Social Influence
Me and My Gang
Who or what influences you??
• Throughout my life I have noticed
that I act differently around different
groups of people.
• Around my family I act quiet and
reserved.
• Around friends I act silly and fun.
• But, around my fellow teachers and
students at school I talk about
curriculum and study skills for the AP
test.
• In other words, the people around us
affect the way we behave.
Group Influence on Behavior
Lets look at how groups effect our behavior.
When are you most likely to do your best??
• Social Facilitation
– Improved performance of tasks in the presence
of others.
• Occurs when one is very skilled at a task or it is a very
easy task
• Take MJ. He is very good in basketball and when he is
practicing alone I am sure he looks pretty good.
• But because he is so skilled, he actually performs better
in front of a group of people.
• social
impairment
• when a task is very hard or one is not skilled (not to much
unlike my basketball ability), one performs worse in front
of a group than if they were alone.
Conformity
• Adjusting one’s
behavior or thinking
to coincide with a
group standard.
How did you feel the
first time someone
asked you to smoke,
drink, or skip class?
Asch’s Study
Conditions that Strengthen
Conformity
•
•
•
•
•
•
One is made to feel incompetent
The group is at least three people
The group is unanimous
One admires the group’s status
One had made no prior commitment
The person is observed
Reasons for Conforming
• A desire to gain
approval or avoid
disappointment of
others (acceptance or
rejection) -Normative
Social Influence
• Influence resulting
from one’s willingness
to accept others’
opinions about reality Informational Social
Influence
•Wanting a material or social
reward such as a pay raise or
votes
Obedience
• compliance with commands given by an
authority figure
Milgram’s Experiments
Milgram’s Obedience Study
Why do People Obey Immoral
Commands??
• Legitimization of Authority
– We are taught to obey authority figures and not
to question or second-guess them
• Social Validation
– We use other people’s behavior as a standard for
judging the appropriateness of our own actions
• We may see that someone is admired for their
behavior so we use that to legitimize our behavior and
even look up to those people even more
What did we learn from Asch &
Milgram?
Ordinary people
can do shocking
things
Other Issues
in Group
Dynamics
Social Loafing
Sometimes people take advantage of being in a group
• The tendency to put
forth less effort
when working as a
member of a group
than when working
alone
of the last time you did a group project – you
may have worked less because if the group did badly it
was not a direct reflection of your skills, but the group
as a whole
• think
Deindividuation
• The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint
occurring in group situations
• People lose inhibitions and sense of responsibility
and feel anonymous – mobs, riots, and looting.
• Behave in a way you usually would not
Zimbardo
Prison
Study
Group Polarization
the tendency of people to make
decisions that are more
extreme when they are in a
group as opposed to a decision
alone or independently
Groupthink
• Occurs when the desire
for harmony in a decisionmaking group overrides
common sense.
– Members pressure others
to conform
– Members squash dissent
and focus just on
information that agrees
with the group’s point of
view
How could hazing incidents be an
example of groupthink?
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
• Occurs when one
person’s belief about
others leads one to act
in ways that induce the
others to appear to
confirm the belief.
If you think someone finds you attractive,
they more likely will!!!
Prejudice and
Discrimination
• Prejudice = attitude
• Discrimination = behavior
Prejudice
• An unjustifiable
attitude towards a
group of people.
• Usually involves
stereotyped beliefs
(a generalized belief
about a group of
people).
Overt
Subtle
Why is there prejudice?
• Vivid Cases
(Availability
Heuristic)
• The JustWorld
Phenomenon
– People get
what they
deserve in this
world
Social Inequalities
(A principle reason behind prejudice)
• Ingroup: “us”- people with
whom one shares a common
identity.
• Outgroup: “them”- those
perceived as different than one’s
ingroup.
• Ingroup bias: the tendency to
favor one’s own group.
Scapegoat Theory
• The theory that
prejudice
provides an
outlet for anger
by providing
someone to
blame.