Psychology · Ch 7 — Social Influence and Group Processes
Summary
Summary
- Group defined as a collection of two or more people interacting interdependently, with a shared identity and common goals. Key features: interaction, interdependence, shared norms, and a sense of belonging.
- Why join groups? Security, status, self-esteem, power, goal achievement, and affiliation — the need to belong is a fundamental human motive.
- Social facilitation: presence of others enhances performance on simple/well-learned tasks but impairs performance on complex/novel tasks (Zajonc’s drive theory: arousal → dominant response).
- Social loafing: individuals exert less effort in a group than alone, especially when individual output is not identifiable. Reduced by making contributions identifiable, increasing task importance, and fostering group cohesion.
- Group polarisation: group discussion strengthens the initial tendency of members — a cautious group becomes more cautious, a risky group more risk-taking. Occurs via persuasive arguments and social comparison.
- Groupthink: a mode of thinking where the desire for harmony overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives. Symptoms include illusion of invulnerability, collective rationalisation, self-censorship, and pressure on dissenters. Prevented by encouraging critical evaluation, impartial leadership, and seeking outside opinions.
- Conformity: changing one’s behaviour to match group norms. Asch’s line-judgement studies showed conformity increases with group size (up to 4–5), unanimity, and task difficulty. Informational influence (others know better) and normative influence (desire to be liked) are the two main reasons.
- Compliance: agreeing to a request. Key tactics: foot-in-the-door (small request first), door-in-the-face (large request then smaller), low-ball (agree then cost raised), and that’s-not-all (offer sweetened before response).
- Obedience: following orders from an authority figure. Milgram’s shock experiments showed 65% delivered maximum shock. Obedience increased with proximity of authority, legitimacy of institution, and distance from victim. Disobedience rose when others rebelled.
- Cooperation vs. competition: cooperation is working together for mutual benefit; competition is striving for a scarce reward. Influenced by reward structure (cooperative vs. competitive), communication, and individual orientation (pro-self vs. pro-social). …