02/17/14 Social Influence

• Conformity- Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group's standard
• Conditions that strengthen conformity
• One is made to feel incompetent
• Group is at least three people
• Group is unanimous
• One admires the group's status
• One had made no prior commitment
• The person is observed.
• Reasons for conforming
1. Normative Social Influence- Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disappointment.
2. Informational Social Influence- Influence resulting from one's willingness to accept other's opinions about reality.

• Obedience
• Milgram's Experiment
• Social Facilitation
• Improved performance of tasks in presence of others.
• Occurs with simple or well learned tasks.
• Not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered. 
• Social Loafing
• The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable.

• Deindividuation
• The loss of self- awareness and self- restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
• Group Polarization 
• The concept that a group's attitude is one of extremes and rarely moderate. 
• Group Think
• The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision- making group overrides common sense.
• Self- Fulfilling Prophecies
• Occurs when one person's belief about others leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to confirm the belief.