Complete Case Study exercise to analyze the power of group influence.? Case Study Exercise: The Power of Group Influence in Social Psychology? Background:? S

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CHAPTER 8 GROUP INFLUENCE

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.”

Groups help us affiliate, achieve and gain social identity.

People who are merely in another’s presence do sometimes influence one another.

Three examples of collective influence: Social facilitation, social loafing and deindividuation

Three examples of social influence in interacting groups: Group polarization, groupthink, and minority influence.

Social Facilitation: How Are We Affected by the Presence of Others?

Co-actors: Co-participants working individually on a noncompetitive activity.

Cyclists were faster when they raced with others (1898)

The Mere Presence of Others

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.

Arousal enhances whatever response tendency is dominant.

– Do easy things better.

o Students took less time to learn a simple maze.

o Students took more time to learn a complex one.

– Do hard things worse.

– Fig. 8.1

Crowding: The Presence of Many Others

– Supportive audience may elicit poor performance (extended family & first piano recital)

– Intensify positive or negative reactions (friendly liked more closed; unfriendly less liked closed)

– Crowding has similar effect to being observed. It enhances arousal, which facilitates dominant responses.

Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others?

Three factors:

Evaluation Apprehension

=> Concerns for how others are evaluating us.

Blindfolded observers did not boost well-practiced responses.

Enhancement of dominant responses is stronger when people think they are being evaluated.

Self-consciousness can have a negative effect on behaviors that are best performed automatic (free throws)

Driven by Distraction

Driven by distraction on cognitive task we perform worse.

Mere Presence

This is true for animals as well.

Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert Less Effort in a Group?

Occurs when people.

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– work on individual goals &

– effort can be evaluated.

Many Hands Make Light Work

Social Loafing: The tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal.

than when they are individually accountable.

Free Riders: People who benefit from the group but give little in return.

– When we are being observed, evaluation apprehension increases, and social facilitation occurs

– Being lost in a crowd decreases evaluation concerns, social loafing occurs

When output is identifiable, we exert more effort.

Social Loafing in Everyday Life

Assembly line workers (16% when output could be indentified)

People in collectivist cultures exhibit less social loafing.

(when efforts are neither identified nor rewarded, social loafing)

People in groups loaf less when the task is.

– challenging (do b/c another is unreliable, or unable to contribute much)

– appealing

– involving

Loaf less when members are friends, or they feel indentified with or indispensable to their group.

Deindividuation: When Do People Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?

Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone

In group situations people are more likely to abandon normal restraints, lose individuality & > group norms.

Deindividuation: Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension; occurs in group situations that foster

responsiveness to group norms, good or bad.

Group Size

– No accountability

– The bigger the mob, the more its members lose awareness & become willing to commit …

Physical Anonymity

– Internet & anonymity (cyber bullying)

– Being anonymous makes one:

o Less self-conscious

o More group conscious

o More responsive to cues in the situation (negative: Klan OR positive: nurses)

Arousing and Distracting Activities

– Group norms and increases of more aberrant behavior.

Diminished Self-Awareness

– Man in the mirror (increased self-control)

– In Japan, people are more conscious of being observed (mirror or no mirror leads to the same effect)

Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?

Group Polarization: Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies; a strengthening of the members’

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average tendency, not a split within the group.

The Case of the “Risky Shift”

The group takes more risks than the individual members would take on their own (risk shift phenomenon)

During group discussions, it was then lower.

Do Groups Intensify Opinions?

Discussion strengthens the average inclination of group members.

Group Polarization Experiments

(strengthen an attitude shared by group members)

Table 8.8

e.g.: Japanese students more guilty after discussing traffic case.

table 8.9

Group Polarization in Everyday Life

People associate with those that are like themselves.

Expectation plays a role (judges vote likely to be on the ideology of who nominated them)

Judges vote far more conservatively when with like-minded judges.

– In schools

o Independent and liberal views

– Communities attract their own kind and become more so.

o Gang delinquency emerges from a process of mutual reinforcement within neighborhood gangs.

o Unsupervised peer groups are strong predictors of neighborhood crime victimization rate.

– On the internet

o Email, blogs

o Terrorist websites – 12 in 1997 to 4,700 at the end of 2005

– Terrorist Organizations

o People whose shared grievances bring them together.

Explaining Polarization

Informational Influence (results from accepting evidence about reality)

– Group discussions elicit a pooling of ideas that favor the dominant viewpoint.

– Active participation produces more attitude change than passive listening.

Normative Influence (based on a person’s desire to be accepted or admired by others)

– We may express stronger opinions after discovering that others share our views.

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.

Most people say to write the novel, if 4/10, but say most others would require at least 5 or 6 out 10.

Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions?

– Camaraderie boost productivity, team spirit is good morale.

– (cohesive group, isolation from opposition, directive leader)

Groupthink: “The mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive

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in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action.

Symptoms of Groupthink

Overestimate their group’s might.

o Illusion of invulnerability

o Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality

Group members become closed-minded.

o Rationalization

o Stereotyped view of opponent

Members suffer from experience.

o Conformity pressure

o Self-censorship

o Illusion of unanimity (fed by self-censorship)

o Mind guards (guardians against information that would question effectiveness or morality)

Critiquing Groupthink

o Directive leadership

o Support over challenge

o Acceptance and approval

o Diversity (more ideas and greater creativity)

o Sometimes good groups do bad things.

Preventing Groupthink

o Be impartial.

Group Problem Solving

o “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African Proverb

o Combine group & solitary brainstorming.

o Have group members interact by writing.

o Incorporate electronic brainstorming.

o The flock is smarter than the bird.

Example >> Titanic

o Fig. 8.11

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The Influence of the Minority: How Do Individuals Influence the Group?

Consistency

– Dissent from within is better than from an outsider.

Self-Confidence

– Minorities are less persuasive when answering questions of fact than opinions.

Defections from the Majority

– Puncture illusion of unanimity

Is Leadership Minority Influence?

Leadership: The process by which certain group members motivate and guide the group

– Bush & Iraq

Good leadership depends on the situation.

Task Leadership: Leadership that organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals.

Social Leadership: Leadership that builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support.

– Workers are more motivated when they have control.

Transformational Leadership:

Leadership that, enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration, exerts considerable influence.

Groups also influence their leaders. (time is important too)

Postscript: Are Groups Bad for Us?