Group Influence

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Group Influence

• Chapter 8

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Outline of Todays Lecture

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

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What is a Group?

• Examples
• 5 people waiting at the same corner for a bus
• People attending a worship service
• N Sync fan club
• The students in a seminar class
• A man, his brother and his sister

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Social Facilitation

• People perform simple, well-learned tasks better
  in the presence of others
• But, for more difficult tasks, the presence of
  others can inhibit performance

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Crowding The Presence of Many Others

• In the presence of others, we perspire more,
  breathe faster, tense our muscles more and have
  higher blood pressure than when we are alone.

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Crowding The Presence of Many Others

• Why are we Aroused in the Presence of Others?
• Evaluation Apprehension
• Distraction
• Mere Presence

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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 in Everyday Life

• People do not engage in social loafing when the
  task is challenging, appealing or involving, or
  when their group members are friends

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Deindividuation

• Loss of self-awareness and evaluation
  apprehension occurs in group situations that
  foster anonymity and draw attention away from the
  individual

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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Group Size
• Bigger crowds lead to more anonymity

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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Physical Anonymity
• Study Women who wore white coats and hoods
  delivered more electric shock to victims than
  women who were visible and wore big name tags

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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Physical Anonymity
• Halloween Candy Study Children were observed on
  Halloween night. They were told to take one
  candy and the experimenter left the room.

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Halloween Candy Study
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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Does physical anonymity always lead to
  deindivuation?
• Nurses uniform study

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Factors that Affect Deindividuation

• Diminished Self-Awareness
• Unself-conscious, deindividuated people are less
  restrained, less self-regulated, more likely to
  act without thinking about their own values and
  more responsive to the situation than
  self-conscious people

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Group Polarization

• The case of the Risky Shift
• Discussion typically strengthens the average
  inclination of group members

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Group Polarization

• Group Polarization in Schools
• Over time, initial differences among groups of
  college students become accentuated
• E.g., Students at college X are initially more
  intellectual than students at college Y . By the
  end of university, the gap between the 2 schools
  is even greater.

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Group Polarization

• Group Polarization in Communities
• Gangs may start and become more violent because
  of more like-minded teenagers joining the group

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Group Polarization

• Informational Influence
• Group discussion leads to a pooling of ideas,
  most of which favour the dominant viewpoint

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Group Polarization

• 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

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Groupthink

• The tendency of decision-making groups to
  suppress dissent in the interests of group
  harmony
• Video

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Minority Influence

• Video 12 Angry Men

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Small Groups Exercise

• Discuss the film clip you just watched. How did
  minority influence work? Why do you think the
  main character was able to persuade the other 11
  jurors?