Social influence

Social influence

The ways in which people alter each other's thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, intentionally or unintentionally.

Social norms

Implicit or explicit rules about how people should behave in specific contexts; guide behavior through expectations.

Conformity

Adjusting behavior or beliefs to match those of a group due to real or imagined social pressure.

Informational social influence

Conformity based on wanting to be correct by relying on others as a source of information when the situation is ambiguous.

Normative social influence

Conformity based on wanting to be liked, accepted, or avoid social disapproval.

Asch conformity study

Participants conformed to clearly incorrect group judgments about line lengths due to normative pressure; ~75

Factors increasing conformity

Group size, unanimity, cohesion, status of group, public responses, and ambiguous tasks increase conformity.

Factors decreasing conformity

Presence of a dissenter, private responses, smaller group size, and strong personal commitments reduce conformity.

Compliance

Changing behavior due to direct request, often without authority involvement.

Foot-in-the-door technique

Compliance technique where agreeing to a small initial request increases likelihood of agreeing to a larger request later.

Door-in-the-face technique

Strategy where a large unreasonable request is made first, followed by a smaller request; smaller request more likely accepted.

Lowball technique

Getting someone to commit to a deal and then raising the cost once they’ve already committed.

That’s-not-all technique

Adding bonus or improvement before individual can respond, increasing compliance likelihood.

Obedience

Following direct orders from an authority figure.

Milgram obedience study

Participants delivered what they believed were dangerous electric shocks to another person due to authority pressure; ~65

Factors increasing obedience

Authority proximity, lab setting legitimacy, depersonalization of victim, gradual escalation, and lack of disobedient role models.

Factors decreasing obedience

Experimenter absence, victim proximity, presence of disobedient peers, and conflicting authorities.

Social facilitation

Presence of others improves performance on easy/well-learned tasks but impairs performance on difficult/new tasks.

Social loafing

Individuals exert less effort in groups than alone when individual performance is not identifiable.

Deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations; increased anonymity can lead to impulsive, deviant behavior.

Group polarization

Group discussion strengthens the dominant position, making attitudes more extreme.

Groupthink

A mode of group decision-making where desire for harmony suppresses dissent; leads to poor, uncritical decisions.

Symptoms of groupthink

Illusion of invulnerability, pressure on dissenters, self-censorship, illusion of unanimity, belief in group superiority.

Preventing groupthink

Encourage open debate, appoint devil’s advocate, invite outside opinions, allow anonymous feedback, leaders don’t state preferences first.

Bystander effect

Individuals are less likely to help when others are present; responsibility is diffused across many people.

Diffusion of responsibility

The more people present, the less personally responsible each feels for taking action.

Pluralistic ignorance

Group members misinterpret others’ inaction as meaning no help is needed, reducing willingness to help.

Steps in helping (bystander intervention)

Noticing event → interpreting as emergency → assuming responsibility → knowing how to help → deciding to help.

Audience inhibition

Fear of looking foolish in unclear situations reduces willingness to intervene.

Social roles

Shared expectations about how people in certain positions should behave (e.g., teacher, student, guard).

Stanford prison experiment

Participants adopted abusive behaviors when placed in roles of guards; shows power of roles and situation in shaping behavior.

Situational vs dispositional factors

Situational factors (context, roles, norms) can strongly drive behavior, sometimes more than personal traits.

Fundamental attribution error

Tendency to overestimate dispositional factors and underestimate situational influences on others’ behavior.

Self-serving bias

Attributing successes to internal traits and failures to external circumstances to protect self-esteem.

Actor–observer bias

We attribute our own behavior to situations, others’ behavior to dispositions.

Social influence continuum

Range from conformity → compliance → obedience; differs in level of explicit pressure and authority involvement.