Social Thinking and Social Influence. Module 35. 35-1: . WHAT DO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGISTS STUDY? HOW DO WE TEND TO EXPLAIN OTHERS’ BEHAVIOR AND OUR OWN?. Social psychologists . Use scientific methods to study how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. ID: 686024
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Slide1
Josef F. Steufer/Getty Images
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Module 35
Slide2
35-1: WHAT DO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGISTS STUDY? HOW DO WE TEND TO EXPLAIN OTHERS’ BEHAVIOR AND OUR OWN?Social psychologists
Use scientific methods to study how people think about, influence, and relate to one anotherStudy the social influences that explain why the same person will act differently in different situations
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
Slide3
When explaining others’ behavior, especially from an individualist Western cultural perspective
Fundamental attribution error committed by
underestimating the influence of the situation
and overestimating
the effects of stable, enduring
traitsBehavior more readily attributed to the influence of the situationExplaining and attributing actions can have important real-life social and economic effects
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social
Thinking
Slide4
Attribution theory, Fritz Heider (1958): The theory that we explain someone else’s behavior by crediting either the situation (a situational
attribution) or the person’s disposition (a dispositional attribution
).
The
fundamental attribution error
is the tendency, when analyzing others’ behavior, to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the effects of the situation.Fundamental attribution error demonstrated in a study (Napolitan & Goethals,1979):
Students attributed behavior of others to personal traits, even when they were
told that behavior was part of an experimental situation.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Slide5
What Factors Affect Our Attributions?Cultural factors: Individuals from individualist
cultures (Westerners) more often attribute behavior to personal traits.Individuals from
collectivist
cultures (East Asian, for
example)
more often attribute behavior to situational factors.When we explain our own behavior, we are sensitive to how behavior changes the situation.We are also sensitive to the power of the situation when we explain the behavior of people we have seen in different situations.
Is most likely to occur when judging others’ behaviors, not our own, and especially when a stranger acts badly.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Slide6
What Are the Consequences of Our Attributions?
Explaining and attributing actions can have important real-life social and economic effects.A person’s friendliness may be attributed to romantic interest or politeness.
Unemployment and
poverty
may
be attributed to personal dispositions.The point to remember: Our attributions—to a person’s disposition or to the situation—have real consequences.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social ThinkingThe Fundamental Attribution Error
Slide7
35-2: HOW DO ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS INTERACT?
Attitudes are feelings influenced by beliefs, that predispose reactions to objects, people, and events.Attitudes Affect Actions
Peripheral route persuasion
occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues; produce fast but relatively thoughtless changes in attitudes.
Central route persuasion
occurs when people are offered evidence and arguments to trigger thoughtful responses.Attitudes are especially likely to affect behavior when external influences are minimal, and when the attitude is stable, specific to the behavior, and easily recalled.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
Attitudes and Actions
Slide8
Actions Affect AttitudesNot only will people stand up for what they believe, they also will more strongly believe in what they have stood up for.
Foot-in-the-door phenomenonPeople agreeing to a small request will find it easier to agree later to a larger one
Principle works for negative and positive behavior
Many
streams of evidence confirm that
attitudes follow behavior. Cooperative actions, such as those performed by people on sports teams, feed mutual liking. Such attitudes, in turn, promote positive behavior.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social ThinkingAttitudes and Actions
Slide9
Role Playing Affects AttitudesA
role is a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave
.
At first, your behaviors in a new role may feel phony, as though you are acting, but eventually these new ways of acting become a part of you.
Philip Zimbardo’s 1972 Stanford Prison simulation study: controversial, but showed the power of the situation and of role playing.
Other studies have shown that role playing can even train torturers (
Staub
, 1989). Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
Attitudes and Actions
Slide10
Cognitive Dissonance: Relief From TensionCognitive dissonance theory:
We act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent.When we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.
Brain regions the become active when we experience conflict and negative arousal also become active when people experience cognitive dissonance.
Through cognitive dissonance we often bring attitudes into line with our actions (
Festinger
, 1957).This can be used positively: Act as though you like someone and you soon may.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social ThinkingAttitudes and Actions
Slide11
35-3: HOW DOES CULTURE AFFECT OUR BEHAVIOR?
Culture: The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of peopleTransmitted from one generation to the next
Transmits customs and
beliefs
that
enable us to communicate with each otherTransmits agreed-upon rules to avoid confrontationVariation Across CulturesNorm: Understood rules for accepted and expected behavior
Each cultural group
evolves its own norms; when cultures collide, their differing norms can confuse or even anger
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Cultural Influences
Slide12
Variation Over TimeLike biological creatures,Cultures
vary and compete for resourcesCultures evolve over time, and may change rapidly;
cultural evolution is far faster than biological evolution
Cultural
changes can
be negative or positiveCultures shape our lives
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social InfluenceCultural Influences
Slide13
35-4: WHAT IS AUTOMATIC MIMICRY, AND HOW DO CONFORMITY EXPERIMENTS REVEAL THE POWER OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE?
Automatic Mimicry
Behavior
is contagious; what we see we often do.
Chartrand
and colleagues (1999) demonstrated the chameleon effect with college students.Automatic mimicry helps people to empathize
and feel what
others feel (mood linkage). The more we mimic, the greater our empathy, and the more people tend to like us.
Suggestibility
and mimicry are subtle forms of
conformity.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Conformity: Complying With
Social
Pressures
Slide14
CONFORMING TO NONCONFORMITY
Are these students asserting their individuality or identifying themselves with others of the same
microculture
?
Automatic Mimicry
Slide15
Conformity and Social NormsConformity
: Adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standardSolomon
Asch’s
(
1955) experiments on conformity showed that
people fear being “oddballs,” and will often conform with other group members, even though they do not agree with the group’s decisionLater investigations have not always found as much conformity as Asch found, but it is nevertheless a significant phenomenon
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Conformity: Complying With Social Pressures
Slide16
Which of the three comparison lines on the left is equal to the standard line? The photo on the right (from one of the experiments) was taken after five people, who were actually working for Asch, had answered, “Line 3.” The student in the center shows
the severe discomfort that comes from disagreeing with the responses of other group members.
ASCH’S CONFORMITY EXPERIMENTS
Slide17
They
are
made to
feel
incompetent or insecure
Their group has at least three people
Everyone else agrees
They admire the group’s status and attractiveness
They have not already committed to another response
They know they are being observed
Their culture encourages respect for social standards
Solomon Asch and others have found that people are most likely to adjust their behavior or thinking to coincide with a group
standard when
:
Social
Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Conformity
:
Complying With Social
Pressures
Slide18
Normative social influence
: Influence
resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval
Conforming to avoid rejection or to gain social approval
Informational social influence
: Influence resulting
from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions as new information
Conforming
because we
want to
be accurate
Conformity
rates
are
generally lower in
individualist
cultures than in collectivist
cultures
,
which put a higher value on honoring group standards
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Conformity: Complying With Social Pressures
Slide19
35-5: WHAT DID MILGRAM’S OBEDIENCE EXPERIMENTS TEACH US ABOUT THE POWER OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE?
Stanley Milgram’s experiments (1963, 1974) were intended to see how people would respond to outright commands.
Research participants became “teachers” to supposedly random “learners” and believed they were subjecting them to escalating levels of electric shocks.
More than 60 percent complied fully; other studies have shown even higher obedience rates.
People
in these studies obeyed orders even when they thought they were harming another person.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social InfluenceObedience: Following Orders
Slide20
In a repeat of the earlier experiment, 65 percent of the
adult male “teachers” fully obeyed the experimenter’s commands to continue. They
did so
despite the “learner’s” earlier
mention of
a heart condition and despite hearing cries of protest after they administered what they thought were 150 volts and agonized protests after 330 volts. (Data from Milgram, 1974.)
MILGRAM’S FOLLOW-UP OBEDIENCE EXPERIMENT
Slide21
Obedience in the Milgram experiments was
highest when: Person giving orders was nearby and was perceived
to
be
a
legitimate authority figureResearch was supported by a prestigious institutionVictim was depersonalized or at a distance There were no role models for defianceSocial Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Obedience: Following Orders
Slide22
Lessons From the Obedience StudiesStrong social influences can make people conform to falsehoods or capitulate to cruelty
Ordinary people are corrupted by evil situationsPeople
get to real-life violence in
tiny increments (the foot-in-the-door phenomenon): In any society,
great
evils often grow out of people’s compliance with lesser evilsMilgram (1974): “ Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process”
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Obedience: Following Orders
Slide23
35-6: HOW IS OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECTED BY THE PRESENCE OF OTHERS?Social Facilitation
In social facilitation (Triplett, 1898), the presence of others arouses people, improving performance on easy or well-learned tasks but decreasing it on difficult ones.
Our arousal heightens our reactions, strengthening our most
likely
response—the correct one on an easy task but an incorrect one on a difficult task.
Home advantage for team sports; doing something we do well in front of a friendly audienceCrowding effect; performers know that a “good house” is a full one
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social InfluenceGroup Behavior
Slide24
Home team advantageWhen others observe us, we perform well-learned tasks
more quickly and accurately.But on new and
difficult tasks
,
performance is less quick and accurate.
Social Thinking and Social InfluenceSocial InfluenceGroup Behavior
Slide25
Social Loafing Tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountableThree
causes of social loafing:Acting as part of group and feeling less accountable
Feeling individual
contribution doesn’t
matter
and is dispensableSlacking off, or free riding on others’ efforts, which is especially common when there is lack of identification with the group
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Behavior
Slide26
DeindividuationThe loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal
and anonymity.Thrives in many different settings.
When we shed self-awareness and self-restraint—whether in a mob, at a rock concert, at a ballgame, or at worship—we become more responsive to the group experience, whether bad or good.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Behavior
Slide27
Deindividuation: During England’s 2011 riots and looting, rioters were disinhibited by social arousal
and by the anonymity provided by darkness and their hoods and masks. Later, some of those arrested expressed bewilderment over their own behavior.
DEINDIVIDUATION
Slide28
35-7: WHAT ARE GROUP POLARIZATION
AND GROUPTHINK,
AND HOW MUCH POWER DO WE HAVE AS INDIVIDUALS?
Group polarization
: The enhancement
of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.Online communication magnifies this effect, for better (motivating positive social change in protest groups) and for worse (cementing prejudiced opinions in hate groups).
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Polarization
Slide29
If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing opinions.
Talking over racial issues increased prejudice in a high-prejudice group of high school students and decreased it in a low-prejudice
group (
Data
from Myers
& Bishop, 1970).GROUP POLARIZATION
Slide30
By connecting and magnifying the inclinations of likeminded people, the Internet can be very, very bad, but also very, very good.
Blue liberal blogs link mostly to one another, as do red conservative blogs. (The intervening colors display links across the liberal conservative boundary
.)
Each dot represents a
blog,
and each dot’s size
reflects the
number of other
blogs linking
to that blog. (
From
Lazer
et al., 2009
.)
LIKE MINDS NETWORK IN THE BLOGOSPHERE
Slide31
Groupthink (Janis, 1982): The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire
for harmony within a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of
alternatives
Groupthink is prevented when
leaders
Welcome various opinions, usually in diverse groupsInvite experts’ critiques of developing plansAssign people to identify possible problems
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Polarization
Slide32
The Power of IndividualsPower of the
individual (personal control) and the power of the situation
(
social control)
interact
.A committed individual or a small minority with consistently expressed views may sway the majority.The power of one or two individuals to sway majorities is referred to as minority influence.
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DownloadNote - The PPT/PDF document "Josef F. Steufer /Getty Images" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
Presentations text content in Josef F. Steufer /Getty Images
Josef F. Steufer/Getty Images
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Module 35
Slide235-1: WHAT DO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGISTS STUDY? HOW DO WE TEND TO EXPLAIN OTHERS’ BEHAVIOR AND OUR OWN?Social psychologists
Use scientific methods to study how people think about, influence, and relate to one anotherStudy the social influences that explain why the same person will act differently in different situations
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
Slide3When explaining others’ behavior, especially from an individualist Western cultural perspective
Fundamental attribution error committed by
underestimating the influence of the situation
and overestimating
the effects of stable, enduring
traitsBehavior more readily attributed to the influence of the situationExplaining and attributing actions can have important real-life social and economic effects
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social
Thinking
Slide4Attribution theory, Fritz Heider (1958): The theory that we explain someone else’s behavior by crediting either the situation (a situational
attribution) or the person’s disposition (a dispositional attribution
).
The
fundamental attribution error
is the tendency, when analyzing others’ behavior, to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the effects of the situation.Fundamental attribution error demonstrated in a study (Napolitan & Goethals,1979):
Students attributed behavior of others to personal traits, even when they were
told that behavior was part of an experimental situation.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Slide5What Factors Affect Our Attributions?Cultural factors: Individuals from individualist
cultures (Westerners) more often attribute behavior to personal traits.Individuals from
collectivist
cultures (East Asian, for
example)
more often attribute behavior to situational factors.When we explain our own behavior, we are sensitive to how behavior changes the situation.We are also sensitive to the power of the situation when we explain the behavior of people we have seen in different situations.
Is most likely to occur when judging others’ behaviors, not our own, and especially when a stranger acts badly.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Slide6What Are the Consequences of Our Attributions?
Explaining and attributing actions can have important real-life social and economic effects.A person’s friendliness may be attributed to romantic interest or politeness.
Unemployment and
poverty
may
be attributed to personal dispositions.The point to remember: Our attributions—to a person’s disposition or to the situation—have real consequences.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social ThinkingThe Fundamental Attribution Error
Slide735-2: HOW DO ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS INTERACT?
Attitudes are feelings influenced by beliefs, that predispose reactions to objects, people, and events.Attitudes Affect Actions
Peripheral route persuasion
occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues; produce fast but relatively thoughtless changes in attitudes.
Central route persuasion
occurs when people are offered evidence and arguments to trigger thoughtful responses.Attitudes are especially likely to affect behavior when external influences are minimal, and when the attitude is stable, specific to the behavior, and easily recalled.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
Attitudes and Actions
Slide8Actions Affect AttitudesNot only will people stand up for what they believe, they also will more strongly believe in what they have stood up for.
Foot-in-the-door phenomenonPeople agreeing to a small request will find it easier to agree later to a larger one
Principle works for negative and positive behavior
Many
streams of evidence confirm that
attitudes follow behavior. Cooperative actions, such as those performed by people on sports teams, feed mutual liking. Such attitudes, in turn, promote positive behavior.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social ThinkingAttitudes and Actions
Slide9Role Playing Affects AttitudesA
role is a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave
.
At first, your behaviors in a new role may feel phony, as though you are acting, but eventually these new ways of acting become a part of you.
Philip Zimbardo’s 1972 Stanford Prison simulation study: controversial, but showed the power of the situation and of role playing.
Other studies have shown that role playing can even train torturers (
Staub
, 1989). Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking
Attitudes and Actions
Slide10Cognitive Dissonance: Relief From TensionCognitive dissonance theory:
We act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent.When we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.
Brain regions the become active when we experience conflict and negative arousal also become active when people experience cognitive dissonance.
Through cognitive dissonance we often bring attitudes into line with our actions (
Festinger
, 1957).This can be used positively: Act as though you like someone and you soon may.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social ThinkingAttitudes and Actions
Slide1135-3: HOW DOES CULTURE AFFECT OUR BEHAVIOR?
Culture: The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of peopleTransmitted from one generation to the next
Transmits customs and
beliefs
that
enable us to communicate with each otherTransmits agreed-upon rules to avoid confrontationVariation Across CulturesNorm: Understood rules for accepted and expected behavior
Each cultural group
evolves its own norms; when cultures collide, their differing norms can confuse or even anger
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Cultural Influences
Slide12Variation Over TimeLike biological creatures,Cultures
vary and compete for resourcesCultures evolve over time, and may change rapidly;
cultural evolution is far faster than biological evolution
Cultural
changes can
be negative or positiveCultures shape our lives
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social InfluenceCultural Influences
Slide1335-4: WHAT IS AUTOMATIC MIMICRY, AND HOW DO CONFORMITY EXPERIMENTS REVEAL THE POWER OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE?
Automatic Mimicry
Behavior
is contagious; what we see we often do.
Chartrand
and colleagues (1999) demonstrated the chameleon effect with college students.Automatic mimicry helps people to empathize
and feel what
others feel (mood linkage). The more we mimic, the greater our empathy, and the more people tend to like us.
Suggestibility
and mimicry are subtle forms of
conformity.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Conformity: Complying With
Social
Pressures
Slide14CONFORMING TO NONCONFORMITY
Are these students asserting their individuality or identifying themselves with others of the same
microculture
?
Automatic Mimicry
Slide15Conformity and Social NormsConformity
: Adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standardSolomon
Asch’s
(
1955) experiments on conformity showed that
people fear being “oddballs,” and will often conform with other group members, even though they do not agree with the group’s decisionLater investigations have not always found as much conformity as Asch found, but it is nevertheless a significant phenomenon
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Conformity: Complying With Social Pressures
Slide16Which of the three comparison lines on the left is equal to the standard line? The photo on the right (from one of the experiments) was taken after five people, who were actually working for Asch, had answered, “Line 3.” The student in the center shows
the severe discomfort that comes from disagreeing with the responses of other group members.
ASCH’S CONFORMITY EXPERIMENTS
Slide17They
are
made to
feel
incompetent or insecure
Their group has at least three people
Everyone else agrees
They admire the group’s status and attractiveness
They have not already committed to another response
They know they are being observed
Their culture encourages respect for social standards
Solomon Asch and others have found that people are most likely to adjust their behavior or thinking to coincide with a group
standard when
:
Social
Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Conformity
:
Complying With Social
Pressures
Slide18Normative social influence
: Influence
resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval
Conforming to avoid rejection or to gain social approval
Informational social influence
: Influence resulting
from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions as new information
Conforming
because we
want to
be accurate
Conformity
rates
are
generally lower in
individualist
cultures than in collectivist
cultures
,
which put a higher value on honoring group standards
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Conformity: Complying With Social Pressures
Slide1935-5: WHAT DID MILGRAM’S OBEDIENCE EXPERIMENTS TEACH US ABOUT THE POWER OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE?
Stanley Milgram’s experiments (1963, 1974) were intended to see how people would respond to outright commands.
Research participants became “teachers” to supposedly random “learners” and believed they were subjecting them to escalating levels of electric shocks.
More than 60 percent complied fully; other studies have shown even higher obedience rates.
People
in these studies obeyed orders even when they thought they were harming another person.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social InfluenceObedience: Following Orders
Slide20In a repeat of the earlier experiment, 65 percent of the
adult male “teachers” fully obeyed the experimenter’s commands to continue. They
did so
despite the “learner’s” earlier
mention of
a heart condition and despite hearing cries of protest after they administered what they thought were 150 volts and agonized protests after 330 volts. (Data from Milgram, 1974.)
MILGRAM’S FOLLOW-UP OBEDIENCE EXPERIMENT
Slide21Obedience in the Milgram experiments was
highest when: Person giving orders was nearby and was perceived
to
be
a
legitimate authority figureResearch was supported by a prestigious institutionVictim was depersonalized or at a distance There were no role models for defianceSocial Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Obedience: Following Orders
Slide22Lessons From the Obedience StudiesStrong social influences can make people conform to falsehoods or capitulate to cruelty
Ordinary people are corrupted by evil situationsPeople
get to real-life violence in
tiny increments (the foot-in-the-door phenomenon): In any society,
great
evils often grow out of people’s compliance with lesser evilsMilgram (1974): “ Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process”
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Obedience: Following Orders
Slide2335-6: HOW IS OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECTED BY THE PRESENCE OF OTHERS?Social Facilitation
In social facilitation (Triplett, 1898), the presence of others arouses people, improving performance on easy or well-learned tasks but decreasing it on difficult ones.
Our arousal heightens our reactions, strengthening our most
likely
response—the correct one on an easy task but an incorrect one on a difficult task.
Home advantage for team sports; doing something we do well in front of a friendly audienceCrowding effect; performers know that a “good house” is a full one
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social InfluenceGroup Behavior
Slide24Home team advantageWhen others observe us, we perform well-learned tasks
more quickly and accurately.But on new and
difficult tasks
,
performance is less quick and accurate.
Social Thinking and Social InfluenceSocial InfluenceGroup Behavior
Slide25Social Loafing Tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountableThree
causes of social loafing:Acting as part of group and feeling less accountable
Feeling individual
contribution doesn’t
matter
and is dispensableSlacking off, or free riding on others’ efforts, which is especially common when there is lack of identification with the group
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Behavior
Slide26DeindividuationThe loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal
and anonymity.Thrives in many different settings.
When we shed self-awareness and self-restraint—whether in a mob, at a rock concert, at a ballgame, or at worship—we become more responsive to the group experience, whether bad or good.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Behavior
Slide27Deindividuation: During England’s 2011 riots and looting, rioters were disinhibited by social arousal
and by the anonymity provided by darkness and their hoods and masks. Later, some of those arrested expressed bewilderment over their own behavior.
DEINDIVIDUATION
Slide2835-7: WHAT ARE GROUP POLARIZATION
AND GROUPTHINK,
AND HOW MUCH POWER DO WE HAVE AS INDIVIDUALS?
Group polarization
: The enhancement
of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.Online communication magnifies this effect, for better (motivating positive social change in protest groups) and for worse (cementing prejudiced opinions in hate groups).
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Polarization
Slide29If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing opinions.
Talking over racial issues increased prejudice in a high-prejudice group of high school students and decreased it in a low-prejudice
group (
Data
from Myers
& Bishop, 1970).GROUP POLARIZATION
Slide30By connecting and magnifying the inclinations of likeminded people, the Internet can be very, very bad, but also very, very good.
Blue liberal blogs link mostly to one another, as do red conservative blogs. (The intervening colors display links across the liberal conservative boundary
.)
Each dot represents a
blog,
and each dot’s size
reflects the
number of other
blogs linking
to that blog. (
From
Lazer
et al., 2009
.)
LIKE MINDS NETWORK IN THE BLOGOSPHERE
Slide31Groupthink (Janis, 1982): The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire
for harmony within a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of
alternatives
Groupthink is prevented when
leaders
Welcome various opinions, usually in diverse groupsInvite experts’ critiques of developing plansAssign people to identify possible problems
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Polarization
Slide32The Power of IndividualsPower of the
individual (personal control) and the power of the situation
(
social control)
interact
.A committed individual or a small minority with consistently expressed views may sway the majority.The power of one or two individuals to sway majorities is referred to as minority influence.
Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Influence
Group Polarization