Social Influences on Behavior

Groups Influence behavior:

Being in a group changes how we see / perceive things

Deindividuation

Phenomenon when a person becomes “submerged in a group” and loses a sense of identity

* UCONN NCAA Basketball victory–one person does something chaotic, and it snowballs
* Tend to do things that would not normally do when alone (feel invisible, anonymous)
* Anonymous movement, behavior in a concert, sporting events, Tour de France, European Football games where fangs can get trampled, etc.
* Internet is common for this place: we hide behind an avatar, feeling of anonymity

Groups influencing performance

Behavior may change where you are and who you are with

Personas can change based on the group that a person is with

Norman Triplett (1897)

social influences on motivation

* Noticed bicycle racers tended to go faster when others were present.
* 3 experiments: race against the clock, with another cyclist (no competition), with another cyclist (competition)
* result: regardless of competition, went faster with another cyclist.
* found similar results in experiment with adolescents winding fishing reels.

Robert Zajonc

Social Facilitation v. Social impairment

Social Facilitation v. Social Impairment

Presence of others increases general level of arousal. Adds a layer of tension

* When people are around us, we feel like we are pressured to perform better.
* Arousal increases tendency to perform behaviors that are more dominant // the ones we know best
* Person over your shoulder looking at what you’re doing adds pressure, then yerkes-dodson law comes to play–whether or not you can perform based on the difficulty of the task and how demanding it is (performances suffers for hard, unfamiliar tasks)

Social Loafing

Exerting less effort when performing a group task than when performing the same task alone

* Harder to evaluate the performance of individuals when in a group
* Rewards may come to group regardless of individual giving more effort
* Group’s rewards usually divided equally rather than by effort.

Group polarization

Interaction and discussion of indibiduals in a group with similar beliefs // attitudes tends to make these beliefs //. attitudes more extreme

* “risky shift” and “conservative shift” in politics
* trying to get an applause, slap on the back, a cheer, a laugh, 1-UPing each other. Shift of risky or non-risky behaviors. ESPECIALLY IN SOCIAL MEDIA.
* In social media, you are the product. The ad agencies are the consumers. The secret sauce to make good product is anger, boosts engagement. Creates echo chambers, moves us towards one direction or another. 

Groupthink

Pattern of thinking where group members fail to realistically evaluate wisdom of various options and decisions

* likely when people place higher value on reaching decision / consensus than assuring the decision is right
* Best way to avoid this is by encouraging diverse perspectives and dissent
* THIS IS THE YES MEN TERM! DON’T SURROUND YOURSELF WITH YES PEOPLE!
* Nobody says anything until it actually goes wrong.
* The Holocaust–nobody in Germany realistically thought anything was bad, they all kinda just went with it.

Conformity

Changing behavior / beliefs to match those of others, generally as result of a real or imagined through unspoken group pressure

* Changing behavior or beliefs to match those of others, generally as result of a real or imagined, though unspoken group pressure. 
* makes sense evolutionary perspective–easier to survive in a group, if we stand out, we don’t get much protection from the herd.

Compliance

adjusting one’s behavior because of an explicit or implicit request. “You must do this or else”

* I MUST DO THIS TO FIT IN WITH THE REST OF THE GROUP!

Solomon Asch’s Conformity Study

Study where subjects were asked to pick which 3 lines were the same size as the standard / control, but the people around them occasionally intentionally chose the wrong answer. Showed that people will side with the group’s decisions even if it was blatantly wrong.

* Due to normative social influence and Informative social influence
* !!!His research lacked debriefing and consent

Normative social influence

Where someone says the wrong answer by knows they are wrong but they did so because they wanted to fit in and not look like an outcast.

Informative social influence

outward conformity and internal acceptance. Somebody conforms because they believe that the other people’s perspectives on reality is right, so they change their wrong perception to match the the group’s “correct” perception.

* “I’ve seen it, other people have done it, so it has to be right.”

What influences Conformity?

NOT Gender! Both males and females conformed roughly the same amount.

* **Ambiguity–** When something is less certain, we rely more on other people’s opinions. Could be faking, but we are dealing with so much uncertainty that we kinda just let it happen.
* **Group size and unanimity–**the more people we have, the more it will influence our decision. Even if one person disagrees, it will greatly reduce conformity. Once we see a second object, it’s liberating–we go follow the second one.
* **Social Status–**we like to follow famous people’s ideas (Jake Paul promoting crypto)
* **Prior Commitments**
* **Culture that values social standards** (Revolutionary Spirited cultures may do the exact opposite, encourage people to shake things up)