissent - Focusing on achieving the best outcome rather than group harmony - Encouraging members to take individual responsibility - Making specific plans to take the perspective of a neutral observer on group decision making The different styles of leadership: charismatic, relationship-oriented, and task-oriented - Charismatic leaders emphasize bold actions and inspire belief in the greatness of the group - Task-oriented leaders are more practical, focusing on achieving the group’s goals - Relationship-oriented leaders focus on fostering equality, fairness, harmony, and participation among group members Social dominance theory, related concepts, and research Social Dominance Theory: the theory that large societies create hierarchies and that people tend to endorse beliefs that legitimatize hierarchy - Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is an individual difference variable that measures a person's preference for hierarchy in society and their attitude toward intergroup inequality. People high in SDO tend to favor social structures that are hierarchical and are more likely to support policies and ideologies that maintain or increase inequality  - Group-Based Hierarchies: SDT asserts that societies tend to organize themselves into groups that hold varying levels of power, dominance, and social status. These hierarchies can be based on factors like race, gender, class, age, sexual orientation, and nationality - Horizontal Hierarchies: When groups of equal status coexist but have separate identities (e.g., different ethnic or religious groups living in a multicultural society). - Vertical Hierarchies: When some groups dominate others in a clear, power-differentiated way (e.g., caste systems, slavery). - Legitimizing Myths: These are socially constructed beliefs or ideologies that justify and legitimize the unequal distribution of resources and power in society. They help to sustain and maintain social hierarchies. System justification theory and related concepts System Justification Theory: the theory that negative stereotypes get attached to groups partly because they help explain and justify why some individuals are more advantaged than others - Complementary Stereotypes: both positive and negative stereotypes that are ascribed to a group as a way of justifying the status quo. - Relative Deprivation Theory: a theory which states that disadvantaged groups are less aware of and bothered by their lower status because of a tendency to compare their outcomes only with others who are similarly deprived. - Collective Action: efforts by groups to resist and change the status quo in the service of group goals. - Identity Fusion: a profound feeling of oneness with a group and a perception that one’s personal identity and group identity are essentially the same. It is a strong motivator of collective action. - The conditions that increase the likelihood of disadvantaged group members seeking improvement through individual mobility versus collective action - The same psychological motives that drive people to join and identify with groups also can drive them to leave when group membership itself threatens to undermine those needs - Promoting Survival: when people sense that belonging to a group increases the risk of being harmed or killed, they tend to break away from the group - Reducing Uncertainty: subgroups may break away from a parent group when they believe the group is violating a core value that provides certainty. - Bolstering Self-Esteem: when a group member cannot view the group positively, membership may decrease self-esteem, prompting the person to leave. - Managing Mortality Concerns: when a group no longer buffers mortality concerns by providing meaning and value, group members may disidentify, especially if they regard the group as temporary. Chapter 10/Lecture 9: Chapter 11/Lecture 9: Research on harmful effects of prejudice, including stereotype threat effects - Regardless of how accurately prejudice is perceived, being a target of bias can have negative consequences for psychological and physical health Perceiving Prejudice: - Because prejudice is less overt today than it once was, it is difficult to know if and when one is the target of prejudice. - People differ in their sensitivity to prejudice, but people commonly underestimate personal discrimination. - People may be motivated to deny discrimination out of optimism or out of a desire to justify the social system. - Prejudice can take a toll on a person’s mental and physical health. The Harmful Impact of Stereotypes: - Holding a stereotype can change how observers interact with targets, sometimes causing targets to act stereotypically. - Targets sometimes inadvertently act stereotypically to get along with others. - Self-objectification—viewing the self as an object to be looked at—can undermine health and performance. - Stereotype threat—the fear of confirming a negative stereotype—can undermine performance. - Social identity threat—the feeling that a group does not belong in a domain—can repel people from that domain.