Group Influence

Definition of a Group:
- A group is defined as c"two or more people who interact and influence one another".
- Group members perceive themselves as c"us".
Presence of Others:
- Individuals can be influenced by the mere presence of others, independent of competition or cooperation.
- This presence acts as a passive audience or co-actors where individuals work simultaneously but individually.
Triplett's Experiment:
- Around the turn of the century, Triplett found that children wound string on a fishing reel faster when in the presence of others than when alone.
- Subsequent experiments indicated this principle holds true for animals.
Complex Tasks:
- Later research showed people can perform worse on certain tasks (such as learning nonsense syllables, completing mazes, or doing complex multiplication) when in the presence of others.

Social Facilitation Defined:
- "The strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely) response owing to the presence of others".
- Arousal generated from the presence of others enhances the performer's likelihood of responding more dominantly.
Task Difficulty:
- Individuals are more likely to fail at difficult tasks and succeed at easy or well-practiced tasks.
- Effect of social facilitation increases with the number of people present.
- As the audience size grows, even basic behaviors (like speaking) can become jumbled and prone to error.
Intensity of Reactions:
- The presence of others can intensify both positive and negative reactions toward people and tasks, leading to a stronger liking or disliking.

Evaluation Apprehension:
- Proposed by Cottrell, this theory posits worry about how others evaluate our performance leads to heightened arousal.
- Definition: c"Concern for how others are evaluating us".
- Evidence: When members are blindfolded and perform tasks, there is no increase in performance facilitation, signifying absence of concern for evaluation.
- Example: Joggers tend to run faster when passing a visible person, but the effect depends on whether they face the observer.
Distraction-Conflict Theory:
- Suggested by Sanders et al., this theory states the distraction from thinking about audience evaluation creates a conflict that overloads cognitive systems and causes arousal.
Merely Presence Theory:
- Zajonc proposed that it is merely the presence of others that initiates arousal, evidenced by the social facilitation effect also being present in simple organisms like cockroaches.

Social Loafing Defined:
- c"The tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal than when they are individually accountable".
Ingham’s Findings (1974):
- If individuals know they are pulling alone on a rope, they pull 18% harder than when they think others are pulling with them.
- The presence of individual feedback causes participants to match their personal output.
Clapping and Shouting Experiments:
- Similar experiments (involving clapping and shouting) confirmed that people produce only one-third of the sound when they believe they are in a group.

Individual Perception:
- Individuals are often unaware of their social loafing tendencies; they believe they are exerting equal effort regardless of group context.
Free-Riding:
- c"Benefitting from the group while contributing little in return".
Evaluation Apprehension Connection:
- Observation increases evaluation apprehension, prompting social facilitation.
- Lack of individual recognition within a group diminishes evaluation apprehension, causing social loafing.

Definition:
- A situation where everyone can access a pooled resource without needing to contribute.
- Examples: public libraries, parks, volunteer organizations, and public television (e.g., PBS).
Contributing vs. Free-Riding:
- While individuals can utilize the resource freely, others must contribute to maintain it.
- If contributions are not made, the resource diminishes or ceases to exist.
Implication of Equal Rewards:
- When rewards (benefits from the resource) are distributed equally, free-riding becomes attractive as individual contributions go unmonitored.

Task Challenge:
- In challenging tasks, awareness of individual effort's impact on the outcome increases, reducing social loafing.
Group Dynamics:
- Social loafing is less likely when group members are friends, part of in-groups, or thought to be indispensable to the group.
- Group cohesiveness serves to intensify individual effort.

Definition:
- c"Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension; occurs in group situations that foster anonymity and draw attention away from the individual".

Group Size:
- Deindividuation does not manifest in smaller groups but transpires in larger crowds.
- People feel less personally accountable when actions are viewed as collective rather than individual; this can lead to disconnection from personal accountability.
- This feeling is often inaccurate as individuals can still face prosecution despite the anonymity provided by the group.
Physical Anonymity:
- Zimbardo's experiment demonstrated that women dressed in white coats and hoods administered electric shocks longer than those whose faces were visible.
- Anonymity influences behavior, especially prominently in online interactions where individuals express themselves in ways they might not in person.
Arousing and Distracting Activities:
- Recent aggressive incidents in the news often begin with a minor distraction which contributes to a loss of self-consciousness.
- When immediate actions align with group behavior, individuals may interpret that as a shared emotional experience, reinforcing uninhibited behavior.

Opposition of Constructs:
- Increased self-awareness encourages adherence to personal standards and values, thus increasing self-control, attitude-behavior congruity, and consistency between expressed beliefs and actions.
Loss of Self-Regulation:
- During deindividuation, individuals lose their ability to inhibit unwanted emotions and responses, becoming fully responsive to immediate situational prompts.