David Myers
Chapter Eight
Group Influence
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What Is a Group?
Two or more people who, for longer than a few
moments, interact with and influence one another
and perceive one another as “us” (M. Shaw, ‘81)
For
Affiliation
To achieve
Social identity
What are some groups you belong to?
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Topics:
Collective influence
(can occur in minimal group situations):
Social facilitation
Social loafing
Deindividuation
Influence occurring with interacting groups:
Polarization
Groupthink
Minority influence
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Social Facilitation: How Are We
Affected by the Presence of Others?
Crowding: The Presence of Many Others
Effect of others’ presence increases with their number
Being in a crowd intensifies positive or negative
reactions
Enhances arousal
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Social Facilitation: How Are We
Affected by the Presence of Others?
(biking with others – N. Triplett, ‘90)
Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others?
Evaluation apprehension
Concern for how others are evaluating us
Driven by distraction
When we wonder how co-actors are doing or how an audience
is reacting, we become distracted
Mere presence
Can be arousing even when we are not evaluated or distracted
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Social facilitation (& hindrance)
evaluation apprehension causes arousal
R. Zajonc
Dominant response theory:
Group presence
Boosts performance on easy tasks
Hurts performance on difficult tasks
If the dominant response is correct and well learned
Performance increases
If the dominant response is incorrect (not well-learned)
Performance decreases
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Crowding
Evaluation apprehension
Dominant response theory is enhanced
With increased apprehension
Distraction
More difficult to pay attention to the task
Mere presence
Arousal occurs just with the mere presence of others
-Zajonc (with all sorts of species)
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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
Many Hands Make Light Work
Effort decreases as group size increases
Free riders
People who benefit from the group but give little in return
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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
Social Loafing
Tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool
their efforts toward a common goal than when they are
individually accountable
Give some personal examples of where this has happened to
you.
Have you ever been a ‘social loafer’?
Does it happen with “tug o’ war”? (Ringlemann)
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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
Social Loafing in Everyday Life
People in groups loaf less when the task is
Challenging
Appealing
Rewards are significant
Involving
Team spirit
When held accountable / effort is visible
Interdependent tasks with specific roles
When the reward (output) is for self/small group
Is this why communism usually doesn’t work?
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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Deindividuation
Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension;
occurs in group situations that foster responsiveness to
group norms, good or bad
Looting in
Iraq, London, Ferguson
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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone
Group size
Larger the group the more its members lose self-awareness
and become willing to commit atrocities
Lnychings, encouraging suicidial persons to jump to their
death
People’s attention is focused on the situation, not on
themselves
“Everyone’s doing it” attitude
They contribute their behavior to the situation rather than to
their own choices
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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Doing Together What
We Would Not Do Alone
Anonymity
Being anonymous makes
one less self-conscious,
more group-conscious, and
more responsive to cues
present in the situation,
whether negative or
positive
Dressed to cover their
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identity delivered more
electric shocks Zimbardo
(‘79; ‘02)
13
Deindividuation: When Do People Lose
Their Sense of Self in Groups?
“flaming” Always bad behavior?
Download to MP3 Klan hoods v. nurse
Smoked car windows uniforms
Incivility when driving Why not?
Single or multiple checks Response to situational
for restaurant bill? cues
Anti-social v.
Halloween
Pro-social
Masked vs unmasked
Which take more candy?
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Deindividuation: When Do People Lose
Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone
Arousing and distracting activities
When we act in an impulsive way as a group, we are not thinking
about our values; we are reacting to the immediate situation
i.e. “situational cues” overwhelm “held values”
Impulsive group action absorbs our attention
Starting, encouraging chants in demonstrations
Purposely done by protest organizers
to induce disinhibited behaviors
- makes us think others feel as we do (social comparison theory
- and induces false consensus beliefs
- and compliance with social (group) norms
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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Self-Awareness
Opposite of deindividuation
Tend to increase people’s responsiveness to the
immediate situation, be it negative or positive
Take a mirror with you everywhere you go
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
Group Polarization
Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting
tendencies; a strengthening of the members’ average
tendency, not a split within the group
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our
Opinions?
-first comes:
“Risky Shift” Phenomenon (J. Stoner, ’61)
What would you advise Helen to do?
Cheap westerns or a significant novel?
What would you advise Roger to do?
Sell or not sell his life insurance policy?
Occurs not only when a group decides by consensus;
after a brief discussion, individuals, too, will alter their
decisions
Juries
Business committees
Military organizations
Teen drivers
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
Do Groups Intensify Opinions?
Group polarization experiments
Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969)
After French students discussion how did initial attitudes
change toward Americans and the French President?
Mititoshi Isozaki (1984)
Japanese judgements of “guilty” for traffic violations
Were award damages from group larger or smaller that for
individual awards?
Markus Brauer, et al. (2001)
After discussion did French students dislike certain other
people more or less? Why?
What effect does discussion ofmoral issues have on
individuals in the group?
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
Do Groups Intensify Opinions?
Group polarization in everyday life (echo chamber)
Schools
Accentuation effect
How does this apply to gender orientation?
Communities
Self-segregation
Internet
U.S. Congress
Gerrymandering phenomenon?
Terrorists organizations
What’s the solution to prevent radicalization of these
individuals?
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Group Polarization: Do Groups
Intensify Our Opinions?
Explaining Polarization
Informational influence
Arguments
Favor given to the initial ones
Active participation
“Don’t you agree….?”
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
Explaining Polarization
Normative influence (social influence)
Social comparison
Evaluating one’s opinions and abilities by comparing oneself
with others
Pluralistic ignorance
A false impression of what most other people are thinking or
feeling, or how they are responding
When we find out what others think, we want to be unique
and stand out more by taking a stronger position (“I’m not like
everyone else!”)
Explain the “bandwagon effect” for why songs become
popular (Salganik, ‘06)
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions?
(Irving Janis, 71)
Mode of thinking that persons engage in when
concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a
cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic
appraisal of alternative courses of action
Caused by
Cohesive group
Isolation of the group from dissenting viewpoints
Directive leader
Perl Harbor
Bay of Pigs
Vietnam war
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Symptoms of Groupthink
Following lead group members to overestimate their
group’s might and right
Illusion of invulnerability
Admiral Kimmel’s laugh (Diamond Head)
Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality
Kennedy vs. William Fulbright Arthur Schlesinger
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Symptoms of Groupthink
Following leads group members to become closed-
minded
Rationalization
“Tuesday Lunch group” (explain and justify focus)
Stereotyped view of opponent
Castro’s military? ….much too weak!
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Symptoms of Groupthink
Following leads group to feel pressure toward uniformity
Conformity pressure
Here comes Bill Moyers, “Mr. stop the bombing”
Self-censorship
What should Arthur have done?
Illusion of unanimity
Adolf’s team / Vietnam / Bay of Pigs / Pearl Harbor / Iraq
Mindguards
Bobby Kennedy / Dean Rusk
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Critiquing Groupthink
Directive leadership is associated with poorer decisions
Groups do prefer supporting over challenging
information
Groups make smart decisions by widely distributed
conversation with members who take turns speaking
Group acceptance, approval, and social identity,
suppress disagreeable thoughts among members
Diverse groups produce more creativity
Groups may not always benefit from all that members
know
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Preventing Groupthink
Be impartial
Encourage critical evaluation
Occasionally subdivide the group, then reunite to air
differences
Welcome critiques from outside experts and associates
Call a second-chance meeting
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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Group Problem Solving
Combine group and solitary brainstorming
Have group members interact by writing
Incorporate electronic brainstorming
How to evaluate the correctness of the decision?
Not on the outcome/ results
But on the decision process itself (I. Janis)
Anyone can be a Monday morning quarter back
Remember counter-factual thinking?
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The Influence of the Minority:
How Do Individuals Influence the Group?
Consistency
Minority slowness effect
Self-Confidence
Portrayed by consistency and persistence
Defections from the Majority
Minority person who defects from the majority is more
persuasive than a consistent minority voice
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The Influence of the Minority:
How Do Individuals Influence the Group?
Is Leadership Minority Influence?
Leadership
Process by which certain group members motivate and guide
the group
Formal and informal group leaders exert disproportionate
influence
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The Influence of the Minority: How
Do Individuals Influence the Group?
Is Leadership Minority Influence?
Task leadership
Organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals
Social leadership
Builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support
Transformational leadership
Enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration, exerts significant
influence
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