Chapter 8 Flashcards
Social power
the capacity to influence others, even when these others try to resist this influence.
Milgram’s research:
Milgram: tested people’s ability to resist a powerful authority who ordered them to give painful and
potentially harmful electric shocks to a subject. Several conditions in his experiment:
1. Voice-feedback cognition = hearing the screaming and begging of the victims. 62,5%
continued until the end.
2. Heart condition = victim mentioned that he is suffering from heart diseases and complained
about his heart during the experiment. 65% continued till the end.
3. Touch-proximity condition = subject sat next to the victim. 30% continued until the end.
4. Low surveillance condition = Milgram gave orders through the phone but there was low
surveillance. 25% continued until the end.
5. Office-building condition = experiment took place in a shopping mall instead of a prestigious
location. 48% continued until the end.
6. Ordinary-man variation = Milgram did not give the orders, but an ordinary man. 20%
continued until the end.
7. Authority-as-victim variation = Milgram was the victim and an accomplice of him gave the
orders. No one continued until the end.
8. Peer administers shock condition = subjects were not the ones who gave the shocks but the
accomplice did. When the accomplice did what Milgram ordered, 92,5% of the real subjects
were cooperating with the accomplice.
9. Two peers level condition = two accomplices were added and pretended they were normal
subjects. Obedience of the subjects declined when the accomplices did not want to continue
giving shocks. 10% continued until the end.
French & Raven: power bases
sources of social power in a group. Six sorts of power bases:
- Reward power
- Coercive power
- Legitimate power
- Referent power
- Expert power
- Informational power
Reward power
ability to influence others by having control over the rewards.
Coercive power
ability to influence others based on punishing others (e.g., bullying)
Legitimate power
ability to influence others based on the individual’s position/role that
includes the right to require and demand compliance of the others
Referent power
ability to influence others based on social relationships between
individuals, including identification with, attraction to, or respect for another person or group
(e.g., charisma).
Expert power
ability to influence others based on the belief that an individual possesses
superior knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Informational power
ability to influence others based on the potential use of informational
resources, including rational argument, persuasion, or explanation.
Power tactics
specific methods (e.g., persuasion, bargaining, and evasion) that people use to attain the goal of influencing others. Can be distinguished on basis of three dimensions:
- Soft versus hard: (1) Soft tactics: being friendly (e.g., cooperating, being social, and building
friendships) is indirect way, and (2) Being hard: (e.g., threatening, be mean, demanding
orders) is direct way. - Rational versus irrational: (1) Rational tactics: emphasize reasoning, logic, and good
evaluation, and (2) Irrational tactics: based on emotional manipulation and giving wrong
information. - Unilateral versus bilateral: (1) Unilateral tactics: giving orders and other member has
nothing to say, and (2) Bilateral tactics: interaction that goes in two directions.
Compliance tactics
technics that are subtle, indirect, and hard to detect and are used to influence a
person, often without the person knowing. Techniques are effective because they (1) create a
favourable cognitive and emotional reaction in the victim, and (2) disrupt the ability to think critically.
- Foot-in-the-door technique = prefacing major demands with minor, inconsequential ones.
-Behavioral commitment = when a person has said “yes” to demands before, he is more likely
to say “yes” to other demands.
Foot-in-the-door technique
prefacing major demands with minor, inconsequential ones.
Behavioral commitment
when a person has said “yes” to demands before, he is more likely
to say “yes” to other demands.
Pecking order
animals with a higher status threaten animals with a lower status. Animals with a lower status try to avoid this by acting submissive.
Social dominance orientation (SDO)
tendency to maintain inequality in a group. Preferring
hierarchical social structures.
Berger: Expectation-states theory
explanation of status differentiation in groups, which
assumes that group members allocate status to group members that are judged to be
competent at a task or that have qualities. Distinguishes two sorts of status characteristics:
- Specific status characteristics = task-specific and personal characteristics that people
consider when judging themselves and others. - Diffuse status characteristics = general personal characteristics (e.g. race, gender,
and age) that people consider when judging themselves and others.
Specific status characteristics
task-specific and personal characteristics that people
consider when judging themselves and others.
Diffuse status characteristics
general personal characteristics (e.g. race, gender,
and age) that people consider when judging themselves and others.
Status generalization
group members unfairly allow irrelevant characteristics, such as rage,
age, or ethnicity, to influence the allocation of the prestige.
Michel: iron law of oligarchy
describes the principle of social and political control which
predicts that, in any group, power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals (an
oligarchy) who will act in ways that protect and enhance their power.
Interpersonal complementary hypothesis
individuals tend to respond submissively when
they confront authority, and they tend to behave assertively when they encounter someone
who is submissive.
Keltner: approach/inhibition theory
power activates the approach response system
whereas the loss of power inhibits actions.
Positive effects of power
(1) Taking initiative, (2) More positive emotions, (3) Consistent
goal-striving, (4) Enhanced executive functioning, (5) Increased authenticity, and (5) Lower
levels of conformity.
Negative effects of power
(1) Increased tendency to act in a risky/inappropriate way,
(2) A negative impact on others’ emotional states
(3) Loss of perspective-taking
(4) Tendency to misjudge others
(5) Increased self-satisfaction.
Bathsheba syndrome
when authorities use their power to exploit others
Kelman: compliance-identification-internalization model
people express three following
reactions when they get to do with coercive power:
1. Compliance = complying with the authorities’ requests.
2. Identification = complying with the authority because people want to be like
him/her.
3. Internalization = people have internalized the authorities’ demands and they will
comply with the demands even when the authority is not present. > Milgram: agentic state = psychological state in which submissive group members
in a status hierarchy experience such a large decrease in autonomy that they are
not capable anymore to resist the demands of the authority. They also
experience a reduction of responsibility.
Zimbardo: Stanford prison experiment
simulated prison study that was terminated
prematurely when participants became too dominant and submissive.
-Lucifer effect = ordinary, good people can change in morally corrupt people by being
in the wrong social situations
Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
blaming the personalities of the individuals rather
than the powerful group processes at work that forced them to obey.
