week 5 Flashcards
Social influence
The process whereby people directly or indirectly affect each other’s thoughts, feelings and actions
incidental influence
- Social facilitation
- Social norms
deliberate influence
- Inducing compliance
- Influence of majorities
- Influence of minorities
- Obedience to authority
Social Facilitation
The effect of others on our behaviour
cyclists were faster in a group then individually
Social inhibition
decreased performance with audience in novel tasks
Zajonc (1965): Drive Theory
-The mere presence of others influences our behavior
-Increases arousal (extra energy)
-Facilitates dominant responses, inhibits non-dominant responses:
Improved performance on simple/routine/well-learnt tasks
Decreased performance on complex/novel tasks
Social Norms
Shared belief systems about how we should (and should not) think, feel and act
Autokinetic effect
an optical illusion
An example of norm development Muzafer Sherif
we use others as frame of reference particularly when in uncertain and unstable situations
norm development experiment Sherif
-Judge how many inches the dots move (about 100 judgements)
-3 times (conditions):
Alone
Then in groups of two or three
Alone again
First there were huge differences, then with group work the results were closer together and when alone they were almost identical
why? Uncertainty, ambiguity of task, look at others to interpret
Social Norms (2)
descriptive norm
injunctive norm
descriptive norms
how others (will) act in similar situations/ what is typical
injunctive norms
what behaviour should be performed/what is desired
Broken Windows Theory:
Signs of disorderly and petty criminal behaviour trigger more disorderly and petty criminal behaviour
The spreading of disorder: Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg
study 1
No conflict condition: No- graffiti sign (injunctive norm) and no graffiti on the walls (descriptive norm)
Conflict Condition: No- graffiti sign and graffiti on the walls
Dependent Variable: How many people will throw the fake flyer on the ground (no litter bins around) in each condition?
Cialdini effect
50% more was littered with the graffiti
cialdini effect
descriptive norm inhibits the injunctive norm
The spreading of disorder: Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg
study 5&6
Studies 5 & 6: stealing
Envelope, visibly containing a €5 note, hanging out of a mailbox
No conflict condition: mailbox - not covered with graffiti and ground around the mailbox - clean.
Conflict conditions:
Mailbox covered with graffiti without litter on the ground
No graffiti on the mailbox, but space around it - littered
with graffiti and litter more people who steal the envelope
inducing compliance
the target of influence goes along with the request from influence source
Giving in to a request
inducing compliance techniques
Door-in-the-face
Foot-in-the-door
Lowballing
Door-in-the-face (or mutual concessions) technique
Requester begins with an extreme request that is almost always refused
Then retreats to a more moderate request which is what s/he had in mind all along
Target of influence: likely to make a concession too
door in the face: blood donors
Condition 1: Request for blood donations for a year, followed by one-off blood donation request
Condition 2: Request for one-off blood donation
with condition 1 there were 20% more people who were willing to do a one-off blood donation request
Foot-in-the-door technique
The reverse of the door-in-the-face:
First request is small – almost
certain not to be refuted
can i lend 50 cents?
Second request is bigger – can’t be refuted
I’m actually 2 Euro short…
why does foot in the door work?
- Need to be consistent with our previous behaviour
- Self-perception theory (Bem, 1972): we infer who we are by what we do
Lowballing
Target of influence complies to the initial request
This request is followed by a more costly and less beneficial version of the same request
e.g. price for a car agreed, then salesman goes back on the deal with a good reason for which the car is no longer available at the initial prize
