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• Social Influence: how other people influence our behaviour

• Three key types of social influence:

  • Compliance: change of behaviour in response to a direct request

    • Example: agreeing to attend a social event because someone else asked you to

  • Obedience: change of behaviour in response to a directive from an authority figure

    • Example: changing your behaviour in response to a direct order from a police officer, parent, teacher, or school official

  • Conformity: change in behaviour to match the response or actions of others

    • Example: looking in a specific direction because you saw other people doing that

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Compliance: Why does it happen?

• Principles of Compliance (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004): applied in advertising/sales

• Reciprocity: the rule that obliges us to repay others for what we have received from them

  • Example: acceptance of "gift" = social obligation, such as free samples

• Door-in-the-face technique: starting with a large request and then lowering it after the other party says no

  • Example: recruiting university students for voluntary counseling positions at a detention center

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• Consistency: the rule that obliges us to be consistent in our behaviour

• Foot-in-the-door technique: starting with a small request and then asking for a larger one

• Example: attaching a small label to a house and then asking for a large sign to be placed in front of it

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• Commitment: once we make a commitment, we feel pressure to follow through

• Low-balling technique: having people commit to a course of action and then increasing the request

• Example: asking someone to participate in an experiment and then telling them it starts at 7 in the morning

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• Liking: people comply more with requests made by individuals they like

• Factors that influence liking: physical attractiveness, similarity, familiarity

• Authority: people comply more with requests made by individuals in a position of authority

• Milgram's obedience studies: participants were willing to administer electric shocks to others based on orders from an authority figure

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• Milgram's obedience studies: predicted results for different groups

• Real-world replication of Milgram's study: the Hofling et al. (1966) hospital study

• Milgram's statement on participants: people who reached the end of the board were not necessarily sadistic, but were influenced by the situation

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• Conformity: change in behaviour to match the response or actions of others

• Reasons for conformity: informational influence and normative influence

• Sherif's autokinetic effect study: participants' estimates of light movement were influenced by the estimates of others

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• Asch's line studies: participants conformed to the incorrect answers given by others

• Variations of the study: private response, non-unanimous erroneous majority, accurate information from one confederate

Page 8: SOCIAL FACILITATION / SOCIAL INHIBITION

• People perform better when alone or in groups

• Audience increased cockroaches' performance on the easy task but not on the complex task

  • Times for simple maze: Alone - 41 sec, Audience - 33 sec

  • Times for complex maze: Alone - 110 sec, Audience - 130 sec

• Social facilitation = improved task performance in the presence of others

• Social inhibition = decreased task performance in the presence of others

• Other factors that influence social facilitation / social inhibition:

  • Others as distraction

  • Evaluation apprehension

Page 8: SOCIAL LOAFING

• Social loafing is a type of motivation loss that occurs when group members' work is unidentifiable

• Participants made less noise when they thought others were also making noise

• Latané, Williams, and Harkins (1979) study:

  • Participants in a group of 6 people

  • Blindfolded participants and had them put on headphones

  • Played clapping or cheering over headphones

  • Participants asked to clap/cheer

  • Results: 1/3 less noise when they thought others were also making noise

• Social loafing = working less in a group than individually

Page 9: PREJUDICE REFRESHER ON DEFINITIONS

• Prejudice (emotional): A shared attitude or feeling towards a social outgroup and their members based on group membership

• Stereotypes (cognitive): Generalized beliefs about members of groups

• Discrimination (behavioral): Prejudice that translates to behavior

• Prejudice is not always obvious, e.g. linguistic intergroup bias

• Linguistic intergroup bias:

  • Tendency to use concrete, specific language for positive outgroup characteristics and negative ingroup characteristics

  • Tendency to use more general and abstract terms for negative outgroup characteristics and positive ingroup characteristics

Page 10: COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN PREJUDICE

• Illusory correlations: Perception of a relation between two elements that does not exist or is exaggerated

  • Example: belief that people from New York are rude

  • Caused by confirmatory bias, focusing on confirmatory evidence and ignoring contradictory evidence

• Illusion of out-group homogeneity: Perceiving members of the outgroup as more similar to each other than members of the ingroup

• Contact hypothesis: Contact with people of the outgroup should reduce prejudice

  • Anxiety, self-fulfilling prophecy, power differential, and length of contact can work against the contact hypothesis

  • Can lead to decategorization and recategorization

Page 11: BYSTANDER INTERVENTION

• Bystander effect: Bystanders are less likely to help in an emergency if there are other onlookers present

• Kitty Genovese case made the bystander effect well known

• Latané & Darley (1968) study:

  • Participants discussing problems faced by students in a high-pressure urban environment

  • One participant on the intercom began to choke and appeared to have an epileptic seizure

  • Would the participant leave the room to seek help? How long would it take?

• Principles that can prevent helping:

  • Pluralistic ignorance: Assuming others accept a belief even if they privately reject it

  • Diffusion of responsibility: Diluting personal responsibility for acting by assuming someone