Social Psychology: The power of groups

Th The study of the manner in which the personality, attitudes, motivations, and behavior of the individual influence and are influenced by social groups.

Cultural influence

Culture dictates how you dress. Culture specifies what you eat and do not eat. People from different cultures seek different

amounts of personal space. Cultural truisms: Norms:

Chameleon Effect

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199911/were-all-copycats

Conformity

Conformity: voluntarily yielding to social norms, even at the expense of one’s preferences.

Conformity: The Asch Experiment

The more difficult the decision, the greater the conformity.

Difficult judgments

Easy judgments

Conformity higheston important

judgments

Low HighImportance

50%

40

30

20

10

0

Obedience

Obedience: change of behavior in response to a command from another person, typically an authority figure.

Factors that increase obedience:

Obedience: The Milgram Experiment

A good impact of being in a group: social facilitation

At times, people will improve their 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

Expert pool players who made 71% of shots by themselves make 80% when 4 people are watching; poor pool players who made 36% alone made 25% when watched.

Laughter: comedy CDs that are mildly amusing in an uncrowded room seem funnier in a densely packed room (i.e. laugh tracks on TVs): “a good house is a full house”

Driving: After a light turns green, drivers take 15% less time to travel the first 100 yards than when alone

Can you think of activities that you do better when others are watching?

Social Facilitation in sports

The bad: social loafing

The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when working individually.

Ingham’s 1974 “tug of war” experiment:

The bad: bystander effect

We only help when a situation enables us to notice a situation, interpret it as an emergency, and assume responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility: http

://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/kitty_genovese/1.html

Have you ever seen a car accident or other bad event and hesitated before getting involved, or decided not to get involved at all?

The bad: deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/july99/woodstock29.htm

What other kinds of things will people do when they are in a crowd or a mob?

The bad: group polarization

Over time, initial differences between different groups tends to grow

Do you spend most of your time with people who have the same opinions, or do you seek out differences?

Group polarization

The bad: groupthink

When the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives: Challenger, Bay of Pigs, Iraq War, etc.

Can you think of other examples?