Emotions and Social Influence

Question 1

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Answer 1

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of those around you.

Question 2

What are the four skills of emotional intelligence? What do they mean?

Answer 2

The Four Skills of Emotional Inteligence

1. Perceive: ability to accurately perceive emotions in oneself and in others.
2. Use: recognize the ways in which emotions can help us make better decisions or solve problems.
3. Understanding: ability to understand the causes and consequences of emotions, understand how emotions are triggered, and how they can impact behavior and relationships.
4. Management of Emotions: ability to regulate and manage emotions effectively, being able to control one’s own emotional responses, as well as helping others manage their emotions.

Question 3

What are the four Social Functions of Emotion? and What do they mean?

Answer 3

1. Individual Analysis Level: Prepares the organism (body and mind) for action a and informs about events.
2. Dyadic Level of Analysis: Coordinate social interactions: getting to know the other (intentions), communicate and learn.
3. Group Analysis Level: Defining identity; Establishing boundaries and strengthening cohesion.
4. Cultural Level of Analysis: Creating and shaping symbolic cultural practices and systems.

Question 4

Define the Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).

Answer 4

Our identity is in large part defined by our membership in social groups.

Question 5

Define the Social Categorization Theory (Turner, 1985).

Answer 5

We categorize the social world into groups to which we belong and those to which others belong.

Question 6

What is Social Inferencing?

Answer 6

Social Inferencing means understanding information that is inferred or not directly stated.

Question 7

How can we improve Social Inferencing?

Answer 7

The basic principle is that social inference can be improved as we become less dependent on intuitive inferential strategies. This can be achieved through formal education in scientific and rational thinking, in statistical techniques and via reflexive thinking that keep us aware of inferencing pitfalls.

Question 8

What is Conformity? Give some example studies

Answer 8

Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms, politics or being like-minded.

Examples Studies: Asch study (Line), Miligram’s Experiment (Student Shock)

Question 9

What is a group? Give two definitions.

Answer 9

A group is a social unit which consists of a number of individuals who stand in role and status relationship to one another stabilized in some degree at the time and who possess a set of value or norms (…). (Sherif and Sherif, 1969)

A group exists when two or more members define themselves as members of a given group. (Hewstone, Stroebe and Jonas, 2021)

Question 10

What are the different types of groups? Give examples

Answer 10

Intimacy groups: mainly fulfil affiliation-related needs, such as the need to belong Ex: family; friends, romantic partner.

Task groups: mainly have a utilitarian function and help people to satisfy achievement-related needs. Ex: sports teams.

Social categories: mainly have the function of giving people a social identity. Ex: people from the same city/region.

Question 11

How are individuals affected by the presence of others? What is it called?

Answer 11

Social facilitation: Improvement in the performance of well-learned/easy tasks and a worsening of performance in poorly learned/difficult tasks due to the presence of members of the same species.

Question 12

What are the stages of the creation of a group?

Answer 12

1. Forming: group members get to know each other: high uncertainty.
2. Storming: group members resist influence: disagreement and high conflict.
3. Norming: group members share a common purpose; high friendship and cohesion.
4. Performing: group members work together towards their goal: performance oriented relations.
5. Adjourning: group members leave the group: feelings of accomplishment or failure, sometimes grief or relief.

Question 13

What are Group Norms?

Answer 13

Belief systems of how to behave guide behavior without the force of laws, reflecting shared group expectations about typical or desirable activities.

Question 14

What are the two types of group Cohesion?

Answer 14

1. Task cohesion refers to the shared commitment to the group’s tasks;
2. Interpersonal cohesion refers to the attraction to the group.

Question 15

Define Helping Behaviour?

Answer 15

Actions that are intended to provide some benefit to or improve the well-being of others.

Question 16

Why do we help people?

Answer 16

Altruistic motivation: refers to behavior carried out to benefit others without anticipation of external rewards.

Egoistic motivation: witnessing someone in need creates an unpleasant mood in the observer, who is thus motivated to act to relieve this unpleasant mood.

Question 17

What is the Bystander Effect?

Answer 17

Bystander Effect: refers to to the phenomenon whereby the likelihood of any one person helping in an emergency situation decreases as the number of other bystanders increases.

Question 18

What is the Diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 18

Diffusion of responsibility : the process by which responsibility is divided between the number of bystanders present; as more people are present in an emergency, responsibility is diffused between them and each individual bystander feels increasingly less responsible than if they were alone.

Question 19

What is the Pluralistic Ignorance Emergency?

Answer 19

Pluralistic ignorance emergency : bystanders look to others in reacting to the event; as each person fails to react, they look at non-reacting bystanders, and interpret the event as not requiring a response.

Question 20

What is Audience inhibition?

Answer 20

Audience inhibition: the experience of individual bystanders whose behavior can be seen by other bystanders. In an emergency bystanders may fear embarrassment by their actions, resulting in lower likelihood of them helping.