1. Myers PSYCHOLOGY Seventh Edition in Modules
Social Influence
James A. McCubbin, Ph.D.
Clemson University
Worth Publishers

2. Social Influence Conformity
adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard
Are these students asserting their individuality or identifying themselves with others of the same microculture?

3. Influence (Conformity)
Social Influence
Normative Social
Influence (Conformity)
influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval
Example: “I saw Cady Heron wearing army pants and flip flops, so I bought army pants and flip flops.”

4. “We Are Natural Mimics” –Chartrand, Bargh (1999)
Behavior is contagious
One person giggles, coughs, or yawns, and others in the group are likely to do the same
Unconsciously mimicking expressions, postures and tone of voice
Little kids playing Simon says!

5. Social Influence
The chameleon effect as demonstrated by Chartrand and Bargh.
Participant Participant
rubs face shakes foot
Confederate rubs face
Confederate shakes foot
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
Number
of times

6. Asch’s Conformity Experiments
Previous research had shown
people will conform to others’ judgments more often when the evidence is ambiguous
Asch set out to prove that people will not conform when evidence is clear-cut or unambiguous
his question - will people still conform when group is clearly wrong?

7. Social Influence
Asked to state which line matched up with the standard line

8. Asch “Post-Experiment”
Did our results confirm the results of the original Asch experiment? Why or why not?
What suggestions would you make to improve future Asch experiments?
What participation grade would you give yourself? Why?
Who deserves extra participation credit? Why?

9. Results of Asch’s Experiment
75% participants conformed to at least one wrong choice
Why?
subjects reported having doubted their own perceptual abilities which led to their conformance
If everyone agrees on something you are less likely to disagree

10. Conditions that Strengthen Conformity
One has no prior commitment to any response
Others in the group observe one’s behavior
One is made to feel incompetent or insecure
The group has at least 3 people
The group is unanimous
One’s culture encourages respect for social standards
One admires the group’s status and attractiveness.

11. Social Influence Informational Social Influence (Conformity)
Informational Social Influence (Conformity)
influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality

12. Social Influence
Difficult judgments
Easy judgments
Conformity highest
on important
judgments
Low High
Importance
50% 40 30 20 10
Percentage of
conformity to
confederates’
wrong answers
Participants judged which person in Slide 2 was the same as the person in Slide 1

13. Obedience People often comply with social pressures
How does a person respond to outright commands?
Milgram’s experiment concerning punishment on learning
Would you administer an electric shock after someone answered a question wrong if that was your job?

14. Social Influence
Milgram’s follow-up obedience experiment

15. Social Influence
Some individual resist social coercion

16. Group Influence How does the presence of other influence our actions?
Athletes will perform better when against someone than when trying to beat the clock
On tougher tasks, people perform less well when observers or others working on the same task are present
Why does the presence of others hinder and/or help someone’s performance?

17. Social Facilitation Hula Hoop? (Not so much)
improved performance of tasks in the presence of others
occurs with simple or well-learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered
Example: During the mini olympics, those selected to run in an individual foot race will run faster as a result of the energy in the gym and the cheering of their classmates.
What you do well, you are likely to do even better in front of an audience, especially a friendly audience; what you normally find difficult may seem all but impossible when you are being watched.

18. Social Facilitation

19. Yerkes-Dodson Law
A correlation between task performance and an optimal level of arousal, whereby performance will first improve as a person's arousal level increases but then reach a point at which further arousal (possibly in the form of stress) will result in a decrease in performance.

20. Social Loafing Social Loafing
tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable
Example: When Mr. Wandyes assigns a group project, some members of the group reason that the rest of the group will do the project for them and therefore put in little effort.

21. Self Monitoring
When you pay more attention to the impression you’re making on other people rather than fine tuning the performance
High self monitors watch
themselves and change
their behavior constantly

22. Social Influence Deindividuation
loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity
sense of reduced accountability and shifted attention away from the self that occurs in groups

24. Social Influence Group Polarization Groupthink
enhancement of a group’s prevailing attitudes or position through discussion within the group
Rep vs. Dem Jrs. Vs Srs.
Why? Informational and Normative influences
Groupthink
mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives
Can have a negative or positive effect on decision making

25. Negative Affect of Groupthink
The Navy and Army in Pearl Harbor shared rationalizations about why an attack was unlikely. Their reasoning included, "The Japanese would never dare attempt a full-scale surprise assault against Hawaii because they would realize that it would precipitate an all-out war, which the United States would surely win.” officers succumbed to social pressures and did not want to face social scrutiny by objecting to the common belief that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor.
At the end of the day, the leading officers at Pearl Harbor reinforced each other's feeling of invulnerability and it is the reason why the United States was defenseless against Japan's attacks.

26. Overconfidence Overconfidence Overconfidence Effect
confident without adequate reason; too confident
Overconfidence Effect
excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions.
For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.

27. Compliance Four walls technique: used in sales
question customer in such a way that gets answers consistent with the idea that they need to own the object
feeling of cognitive dissonance results if person chooses not to buy this thing that they “need”

28. Social Influence
If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing opinions

29. The power of INDIVIDUALS
Social control: the power of the situation
Personal control: the power of the individual
By doing the opposite of what is expected when feeling pressured you reassert your sense of freedom
*Social history is often made by a minority, that sways the majority