Group Influence

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Chapter 8

• Group Influence

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Example The Introduction of New Coke in the 1980s

• Coca-Cola had been the dominant soft-drink for
  decades
• 60 market share in 1940sbut down to 24 in 1983
• Pepsi Challenge
• Coca-Cola changed the formula in 1985
• Original introduced in 1885
• Unchanged since 1903
• Lost billions!!
• How could this have happened?

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Outline

• What is a Group?
• Social Facilitation
• Social Loafing
• Deindividuation
• Group Polarization
• Groupthink

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What is a Group?

• Group Two or more people who, for longer than a
  few moments, interact with and influence one
  another and perceive one another as us
• Examples
• Students in this class
• Members of the Britney Spears fan club
• Faculty members in psychology
• Members of my family
• Just because people are near each other does not
  necessarily mean they constitute a group (ex.
  students in a computer lab working individually)

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Collective Influence

• Three examples of collective influence that can
  occur with minimal interaction
• Social facilitation
• Social loafing
• Deindividuation
• Two examples of social influence in interacting
  groups
• Group polarization
• Groupthink

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The Mere Presence of Others

• Triplett (1898) noticed that cyclists times were
  faster when racing together than when racing
  alone against the clock
• He conducted one of social psychologys first lab
  experiments to test his hypothesis
• He found that kids wind string on a fishing reel
  faster when they worked with other kids than when
  they worked alone
• The mere presence of other kids increased their
  performance

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The Mere Presence of Others

• Social Facilitation the tendency of people (and
  animals) to perform simple or well-learned tasks
  better when others are present
• Why limit it to simple or well-learned tasks?

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The Mere Presence of Others

• In contrast to the work on social facilitation,
  other studies found that the presence of others
  sometimes HINDERS performance
• Learning nonsense syllables, completing a maze,
  performing complex multiplication problems

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The Mere Presence of Others

• From 1940 to 1965 we were stuck with the fact
  that sometimes the presence of others improves
  our performance and sometimes it does not
• Zajonc (1965) solved the problem by pointing out
  that arousal enhances whatever response tendency
  is dominant
• Increased arousal (from the presence of others)
  enhances performance on easy tasks for which the
  most likely (DOMINANT) response is the correct
  one
• On complex tasks, for which the correct answer is
  not dominant, increased arousal promotes
  incorrect responding

Enhances easy behavior
Strengthens dominant responses
Others presence
Arousal
Impairs hard behavior
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Results of Michaels et al. (1982) Pool Hall Study

• Below average and above average pool players
  were observed by 4 individuals while playing pool

Percentage of Shots Made
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Crowding The Presence of Many Others

• We are aroused by the presence of others
• We perspire more, breathe faster, tense our
  muscles more, and have higher blood pressure than
  when we are alone
• Even a supportive audience may elicit poor
  performance on a challenging task
• The effect of other people increases with their
  number
• Large audiences may even interfere with
  well-learned, automatic behaviors such as
  speaking
• choking
• People tend to stutter more when speaking to
  large audiences
• College basketball players miss more free throws
  with larger audiences

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Being in a Crowd

• We tend to be more aroused in tightly packed
  groups
• Intensifies positive or negative reactions
• When sitting close together, friendly people are
  liked even more and unfriendly people are liked
  even less (Schiffenbauer Schiavo, 1976 Storms
  Thomas, 1977)
• Increases conformity
• Theater directors want a full house for their
  productions because there is more clapping

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Evaluation Apprehension

• Evaluation Apprehension Concern for how others
  are evaluating us
• Well-practiced responses do not improve in the
  presence of blind-folded individuals (Cottrell et
  al., 1968)
• People jog faster when they approach a woman who
  is facing the track than when she is facing away
  (Worringham Messick, 1983)

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Social Loafing

• In a team tug-of-war, will four people exert as
  much force as the sum of their best efforts?
• Social Loafing The tendency for people to exert
  less effort when they pool their efforts toward a
  common goal than when they are individually
  accountable

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Social Loafing

• Participants pulled 18 harder when they knew
  they were pulling alone than when they believed
  they were pulling with others (Ingham, 1974)
• The people who were loafing did not perceive
  themselves as loafing!!

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Social Loafing

• Effort decreases as group size increases
• The reason is decreased evaluation apprehension
• When people are not accountable and cannot
  evaluate their own efforts, responsibility is
  diffused across all group members

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How Can We Decrease Social Loafing?

• Make individuals accountable for their own
  performance
• Videotape individual football players during
  games
• Make the task challenging, appealing, or
  involving
• We loaf less when we see others as unreliable or
  unable to contribute much
• We loaf less when other members are our friends

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Deindividuation

• Deindividuation Loss of self-awareness and
  evaluation apprehension that occurs in group
  situations that foster anonymity and draw
  attention away from the individual
• Examples
• Yelling obscenities at a referee
• Group vandalism
• Looting / Riots / Lynchings
• Police brutality

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Deindividuation

• June 11th, 2000
• Dozens of young men roamed New York's Central
  Park sexually assaulting, terrorizing, and
  robbing more than two dozen women after the
  annual Puerto Rican Day parade along Fifth Avenue
• Victims were mostly ignored by police

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Deindividuation

• In 1967, about 200 University of Oklahoma
  students gathered to watch a disturbed fellow
  student threatening to jump from a tower
• They began to chant JumpJumpJump Jump
• The student jumped to his death
• Would any of those 200 students have tried to
  coax him into jumping if they had been by
  themselves?

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Deindividuation

• Why do we do together what we would not do
  separately?
• Social facilitation shows that groups AROUSE
  people
• Social loafing shows that groups can DIFFUSE
  RESPONSIBILITY
• AROUSAL DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY
  NEGATIVE BEHAVIOR (SOMETIMES)

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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Group Size
• Bigger crowds lead to more anonymity
• Mann (1981) examined 21 instances with a
  potential jumper
• Large crowds were more likely to bait the person
  at night
• Individuals are more destructive in large mobs of
  fans than in smaller groups (e.g., riots in
  Chicago in 1992 and 1993 following NBA
  championships)

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Group Size

• Zimbardo (1970) thought that the immensity of
  large cities might be enough to cause
  deindividuation which may lead to vandalism norms
• He bought two 10-year-old cars and left them with
  the hoods up and license plates removed on
  streets near (1) the Bronx campus of NYU and (2)
  the Stanford campus in Palo Alto
• New York first strippers were there within 10
  minutes after 3 days (and 23 incidents of theft
  and vandalism) the car was a complete wreck
• Palo Alto the only person to touch the car in
  over a week was a passerby who lowered the hood
  when it began to rain

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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Physical Anonymity
• Women who wore white coats and hoods delivered
  longer electric shock to victims than women who
  were visible and wore big name tags
• This may be one of the reasons for high rates of
  music pirating
• People are much less inhibited in chatrooms
• People in convertibles wait longer to honk, do it
  less often, and do it for less time when the top
  is down
• Ku Klux Klan

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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Physical Anonymity
• Halloween Candy Study Observed 1,352 kids on
  Halloween at 27 homes in Seattle
• Experimenter invited them to take one of the
  candies and then left the room

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Halloween Candy Study
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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Does physical anonymity always lead to negative
  behavior?
• Nurses uniform study Women became LESS
  aggressive when they were anonymous
• Being anonymous makes one less self-conscious,
  more group-conscious, and more responsive to
  environmental cues whether negative (KKK) or
  positive (nurse uniform)

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Group Polarization

• Are groups less cautious than individuals?
• When making decisions, groups often give riskier
  advice than single individuals
• This was originally thought of as the Risky
  Shift
• Discussion typically strengthens the average
  inclination of group members
• WHETHER IT IS RISKY OR NOT!!!!

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Group Polarization

• Group Polarization Group-produced enhancement of
  members preexisting tendencies a strengthening
  of the members AVERAGE tendency, not a split
  within the group
• Example Political conventions tend to strengthen
  the initial inclinations of those who attend

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How Does Group Polarization Work?

• Informational Influence
• Group discussion leads to a pooling of ideas,
  most of which favor the dominant viewpoint
• Active participation increases attitude change
  (just repeating someone elses ideas may lead you
  to adopt their stronger position)

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How Does Group Polarization Work?

• Normative Influence
• People want others to like them and may express
  stronger opinions after discovering others share
  their views
• Pluralistic ignorance A false impression of how
  other people are thinking, feeling, or responding
• Ex. When I ask is this clear?why dont
  students ask questions? People assume they are
  the only person who doesnt understand because no
  one else raises their hand

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Groupthink

• Groupthink The tendency of decision-making
  groups to suppress dissent in the interest of
  group harmony
• Examples
• Iraq War
• New Coke
• Challenger Explosion

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Groupthink

• What leads to groupthink?
• A friendly, cohesive group
• Relative isolation of the group from dissenting
  viewpoints
• A directive leader who signals what decision he
  or she favors

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Symptoms of Groupthink

• Overestimate their groups might and right
• An illusion of invulnerability
• Unquestioned belief in the groups morality
• Become close-minded
• Rationalization
• Stereotyped view of opponent
• Suffer from pressures toward uniformity
• Conformity pressure
• Self-censorship
• Illusion of unanimity
• Mindguards