Influence, Power and Leadership Flashcards
Influence processes
Compliance
How to get others to say yes?
Compliance: How to get others to say yes?
Six weapons of influence:
- Reciprocity:
- Not so free sample
- Door in the face - Commitment and consistency:
- Foot in the door
- Works in comparison to a big request will be more likely to say yes, if you do all small request before. - Social proof: Everyone is doing it!
- Liking: Flattery gets you everywhere
- Authority: Clothes make the deal
- Scarcity: What is scarce is more valuable
How to stop yourself from automatic social influence?
Point out the compliance tactic to the compliance professional → think → Understand how and why the tactic is working → Ask yourself: Do I really want to do this or am I doing it to please someone else? → Wait for a couple hours. If the desire goes away, you probably don’t need it. →
Why are people influenced by others? Three reasons:
- People want to make correct decisions (they want to be right)
- People seek social approval (they want to be liked)
- People want to manage their self-image (they want to be consistent)
Social influence
Interpersonal processes that change people’s thoughts, feelings, or actions.
Majority influence
Social pressure exerted by the larger portion of a group (the majority), directed toward individual members and smaller factions within the group (the minority).
Majority influence: The power of the many
Conformity and independence
Conformity across Contexts
Who will conform?
Conformity
A change in one’s actions, emotions, opinions, judgments, and so on that reduces their discrepancy with these same types of responses displayed by others.
Asch situation / experiment
An experimental procedure developed by Solomon Asch in his studies of conformity to group opinion. Participants believed they were making perceptual judgments as part of a group, but the other members were trained to make deliberate errors on certain trials.
What is this an example of the problems given to participants:
Subjects were told to look at the standard line (on the left) and then match it to one of the three lines on the right. The task was an easy one, but all of the group members, save the one true subject, were Asch’s confederates who deliberately made many mistakes?
Ash situation/experiment
The Crutchfield situation
Participants were in separate booths rather than seated together, face-to-face.
Majorities are more influential when unanimous and in strong (rather than weak) situations
Individuals in online groups conform at rates equal to and sometimes greater than face-to-face groups (because social identity model of deinviduation effects, or side effects)
Online there is a reduced sense of what the individual is. Online sets a norm where there is a less form of the I (identity) that’s why they conform.
Larger majorities are more influential up to a point, but then adding more members to the majority had less impact.
Conformity increases and decreases depending on a host of other situational factors sush as:
o accuracy needs
o cohesion
o task difficulty
o status of other members
Social impact theory stresses three key factors:
strength, immediacy, and number.
Who will conform?
- People who conform consistently tend to be more authoritarian but seek social approval.
- Nonconformists are more self-confident
- Women conform slightly more than men, primarily in face-to-face groups
- Individualism/collectivism is associated with conformity
- Conformity rates dropped slightly in the last half of the twentieth century
Minority influence
Social pressure exerted by a lone individual or smaller faction of a group (the minority), directed toward members of the majority.
When do people resist the group’s influence and instead, change the group? Conversion Theory of minority influence (Moscovici)?
A conceptual analysis of the cognitive and interpersonal processes that mediate the direct and indirect impact of a consistent minority on the majority (developed by Serge Moscovici).
- Behaviorally consistent minorities sometimes change the majority.
- Expanding minorities are more influential.
- Minority influence is more indirect than majority influence, so it generates conversion and innovation rather than compliance.
Predicting minority influence by four things:
- Consistency: Moscovici predicts a consistent minority is most effective
- Status: Hollander argues minorities that are accorded high status are most effective, for their idiosyncrasy credits protect them from sanctions
- Effort: Minorities exert more effort in their attempts to influence than majorities do.
- Decision rules: A majority-rules decision rules favor majority influence, and an unanimity rule favors minorities.
o In the court everybody needs to agree so the unanimity rule favors minority
Sources of group / social influence
Influence is sometimes direct and obvious, but in other cases indirect and subtle. It can take many forms, including implicit, informational, normative, and interpersonal.
Implicit influence is produced by …?
Cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes that are neither consciously controlled nor noticed.
- Mimicry: Group members tend to unconsciously imitate each other
- Mindlessness can cause individuals to conform automatically (often we don’t think)
Definition = A state of reduced cognitive processing characterized by actions based on habit, routine, or previously formed discriminations rather than conscious deliberation.
Example of mindlessness, Langer found people complied with a request to jump in front of a line of people using a copier if the line jumper said either “I’m in a rush” OR “I need to make copies”. …
Informational influence
three theories
We use others’ responses as reference points and informational resources.
- Social comparison theory: Basing conclusions on others’ responses
- False consensus effect: Misjudging the extent to which others agree. Perceivers’ tendency to assume that their beliefs, attributes, and actions are relatively common and appropriate in any given situation.
- Dual process theories: In general, any conceptual analysis that identifies two sources or forms of influence: direct (such as persuasion and discussion) and indirect (such as imitation and herding)
Social comparison theory
Basing conclusions on others’ responses
False consensus effect
Misjudging the extent to which others agree. Perceivers’ tendency to assume that their beliefs, attributes, and actions are relatively common and appropriate in any given situation.
Dual process theories
In general, any conceptual analysis that identifies two sources or forms of influence: direct (such as persuasion and discussion) and indirect (such as imitation and herding)
Normative influence
Change-promoting interpersonal processes based on social norms, standards, and convention. Because individuals internalize their group’s norms, they strive to act in ways that are consistent with those norms.
We feel, think, and act in ways that are consistent with our group’s social standards.
Disagreeing with others can trigger cognitive dissonance, an unpleasant and neurologically detectable psychological state that individuals are motivated to reduce
Cialdini’s focus theory of normative conduct argues that injunctive norms (normative influences) and descriptive norms (informational influences) work when they are made salient, and that normative influence requires more cognitive resources that informational influence.