1 Social Influence Module 56

2 Social Psychology Social influence  Conformity and Obedience  Group Influence

3 Social Influence

4 Conformity Adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard. WARNING: Behavior is Contagious!

5 The Chameleon Effect We unconsciously mimic other’s expressions, postures, and voice tones.

6 Asch’s experiments on Conformity Solomon Asch (1955) wanted to study conformity and suggestibility. He devised a simple experiment.

7 Asch’s Experiments on Conformity

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9 Results of Asch’s experiment? Influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality. Alone people only erred less than 1% of the time. Within the group of confederates people erred 33% of the time.

10 Reasons for Conformity Normative Social Influence: We all follow the understood rules for accepted and expected behavior. We do this to avoid rejection or to gain social approval. Informative Social Influence: Influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept other’s opinions about reality. * IF EVERYONE is doing it… it is probably right.

11 Ways to Induce Compliance Foot-in-the-door technique (FITD): getting a person to agree to a substantial request by first having him or her comply with a more modest request. Door-in-the-face technique (DITF): asking for a large request first, even though you know it will be turned down, and following it with the smaller, true request.

12 Ways to Induce Compliance That’s-not-all technique (TNA): offering an additional product or service to someone before presenting him or her with the actual product, thus enticing him or her by adding more options and, increasing desirability. Low-balling technique: making a request and securing it, and then increasing the fee with hidden costs or unforeseen circumstances.

13 Obedience People comply to social pressures. But how would they respond to outright command? Stanley Milgram designed a study that investigated the effects of authority on obedience. Stanley Milgram ( )

14 Milgram’s Study

15 Milgram’s Study: Results

16 Milgram’s Study Revisited.

17 Individual Resistance A third of individuals in Milgram’s study resisted social coercion. An unarmed individual single-handedly Challenged a line of tanks at Tiananmen Square.

18 Lessons from the Conformity and Obedience Studies In both Ash's and Milgram's studies participants were pressurized between following their standards and being responsive to others. In Milgram’s study, a step forward, participants were torn between hearing victims pleas and experimenter’s orders.

19 Group Influence How do groups affect our behavior? Social psychologists study all kinds of groups: 1.One person affecting another 2.Families 3.Teams 4.Committees

20 Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others Social facilitation: Refers to improved performance on a task in the presence of others. Triplett (1898) noticed cyclists’ race time were faster when they competed against others than against a clock.

21 Social Loafing Tendency of an individual in a group to exert less effort toward attaining a common goal than when tested individually (Latané, 1981).

22 Deindividuation Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity. Mob behavior

23 Effects of Group Interaction Group Polarization: enhances group’s prevailing attitudes through discussion. If a group is like- minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing opinions and attitudes.

24 Groupthink Mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives. Attack on Pearl Harbor Kennedy and Cuban Crisis Watergate Cover-up Chernobyl Reactor Accident

25 Power of Individuals The power of social influence is enormous but so is the power of the individual. Non-violent fasts and appeals by Gandhi led to the independence of India from the British. Gandhi