33. Social Influence Flashcards
Refers to the effects of the presence of others on the way people think, feel and behave.
Social influence
Sociologist and philosophers had recognised that people ____ differently crowd than they do as individuals and that a crowd is more than the mere sum of its parts.
behave
They become anonymous and no longer consider themselves ____ for their behaviour.
accountable
The influence of implicit and explicit expectations of this sort provides the basis for ____-____ ____, in which false impressions of a situation evoke behaviour that, in turn, makes these impressions become true.
SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES
Compliance with authority.
Obedience
Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974), ____ shock experiment.
Electric
The Milgram experiments demonstrated that most people will ____, without limitations of conscience, when they believe in order comes from a legitimate authority.
obey
Several factors influence obedience.
(1) . Proximity to the ____
(2) . Proximity to the ____
victim, experimenter
The disjunction between our beliefs about how we would behave and the way most of us would actually behave highlights a consistent finding social psychology – that is, our blindness to the power of ____ over our own behaviour.
situations
The effects of powerful situations tend to be ____ and hence to occur automatically and without conscious awareness.
implicit
Thus, when we predict our own behaviour, we tend to picture what we would consciously think and feel and to ____ the power of implicit situational pulls.
underestimate
Means changing attitudes or behaviour to accommodate the standards of peers or groups.
Conformity
Solomon Asch (1955, 1956) documented the power of ____, with a series of experiments involving different length lines.
conformity
The Asch experiments demonstrated that people tend to conform rather than to be the lone ____ voice.
dissenting
The Asch studies powerfully demonstrate the power of situations to ____ behaviour and attitude.
influence
Personality factors, however, also influence the tendency to conform. Individuals with ___ ___-____ and those who are especially motivated by the need for social approval are more likely to conform.
low self-esteem
A ____ is a collection of people whose actions affect the other group members.
Group
The behaviour of people in groups is dictated in large part by the norms operating within particular groups and the roles that individual members of the group play.
Characteristics of groups
____, or standards for behaviour, guide thought, feeling and behaviour, from the way people dress to their attitudes about sex, politics and lawyers.
Norms
Sometimes norms are explicit (e.g. dress code), but much of the time they are ____ (men do not wear dresses; peers do not issue commands to each other).
implicit
Different groups have different norms, and particularly in complex societies, people must pick and choose the norms to obey at any given moment because they ____ to many groups, which may have conflicting norms.
belong
Groups whose norms matter to an individual, and hence have an impact on the individuals behaviour, unknown as ____ ____. In other words, these are groups to which a person refers when taking action.
REFERENCE GROUPS
A reference group is considered ____ if the person tries to emulate its members and meet the standards. Not necessarily a positive influence. A Reference group is negative if a person rejects its members and disavows their standards.
positive
The norms operating in groups determine, in part, the ____ that individual group members play.
Roles
A ____ is a position in a group that has norms specifying appropriate behaviour for its occupants. Roles are essentially norms that are specific to particular people or subgroups.
ROLE
Roles reflect sheared ____ about how particular members of the group are supposed to behave.
expectations
Individuals internalise roles as ____ ____, which direct their behaviour when they are in a particular role and lead them to expect certain responses from people with complementary roles.
role schemas
The group members who take responsibility for seeing that the group completes its task are called ____ ____.
TASK LEADERS, or INSTRUMENTAL LEADERS
Others, called ____-____ ____, try to keep the group working cohesively with minimal animosity.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEADERS
Roles can have a dramatic influence on behaviours, as demonstrated in ____ ____ ____, which had to be aborted because people became immersed too deeply in their assigned roles.
Zimbardo’s prison experiment
The presence of other people can either help or hurt individual performance, a process called ____ ____.
Social facilitation
When people are performing dominant, well-learned behaviours, the presence of other people can ____ performance.
facilitate
On the other hand, when people are performing non-dominant behaviours, or behaviours which they are unfamiliar with, the presence of others can ____ performance.
hinder
The facilitative effects of other people on performance have their ____, however, as demonstrated most aptly with the ‘choking under pressure’, phenomenon. Furthermore, the facilitators effects on group membership depend on the type of task.
limitations
The process by which people exhibit less effort in a group is referred to as ____ ____.
SOCIAL LOAFING
In yet other tasks, some individuals will perform at least as well alone is when part of a group. Tasks in which there is a single answer (e.g. yes/no) are referred to as ____ ____.
disjunctive tasks
Disjunctive tasks coming two varieties: .
Eureka and non-Eureka
When we are told the answer to a ____ ____, we are very certain the answer offered is correct. It fits so well, we react with aha or Eureka.
Eureka problem
The answers to a ____ ____, in contrast, are not so satisfying. After arguing about them, we often wonder if the recommended answer is the correct answer.
non-Eureka problem
Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that decisions made by a group would be categorised as mainstream – that is, neither too conservative nor too radical. In fact, research shows that group decisions are rarely ‘____ _ __ ____’ but are normally at one extreme or the other – either conservative or risky.
middle of the road
This is known as ____ ____, the movement towards a decision that is at the extreme position.
GROUP POLARISATION
One possibility is that the group members become ____ to new information argued in a persuasive manner. This convinces the group members to move decisively in one direction another.
exposed
Another reason could be ____ ____, whereby people tend to cluster together to be viewed even more favourably by members of their ingroup.
GROUP COHESIVENESS
A further theory is that responsibility for decisions made in a group can be ____ more readily. Once you make a decision as an individual, there’s no one left to blame if something goes wrong. However, blame can be sheared and diluted if that same decision was made as part of a group.
diffused
Another characteristic of the decision making is what has become known as ____, a concept originated by Irving Janis (1972).
GROUPTHINK
Groupthink occurs when members of a group make decisions based more on maintaining group ____ and ____ than a critical analysis of the realities of the situation. Rather than making an objective examination of the facts and coming to a rational decision, members tend to ignore all the options and fall into line behind each other.
harmony and cohesiveness
_____ are people who exercise greater influence than the average member of a group. ____ tend to vary in the extent to which they are task oriented or relationship oriented.
Leaders
(1) – making all the decisions
autocratic leadership style
(2) – involving themselves in the group and encouraging members to come to decisions themselves
democratic leadership style
(3) – simply letting things happen, intervening as little as possible
laissez-faire leadership style
Contemporary organisational psychologists emphasise two ____ on which leaders vary: task orientation and leadership orientation.
dimensions
____ ____ take responsibility for seeing that the group completes its task;
TASK LEADERS
____ ____ try to keep the group working cohesively with minimal conflict. In other words, leaders differ in the extent to which they focus on efficiency and on the feelings of their employees.
SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEADERS
Interactional theories suggest that effective leaders can adapt the leadership styles to match the needs of the followers and of the situation.
Interactional models of leadership
Outlines three situational variables that together influence what style leadership will be most effective:
Task structure – The task is either very structured and clearly or very unstructured and unclear.
Leadership–member relationships – Which can range on continuum from very good to very bad.
Position power – The status accorded to the leader by the followers.
Fiedler’s contingency theory of leadership
(1). One of the first principles of social influence is the principle of ____. Most people have a compelling need to reciprocate that which has been done to them.
RECIPROCITY
The principle of reciprocity is so strong that it lies at the heart of an everyday social influence tactic, the ____ _ __ ___ ___, when we intentionally make a request that we know will be turned down, so that when we back down from our request, the other individual should reciprocate with a concession.
DOOR IN THE FACE TECHNIQUE
We also feel the need to reciprocate ____ things that people do to us.
negative
(2). A second principle of social influence that allows us to be influenced is the principle of ____. Because people are concerned with the impressions others are forming of them, they feel the need to behave consistently with prior impressions or commitments they have made.
COMMITMENT
The ___ _ __ ____ refers to this process by which people who get us to commit to a small request are much more likely to get us to commit to a large request.
FOOT IN THE DOOR TECHNIQUE
The principle of commitment also underlies a second specific technique of social influence – ___ ____. People who low-ball others get a commitment to a request and then they change the conditions of the request.
LOW-BALLING
(3). One final principle of social influence that gets us all is the principle of ____. The principle of liking makes us feel obligated to buy costly products we normally would buy. We do things for people that we like out of a sense of obligation so that they will continue to like as in return.
LIKING
One of the simplest answers as to why we can’t be more resilient in the face of interpersonal pressure is ____. Each day we are inundated with innumerable stimuli vying for our attention. Obviously, no one can process everything with which he is confronted on a daily basis, so some of what we say and do follows from mindless processing.
MINDLESSNESS