Download Group Influence

Helping Behavior
Prosocial Behavior
• Prosocial behavior - any behavior that helps
another person, whether the underlying motive
is self-serving or selfless
• Altruism - Unselfish regard for the welfare of
others
• Sometimes we help people out of guilt or in
order to gain something, such as recognition,
rewards, increased self-esteem, or having the
favor returned
So, Why Don’t People Always
Help Others in Need?
• Would you have stopped and helped this
man? (Watch Video – 2 min.)
Bystander Effect
• The tendency for any given
bystander to be less likely to give
aid if other bystanders are present
• Famous case of Kitty Genovese:
– 38 people heard her cry for help but
didn’t help. She was raped and
stabbed to death.
1936-1964
Why Don’t People Always
Help Others in Need?
• Latane studies:
– Several scenarios designed to measure the
help response
• Found that if you think you’re the only
one that can hear or help, you are more
likely to do so
• If there are others around, you will
diffuse the responsibility to others
Diffusion of Responsibility
Why Don’t People Always
Help Others in Need?
1. Diffusion of responsibility
– presence of others leads to decreased
help response
– we all think someone else will help,
so we don’t
2. Our desire to behave in a socially acceptable way
(normative social influence) and to appear correct
(informational social influence)
3. Being in a big city or a very small town
4. Vague or ambiguous situations
5. When the personal costs for helping outweigh the
benefits
Helping Behavior
•ABC Primetime looks into helping behavior
Video
Psychology of Bystanders
By staging emergency events in field studies, researchers
have found that an individual is less likely to offer
assistance or call for help when other people are present
than when he or she is the only witness. This is known as
the bystander effect.
In this field study, an individual steals bicycles, picks a
wallet from a purse, and picks a wallet from a pocket, all in
full view of several people. Bystanders intervene in only
one event.
Watch Examples of this Experiment
(1:27)
We’ll help if…
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We’ve observed helpfulness
We’re not hurried
We think the victim needs & deserves help
The victim is similar to us
We are feeling guilty
We’re not preoccupied
We are in a good mood
We don’t perceive danger
We know the victim
We know how to help
Group Influence
Individual and Groups
• Social Loafing—tendency to expend less effort on
a task when it is a group effort
• Reduced when
– Group is composed of people we know
– We are members of a highly valued group
– Task is meaningful
• Women are generally less likely to engage in
social loafing than are men.
• Opposite occurs in many collectivistic cultures,
in a pattern referred to as social striving
Social Loafing
• The tendency for people in a group to
exert less effort when pooling their efforts
toward attaining a common goal than
when individually accountable
• The larger the group, the the lower each
individual’s output
• People may be less accountable in a group,
or they may think their efforts aren’t
needed.
Social Facilitation
• Improved performance of tasks in the
presence of others
• Occurs with simple or well learned
tasks
• Tasks that are difficult or not yet
learned the presence of other
people is likely to hinder
performance
Deindividuation
• The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint
occurring in group situations that foster
arousal and anonymity
• People lose their sense of responsibility
when in a group.
Group Interaction
Effects
Group Polarization
• The enhancement of a group’s prevailing
attitudes through discussion within the
group
Social Pressure in
Group Decisions
• Group polarization
– majority position
stronger after a group
discussion in which a
minority is arguing
against the majority
point of view
• Why does this
occur?
– informational and
normative influences
Before group discussion
Group 1
Against
Group 2
For
Strength of opinion
(a)
After group discussion
Group 1
Against
Group 2
For
Strength of opinion
(b)
Group Polarization
Groupthink
• The mode of thinking that occurs when the
desire for harmony in a decision- making
group overrides a realistic appraisal of the
alternatives
• Group members try to maintain harmony
and unanimity in group
• Can lead to some better decisions and
some worse decisions than individuals
Our Power as
Individuals
Self-fulfilling Prophecies
• When our beliefs and expectations create
reality
• Beliefs & expectations influence our
behavior & others’
• Pygmalion effect
– person A believes that person B has a particular
characteristic
– person B may begin to behave in accordance with
that characteristic
Studies of the Self-fulfilling
Prophecy
• Rosenthal & Fode
– tested whether labeling would affect outcome
– divided students into 2 groups and gave them randomly
selected rats
– 1 group was told they had a group of “super genius” rats
and the other was told they had a group of “super moron”
rats
– all students told to train rats to run mazes
– “genius” rat group ended up doing better than the “moron”
rat group b/c of the expectations of the students
Studies of the Self-fulfilling
Prophecy
• Rosenthal & Jacobson
– went to a school and did IQ tests with kids
– told teachers that the test was a “spurters” test
– randomly selected several kids and told the teacher
they were spurters
– did another IQ test at end of year
– spurters showed significant improvements in their
IQ scores b/c of their teacher’s expectations of
them
PERSUASION
The deliberate attempt to influence the attitudes
or behavior of another person in a situation in
which that person has some freedom of choice
Influence of Others’ Requests
—Compliance
Sales techniques and cognitive
dissonance
– four-walls technique
• question customer in such a way that gets
answers consistent with the idea that they need
to own object
• feeling of cognitive dissonance results if person
chooses not to buy this thing that they “need”
Sales Techniques and
Cognitive Dissonance
Foot-in-the-door technique
– ask for something small at first, then hit customer
with larger request later
– small request has paved the way to compliance
with the larger request
– cognitive dissonance results if person has already
granted a request for one thing, then refuses to
give the larger item
The Reciprocity Norm
and Compliance
We feel obliged to return favors, even those
we did not want in the first place
– opposite of foot-in-the-door
– salesperson gives something to customer with idea
that they will feel compelled to give something
back (buying the product)
– even if person did not wish for favor in the first
place
Defense against Persuasion
Techniques
• Sleep on it—don’t act on something right
away
• Play devil’s advocate—think of all the
reasons you shouldn’t buy the product or
comply with the request
• Pay attention to your gut feelings—if you
feel pressured, you probably are