Intro to Psych: Group Influence, Conformity Terms

Social Influence

When a person changes their beliefs thoughts, behaviors, or feelings because of the presence, actions, or expectations of others.

Social Facilitation

The tendency of people to perform tasks better when others are present

Social Inhibition

The tendency of people to perform worse on tasks when others are present

Robert Zajonc (Zy-ence) – Arousal facilitates dominant responses

• Boosts performance on easy tasks; e.g., eating or doing simple multiplication problems à better ”performance”

• Hinders performance on difficult tasks; e.g., doing complicated math or learning nonsensical words à worse “performance”

Evaluation Apprehension

It is the fear or concern about being judged by others.

Distraction

It is not evaluation apprehension that affects our performance, it is only focusing on evaluation apprehension that affects our performance.

Mere Presence

Zajonc believed that presence may be enough, even without evaluation apprehension or distraction

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

Group Polarization

Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies

Informational influence

when people conform because they believe others have more accurate information, especially in situations of uncertainty.

Normative influence

conforming to be liked and to avoid social rejection.

Social Comparison

People comparing their views to others and shifting their stance to a more extreme perceived group norm.

"I wanna be like the other kids… maybe even a little better!"
You look around at what others are doing or saying, and then you copy them or go a tiny bit further so you fit in and seem cool.

 Pluralistic Ignorance

People privately disagree with the norm, but go along with it because they think everyone else agrees.

"I think everyone else likes this… so I guess I do too?"
Even if you don’t like something, you think everyone else does—so you pretend to agree, and everyone ends up pretending too. Nobody says what they really think!

What is conformity?

a change in behavior or belief to be more consistent with those of others or the standards of a group as the result of real or imagined group pressure

Social arousal

Increase of alertness or excitement when you’re around people