Social Influence And Group Processes Flashcards
Autocratic leaders
Individual control over all decisions and little input from group members. make choices based on their ideas and judgments
rarely accept advice from followers
Compliance
A situation where you’ve agreed with other people’s opinions and complied with requests publicly but have not changed your real internal opinions which may be different
Social influence arising as a response to a request
Conformity
You’ve changed these innermost thoughts and feelings as a result of less direct pressure from others.
Behaviour in accordance with socially accepted conventions
Social influence arising from adherence to group norms
Contact hypothesis
This view suggests that contact between members of different groups lessens intergroup hostility
Conversion effect
disagreement within the group results in conflict, and that group members are motivated to reduce that conflict—either by changing their own opinions or attempting to get others to change.
Democratic leaders
Prepared to consider others opinions and call for discussion and suggestion
Drive theory
Zajoncs
Presence of others leads to a state of arousal
= increase in performing dominant responses
Correct dominant response - social facilitation
Incorrect dominant response - social inhibition
Dual process dependency model
focuses on interpersonal dependency, while this emphasises the social groups that you belong to and group norms. Therefore you don’t conform to others you conform to what is expected from your group norm.
Majority influence = compliance
Minority influence = conversion
Evaluation apprehension model
Cottrell
People are aroused in the presence of others because they learn that social approval / disapproval (perceived rewards and punishments) are dependent on how we are evaluated by others
Free-riding
Idea that own efforts not as important to the group because of the effort of other group members
Leave decision to other group members and reap any rewards that result
Genetic model
Moscovici
studied how consistent minorities create cognitive conflict and produce social innovation by disrupting established norms and making visible their alternative point of view
Group
2 or more people
Group membership can lead to changes in our own beliefs and attitudes and behaviours
Group norm
Informal rules that groups adopt to regulate and regularize group members’ behavior
Group polarisation
Group polarization occurs when a group makes a more extreme decision than its individual members would have made if acting on their own.
Groupthink
A type of thinking among very cohesive groups that is based on members wanting to reach a unanimous decision irrespective of a motivation to use logical and reasoned decision- making processes
Identity-reference group
Belonging to the group has an effect on ones own social identity
Act as a reference frame for people knowing and understanding who they are
Identification within the opinions, goal and motives of the group
Informational social influence
Social influence based on the belief that others are better informed than we are
In-group
an exclusive, typically small, group of people with a shared interest or identity
Intergroup behaviour
Intergroup behaviour is any perception, cognition, or behaviour that is influenced by people’s recognition that they and others are members of distinct social groups.
Laissez - faire leaders
Leaders hardly intervene. Let the group do what they want
Leadership
A role designated in a group for encouraging other members to realise the groups goals
Majority influence
Bring about direct public compliance because of normative and informational influence, without much thinking going on
Minority influence
Bring about indirect and private change because majorities actively think about the minority view - leads to cognitive conflict
Membership group
Committed to the groups norms and values
Defined by being a member
Minimal group paradigm
Social psychology research methodology
Method for investigating the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups
Normative social influence
Type of social influence that leads to conformity
Conformity is caused by the desire to be liked and accepted and to avoid being disliked
Non-conformity may lead to negative evaluations of us
Obedience
compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another’s authority
Social influence arising in response to a direct order
Out-group
a group that is distinct from one’s own and so usually an object of hostility or dislike
Prejudice
an assumption or an opinion about someone simply based on that person’s membership to a particular group.
E.G. people can be prejudiced against someone else of a different ethnicity, gender or religion
Incidental groups
Transient in nature. People have minimal commitment and involvement with each other
E.g assigned by a lecturer to a group to complete a task
Social influence
The ways in which a persons thoughts, their feelings and the ways they behave are influenced by other people or groups
Social reality hypothesis
The less you can rely on your own perception of the world, the more likely you are to be influenced by others
Social facilitation and social inhibition
refer to the findings that people appear to get better at well-learned tasks and worse at difficult tasks when in the presence of others
Social loafing
People work less hard on tasks when they think that others are also working on the task. They can ‘loaf’ about
Social compensation
Work harder on tasks when they perceive other members cannot do the tasks or are not prepared to put in the effort
Prototype
Describes best what the group has in common and what makes it different from an out-group
Person who is least different from other in-group members but most different from out-group members = the prototype
Realistic conflict theory
Sherif
Argued that intergroup conflict is the outcome of a conflict of interests between in-group and an out-group
When groups both desire a goal but cannot attain it, conflict arises
Seen in a series of 3 studies involving 3 phases: forming the groups, creating intergroup competition, reducing conflict
Reference group
A group to which an individual or another group is compared
Group that individuals use as a standard for evaluating themselves and their own behaviour
Referent informational influence
Argues that we conform because we are group members and not to avoid social disapproval
Ringelmann effect
The tendency for individual productivity to decrease as group size increases
Self-categorisation process
Members seek out the group norm to minimise differences between members (in-group) and maximise differences with other groups (out-group)
Social comparison
People need to evaluate their own opinions and behaviours by comparing themselves with other group members
People seek a positive image of themselves and need to get approval and avoid social disapproval
Social identity
portion of an individual’s self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group
Social impact theory
Social impact is the result of social forces including the strength of the source of impact, the immediacy of the event, and the number of sources exerting the impact.
Superordinate goals
Goals that no one group could attain by themselves
Method for reducing conflict
