1. PSY 321 Dr. Sanchez Obedience/Group Influence

2. Extra Credit Results

3. Exam Review What I will do Post Exam Review On-line this Friday
Use class period for Q & A based on posted exam review
Jeopardy

4. Milgram’s Baseline Results

5. The Obedient Participant
No gender differences observed in level of obedience.
Milgram’s basic findings have been replicated in several different countries and among different age groups.
Milgram’s participants were tormented by experience.

6. Are We All Nazis? No, an individual’s character can make a difference.
Authoritarian Personality: Submissive toward figures of authority but aggressive toward subordinates.

7. Factors That Influence Obedience

8. Important Factors That Influence Obedience
Physical presence and apparent legitimacy of the authority figure.
The victim’s proximity.
The experimental procedure.
Participants were led to feel relieved of personal responsibility for the victim’s welfare.
Gradual escalation was used.

9. Defiance: When People Rebel
Social influence can also breed rebellion and defiance.
Having allies gives individuals the courage to disobey.

10. Chapter 8: Group Processes
How do groups effect individual effort?
How/when do groups make bad decisions?
Are groups a sum of their parts?
Applications = I/O, Business, Student Organizations, Class Group Projects

11. Goals
Collective processes = presence of others on individual’s behavior
Group processes = individuals directly interact with each other
Group conflict = Reconciling differences

12. What is a Group?
Groups consist of two or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense that their needs and goals cause them to influence each other.

13. What is a Group?
A set of people who have at least one of the following characteristics:
Joint membership in a social category based on sex, race, or other attributes.
Direct interactions with each other over a period of time (e.g., work colleagues).
A shared, common fate, identity, or set of goals (e.g., political groups).

14. What makes some groups more “groupy”?
Perceptions of groupiness
Social integration of group members
Group members act, think, and feel as single individuals

15. What Is a Collective?
An assembly of people engaging in a common activity but having little direct interaction with each other (e.g., audience members at a concert).
Not a real group
Low in distinctiveness (entitativity)
Some social psychological processes are unique to real groups.
However, others affect both groups and collectives.

16. Collective Processes
The Presence of Others

17. Social Facilitation: When Others Arouse Us
How does the presence of others affect our behavior?
Triplett’s ( ) fishing reel studies.
Children winding fishing reels alone or with others
Later research found conflicting findings.
Sometimes the presence of others enhanced performance.
At other times, performance declined.
What was going on???

18. Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us
tendency for people to do better on simple tasks and worse on complex tasks when they are in the presence of others and their individual performance can be evaluated

19. Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us
Cockroach Example:
Roaches navigate through a maze
Maze was a easy task
½ roaches in the presence of other roaches
½ roaches alone
Results: Roaches performed the task faster when other roaches were present than when alone.

20. Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us
Cockroach Example:
Roaches get through a maze
Maze was a difficult task
½ roaches in the presence of other roaches
½ roaches alone
Results: Roaches took longer to solve the maze when other roaches were present than when alone.

21. Pool Hall Example Pool Hall Study ½ below- average players
½ above- average players
½ unobserved
½ observed

22. Results of Michaels et al. Pool Hall Study

23. Why Does Social Facilitation Occur?
Zajonc’s Mere Presence Theory
all animals are aroused by presence of conspecific others

24. Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us
Bob Zajonc suggested that we can understand the influence others on performance by considering three factors:
Arousal
Dominant response
Task difficulty

25. Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us
Increases physiological arousal – energizes us
Arousal facilitates dominant response
Dominant response
Easy task – perform well
Difficult task – do not perform well

26. Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us
EVALUATION
APPREHENSION
AROUSAL
DOMINANT RESPONSE
PERFORMANCE
IMPROVES
ON AN EASY TASK
(CORRECT RESPONSE)
PERFORMANCE
DECLINES
ON A HARD TASK
(INCORRECT RESPONSE)

27. Evaluation Apprehension
Common to worry about others’ opinions
SF depends on whether evaluator is present
Blindfold study
Stereotype threat revisited.

28. The fear of math evaluation

29. Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us
DISTRACTION
AROUSAL
DOMINANT RESPONSE
PERFORMANCE
IMPROVES
ON AN EASY TASK
(CORRECT RESPONSE)
PERFORMANCE
DECLINES
ON A HARD TASK
(INCORRECT RESPONSE)

30. Distraction Conflict Theory
Attentional conflict between focusing on task and inspecting the distracting stimulus creates arousal.
Maintains there is nothing uniquely social about “social” facilitation.
Which theory is correct?
Mere presence, evaluation, and attention

31. Social Loafing: When the Presence of Others Relaxes Us
RELAXATION
DOMINANT RESPONSE
PERFORMANCE
IMPROVES
ON A HARD TASK
PERFORMANCE
DECLINES
ON AN EASY TASK

32. Social Loafing: When Others Relax Us
Ringelmann (1880s): Individual output declines on pooled tasks.
Def. “pooled”
Social Loafing: A group-produced reduction in individual output on easy tasks in which contributions are pooled.

33. Social Loafing: When Many Produce Less
Adapted from Jackson & Williams, 1985; Sanna, 1992.

34. When Is Social Loafing Less Likely to Occur?
People believe that their own performances can be identified and thus evaluated, by themselves or by others.
The task is important or meaningful to those performing it.
People believe that their own efforts are necessary for a successful outcome.

35. When Is Social Loafing Less Likely to Occur? (cont.)
The group expects to be punished for poor performance.
The group is small.
The group is cohesive.
Membership is valuable, important, and people like eachother

36. Individual Differences
Less likely among women
Less likely among collectivistic cultures
Less likely among those with high need for cognition

37. Why Does Social Loafing Occur?
Collective Effort Model:
Individuals try hard on a collective task when they think their efforts will help them achieve outcomes they personally value.
Social compensation = try even harder
v. Sucker effect = try less

38. SOCIAL FACILITATION SOCIAL LOAFING Improve on simple tasks Individual
effort
can
be evaluated
Evaluation
apprehension
Impaired
on complex
tasks
Presence of
others
Impaired
on simple
tasks
Individual
effort
cannot be
evaluated
No evaluation
apprehension
Improve
on complex
tasks
SOCIAL LOAFING

39. Social Loafing: When the Presence of Others Relaxes Us
Procedure
Ps worked on a maze on a computer
Another P worked on same task in room
½ Ps received simple maze
½ Ps received complex maze
½ Ps thought performance was unique
½ Ps thought performance combined
Results???

40. Time to complete mazes
Difficulty of the mazes

41. Deindividuation
Sometimes the repercussions of anonymity are much more serious that simply “loafing”
Deindividuation refers to the reduction of normal constraints against deviant behavior
Examples:
Lynch mobs
Military atrocities perpetrated against civilians

42. Environmental Cues What makes deindividuation likely?
Accountability cues affect the person’s cost-reward calculations.
Attentional cues focus a person’s attention away from the self.

43. Social Identity Model of Deindividuation
Deindividuation can lead to positive behavior depending on the norms of the group

44. Figure 8.5: Deindividuation and Social Identity
From Johnsson, R.D., and Downing, L. L. (1979). "Deindividuation and valance of cues: Effects on prosocial and antisocial behavior."