David Myers
Chapter Eight
Group Influence
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What Is a Group?
 Two or more people who, for longer than a few
moments, interact with and influence one another
and perceive one another as “us” (M. Shaw, ‘81)
 For



Affiliation
To achieve
Social identity
 What are some groups you belong to?
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Topics:
 Collective influence

(can occur in minimal group situations):
 Social facilitation
 Social loafing
 Deindividuation
 Influence occurring with interacting groups:
 Polarization
 Groupthink
 Minority influence
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Social Facilitation: How Are We
Affected by the Presence of Others?
 Crowding: The Presence of Many Others
 Effect of others’ presence increases with their number
 Being in a crowd intensifies positive or negative
reactions
 Enhances arousal
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Social Facilitation: How Are We
Affected by the Presence of Others?
(biking with others – N. Triplett, ‘90)
 Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others?
 Evaluation apprehension

Concern for how others are evaluating us
 Driven by distraction

When we wonder how co-actors are doing or how an audience
is reacting, we become distracted
 Mere presence

Can be arousing even when we are not evaluated or distracted
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Social facilitation (& hindrance)
evaluation apprehension causes arousal
 R. Zajonc
 Dominant response theory:
 Group presence


Boosts performance on easy tasks
Hurts performance on difficult tasks
 If the dominant response is correct and well learned

Performance increases
 If the dominant response is incorrect (not well-learned)

Performance decreases
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Crowding
 Evaluation apprehension
 Dominant response theory is enhanced

With increased apprehension
 Distraction
 More difficult to pay attention to the task
 Mere presence
 Arousal occurs just with the mere presence of others

-Zajonc (with all sorts of species)
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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
 Many Hands Make Light Work
 Effort decreases as group size increases
 Free riders

People who benefit from the group but give little in return
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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
 Social Loafing
 Tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool
their efforts toward a common goal than when they are
individually accountable


Give some personal examples of where this has happened to
you.
Have you ever been a ‘social loafer’?
 Does it happen with “tug o’ war”? (Ringlemann)
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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
 Social Loafing in Everyday Life
 People in groups loaf less when the task is






Challenging
Appealing
 Rewards are significant
Involving
 Team spirit
When held accountable / effort is visible
Interdependent tasks with specific roles
When the reward (output) is for self/small group
 Is this why communism usually doesn’t work?
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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
 Deindividuation
 Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension;
occurs in group situations that foster responsiveness to
group norms, good or bad
 Looting in

Iraq, London, Ferguson
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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
 Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone
 Group size


Larger the group the more its members lose self-awareness
and become willing to commit atrocities
 Lnychings, encouraging suicidial persons to jump to their
death
People’s attention is focused on the situation, not on
themselves
 “Everyone’s doing it” attitude
 They contribute their behavior to the situation rather than to
their own choices
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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
 Doing Together What
We Would Not Do Alone
 Anonymity


Being anonymous makes
one less self-conscious,
more group-conscious, and
more responsive to cues
present in the situation,
whether negative or
positive
Dressed to cover their
identity delivered more
electric shocks Zimbardo
(‘79; ‘02)
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Deindividuation: When Do People Lose
Their Sense of Self in Groups?
 “flaming”
 Download to MP3
 Smoked car windows
 Incivility when driving
 Single or multiple checks
 Always bad behavior?
 Klan hoods v. nurse
uniforms
 Why not?
 Response to situational
for restaurant bill?
 Halloween
 Masked vs unmasked
 Which take more candy?
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cues
 Anti-social v.
 Pro-social
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Deindividuation: When Do People Lose
Their Sense of Self in Groups?
 Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone
 Arousing and distracting activities
 When we act in an impulsive way as a group, we are not thinking
about our values; we are reacting to the immediate situation
 i.e. “situational cues” overwhelm “held values”
 Impulsive group action absorbs our attention
 Starting, encouraging chants in demonstrations
 Purposely done by protest organizers
 to induce disinhibited behaviors
 - makes us think others feel as we do (social comparison theory
 - and induces false consensus beliefs
 - and compliance with social (group) norms
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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
 Self-Awareness

Opposite of deindividuation
 Tend to increase people’s responsiveness to the
immediate situation, be it negative or positive

Take a mirror with you everywhere you go
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
 Group Polarization
 Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting
tendencies; a strengthening of the members’ average
tendency, not a split within the group
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our
Opinions?
-first comes:
 “Risky Shift” Phenomenon (J. Stoner, ’61)
 What would you advise Helen to do?

Cheap westerns or a significant novel?
 What would you advise Roger to do?

Sell or not sell his life insurance policy?
 Occurs not only when a group decides by consensus;
after a brief discussion, individuals, too, will alter their
decisions




Juries
Business committees
Military organizations
Teen drivers
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
 Do Groups Intensify Opinions?
 Group polarization experiments



Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969)
 After French students discussion how did initial attitudes
change toward Americans and the French President?
Mititoshi Isozaki (1984)
 Japanese judgements of “guilty” for traffic violations
 Were award damages from group larger or smaller that for
individual awards?
Markus Brauer, et al. (2001)
 After discussion did French students dislike certain other
people more or less? Why?
 What effect does discussion ofmoral issues have on
individuals in the group?
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
 Do Groups Intensify Opinions?
 Group polarization in everyday life (echo chamber)





Schools
 Accentuation effect
 How does this apply to gender orientation?
Communities
 Self-segregation
Internet
U.S. Congress
 Gerrymandering phenomenon?
Terrorists organizations
 What’s the solution to prevent radicalization of these
individuals?
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Group Polarization: Do Groups
Intensify Our Opinions?
 Explaining Polarization
 Informational influence


Arguments
 Favor given to the initial ones
Active participation
 “Don’t you agree….?”
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
 Explaining Polarization
 Normative influence (social influence)



Social comparison
 Evaluating one’s opinions and abilities by comparing oneself
with others
Pluralistic ignorance
 A false impression of what most other people are thinking or
feeling, or how they are responding
When we find out what others think, we want to be unique
and stand out more by taking a stronger position (“I’m not like
everyone else!”)
 Explain the “bandwagon effect” for why songs become
popular (Salganik, ‘06)
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions?
(Irving Janis, 71)
 Mode of thinking that persons engage in when
concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a
cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic
appraisal of alternative courses of action
 Caused by



Cohesive group
Isolation of the group from dissenting viewpoints
Directive leader
 Perl Harbor
 Bay of Pigs
 Vietnam war
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
 Symptoms of Groupthink
 Following lead group members to overestimate their
group’s might and right

Illusion of invulnerability
 Admiral Kimmel’s laugh (Diamond Head)

Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality
 Kennedy vs. William Fulbright Arthur Schlesinger
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
 Symptoms of Groupthink
 Following leads group members to become closedminded


Rationalization
 “Tuesday Lunch group” (explain and justify focus)
Stereotyped view of opponent
 Castro’s military? ….much too weak!
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
 Symptoms of Groupthink
 Following leads group to feel pressure toward uniformity




Conformity pressure
 Here comes Bill Moyers, “Mr. stop the bombing”
Self-censorship
 What should Arthur have done?
Illusion of unanimity
 Adolf’s team / Vietnam / Bay of Pigs / Pearl Harbor / Iraq
Mindguards
 Bobby Kennedy / Dean Rusk
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
 Critiquing Groupthink
 Directive leadership is associated with poorer decisions
 Groups do prefer supporting over challenging
information
 Groups make smart decisions by widely distributed
conversation with members who take turns speaking
 Group acceptance, approval, and social identity,
suppress disagreeable thoughts among members
 Diverse groups produce more creativity
 Groups may not always benefit from all that members
know
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
 Preventing Groupthink
 Be impartial
 Encourage critical evaluation
 Occasionally subdivide the group, then reunite to air
differences
 Welcome critiques from outside experts and associates
 Call a second-chance meeting
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
 Group Problem Solving
 Combine group and solitary brainstorming
 Have group members interact by writing
 Incorporate electronic brainstorming
 How to evaluate the correctness of the decision?
 Not on the outcome/ results
 But on the decision process itself (I. Janis)
 Anyone can be a Monday morning quarter back

Remember counter-factual thinking?
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The Influence of the Minority:
How Do Individuals Influence the Group?
 Consistency
 Minority slowness effect
 Self-Confidence
 Portrayed by consistency and persistence
 Defections from the Majority
 Minority person who defects from the majority is more
persuasive than a consistent minority voice
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The Influence of the Minority:
How Do Individuals Influence the Group?
 Is Leadership Minority Influence?
 Leadership

Process by which certain group members motivate and guide
the group
 Formal and informal group leaders exert disproportionate
influence
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The Influence of the Minority: How
Do Individuals Influence the Group?
 Is Leadership Minority Influence?
 Task leadership

Organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals
 Social leadership

Builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support
 Transformational leadership

Enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration, exerts significant
influence
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