Social Influences on Behavior 

Social Pressure

Psychological forces exerted on us by others:

• Judgments

• Expectations

• Demands

• These can be real or imagined

The strongest influence comes from those who are physically or psychologically closest to us.

When positive, it promotes acceptance by others and predictability in our interactions.

When negative, it promotes foolish or immoral action.

Effects of Having an Audience

Social Facilitation: a social expectation to perform leads to additional arousal and, in comfortable situations, leads to an increase in performance.

Easy Tasks: so simple, instinctive, or well-learned that they become automatic with little conscious thought.

Social interference: part of a broader phenomenon of choking under pressure.

Choking: a highly aroused mental state produced by increased pressure that can cause performance to worsen

Stereotype Threat: potent cause of choking on academic tests due to stereotypes.

Conformity

Impression Management: the entire set of ways by which people consciously and unconsciously modify their behavior to influence others’ impressions of them

Two general reasons we conform to others:

Informative Influence: based on the objective nature of an event or situation

Normative Influence: based on a desire to be part of a group

Asch Conformity Experiments

Experiment 1: Everyone answers and most participants conformed

• The participants gave informational reasons why they conformed

Experiment 2: Participants wrote answers privately and conformity dropped

• When fear of evaluation by others was removed, conformity dropped, indicating that normative influences were mostly involved

Social Norms

Public Service Message: implicit norms

• Cialdini suggests that pubic service messages would be more effective if they emphasized that the majority of people behave in the desired way and implicitly portrayed the undesired behavior as abnormal.

Passive Bystander Effect

Diffusion of Responsibility: a witness is more likely to aid a victim when alone than when in a group

• In a group, each bystander’s level of responsibility “diffuses” across the group

  Conformity influence may be either:

  Informational: group inaction may be a source of info leading you to conclude that this isn’t an emergency

  Normative: group inaction can establish an implicit social norm

Social Pressure in Groups

Groupthink: mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive group, and their strive for unanimity overrides motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action

Group Polarization: the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of members

Sales Pressure and Compliance

Cognitive Dissonance: the feeling of discomfort resulting from holding two conflicting beliefs. With the discrepancy between beliefs and behaviors, something must change to eliminate/reduce the dissonance

Low ball Technique: Increasing the price after a commitment to buy

Foot-in-the-door technique: making a small request to prepare for a larger one

Reciprocity Norm: people feel obliged to return favors

Pre-giving: a salesman gives you a gift before asking for a donation or giving a sales-pitch

Shared Identity: good salespeople find commonalities with the customer. Creates a sense of friendship.

Obedience and Milgram

Obedience: cases of compliance in which the requester is perceived as an authority figure as an order.

Milgrams Experiment:

• “Teacher” -the actual participant
• “Learner =“ -confederate in another room
• The researcher repeatedly said “the experiment must continue” etc.
• Results-most went to 450 volts (lethal dose)

Factors responsible for Milgram’s findings:

• Norm of obedience to legitimate authorities
• Experimenters’ self-assurance and acceptance of responsibility
• The immediacy of the experimenter and the distance of the learner
• The sequential nature of the task

Social Dilemmas

Social Dilemma: a tension between acting for the good of a group and one’s selfish good at the expense of others

Tragedy of the Commons: compared Earth with the common grazing land in towns

• Adding another cow increases profits and hardly depletes, but if everyone does that, the land will deteriorate for everyone

Group Projects: the results depend on group effort or voluntary contribution

Possible situations

Social working or contributing: cooperating or taking charge in the group

Social loafing: not cooperating or slacking off in the group; while retaining the benefits of the group’s actions

Robbers Cave Study:

• Divided boys’ camp into two cabins with separate tasks
• In a few days, each group developed its leaders, norms, and names.
• Researchers proposed a series of competitions, that was eagerly accepted

Three changes occurred rapidly:

• Within group solidarity

• Negative stereotyping of the other group

• Between-group hostility

  The only way to reverse the effects was their create a superordinate goal that forced everyone to come together to solve the problem.

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