Lesson twelve, module one. How groups influence individuals.
Let’s begin by moving to slide two. Slide two discusses conformity,
specifically two very classic studies. The first is Sherif’s study of
the autokinetic effect or the watch the light study. In this case,
participants are put into a room, the lights are turned out and a single
beam of light is reflected onto a wall. Participants are then asked to
estimate how much the light moved. Estimations vary as the light
actually doesn’t move, but due to the autokinetic effect, it appears
that it does. Over time as each group member gives their estimate, the
estimates tend to converge. That is, everyone conformed to the group
average. Asch's line study, an objective test of whether or not
we will conform. In this study a target line is compared to three choice
lines. The target line and one of the choice lines are exactly the same
length. If you put a person in a situation where two, three, four or
even ten people give the wrong answer, when it becomes their turn, they
will also report the wrong answer. In fact only 25% of people reported
the right answer when the majority of the group reported the wrong
answer.
Let’s move on to slide three. The role of conformity continues. The
false consensus effect. This is the idea that we believe that everyone
else thinks exactly like we do. One example was that I sat on a jury. In
the jury deliberation room, as we entered, one of the people said we
should just take a vote. It’s clear we all saw the same case and
obviously we all believe the same thing. So we took a vote and sure
enough, it was split 6 to 6. Therefore the false consensus effect was
the idea that we all agreed. We’d seen the same trial, surely we would
have come to the same conclusion, but in fact we disagreed with most of
the other people. Norms. Norms provide a reality check. This is the idea
about what is appropriate. We’ll talk about different types of norms. If
you have a philosophy homework problem, you might compare your homework
to your friends. People who you think think like you do in order to have
your reality verified. However, if you’ve been working on a calculus
problem with some friends, your best bet is to find someone not in your
group to compare answers. If you’ve been working together, it’s likely
that if you made a mistake, you all made the same one, but someone
that’s been working independently, they might have an answer different
from yours and there is an objective reality in calculus. Philosophy is
more subjective, therefore, you compare with friends.
We’ll discuss this more in slide four. Slide four, reference groups.
They have two functions. They can have an informational influence or a
normative influence. The informational influence is when people or
groups provide us with absolute correct answers about what is right and
wrong when there is a demonstrable correct answer like an intellectual
task, that is, if two plus two equals four, I can show you that, I can
demonstrate that. That is absolute. However, if you’re making value
judgments, then groups serve normative influence. This is much like the
calculus versus philosophy problem. Normative influence is your idea
that your beliefs are right and if you wanta believe that your beliefs
are right, you wanta compare to similar others in making value
judgments. So you’ll choose the reference group that’s more similar to
your own group.
Let’s move on to slide five. Self-help groups are often designed in
order to help individuals and it does work for many people. For example,
AA, NA, weight watchers, therapy groups; they all tend to have very
positive benefits. How would this not work? People who are in prison,
people with eating disorders; anyone who’s in a group where there’s no
experience of guilt, it’s likely they aren’t going to have any benefits
for the individual and in fact in prison, we know criminals often learn
how to be better criminals and in eating disorder hospitals when they
try group therapy or put women in groups, primarily women, we find that
they become more adept at hiding their eating disorders.
Let’s move on to slide six. We talked about conformity, now we’re gonna
talk about consensus, is it a good thing. We often rely on consensus.
Television producers know this and provide canned laughter so that we
laugh along with people on the sound track. However, since this also
plays a role in what we call contamination. This is the idea that out
group members are repeating the party line. If I give you six people and
I show you videos of each of them making a claim, and I tell you add six
individual students for giving an opinion. You will rate each student as being
very individual, we don’t see them as a group, even though they all
think the same thing and you then have six good arguments for why you
should be in favor of their position. However, if I show you the same
six people but I tell you that they are in two groups of three, you will
only have two good reasons. You see each group member as repeating the
party line. Pluralistic ignorance is another consensus phenomenon. This
is the idea that people’s behavior reflects how they feel. For example
in a classroom, people may choose not to ask any questions, even if it’s
a very confusing example. Why; because they believe everyone must know
the answer, otherwise someone would ask the question so it’s just me.
This is in direct opposition to false consensus effect. So how do you
overcome this effect? You realize it exists and go ahead and ask the
question.
Let’s move on to slide seven. Social facilitation is the idea that we
can do better or perhaps worse, depending on the difficulty of a task
when others are present. If others are present and we do better, we call
that social facilitation. We usually view these as some things we’re
good at, so if you’re a very good runner, you run alone, you’ll have a
longer time than if you’re running and someone else is also running on
the same track. You’ll run faster when that other person is present.
Part of it has to do with evaluation apprehension. You think you may be
evaluated, so you try to perform better. However, it can also be
distracting to have others around and when this happens, social
facilitation may have the impact of creating this apprehension and
creating this distraction, you’ll actually do worse on things you’re
not very good at. For example, if you’re not a very good chess player,
the more people watching you play, the worse you’ll play.
Let’s move on to slide eight. Social loafing is the idea that when in a
group we slack or we don’t do the work that we would do if we were
working alone or in a smaller group or if our efforts are being
identified. We can minimize social loafing in groups by making sure that
tasks are interesting, making sure that individual effort matters, that
tasks are interdependent and that social compensation will occur instead
of social loafing. Social compensation is the idea that people take up
the slack when a member is sick or not doing their part, they try to
compensate for that loss in the group. This won’t happen every time, but
it will happen sometimes and often when slacking is justified. For
example if someone is having an emotional trauma or a hard time, another
group member will compensate for that. Social loafing is maximized if
you give people the illusion of your productivity, so telling them
they’re doing better than they actually are and also there’s more social
loafing in collectivist cultures.
Let’s move on to slide nine. Crowding. This is probably the most studied
group influence. However, it’s culturally specific, that is perceptions
of what is a crowd in one country or one culture is not the same as what
is crowding in another and also crowding increases the sense of
de-individuation or diffusion of responsibility, which decreases helping behavior and increases mild like behavior.
This concludes lesson twelve, module one. Thank you.
