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Answer in Your Notes
If you could do anything
humanly possible with
complete assurance that you
would not be detected or
held responsible, what
would you do?
Social Influence
Chapter 16, Lecture 2
“Fish swim in schools. Birds fly in flocks.
And humans, too, tend to go with their group,
to think what it thinks and do what it does.”
- David Myers
Social Influence
The greatest contribution of social psychology is its
study of attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and actions and
the way they are molded by social influence.
NON SEQUITER © 2000 Wiley.
Dist. by Universal Press Syndicate
Reprinted with Permission
Let’s test the “human stopwatch”
The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic
On March 23, 1954, Seattle newspapers reported
damage to automobile windshields in a city 80 miles to
the north. In the following days and weeks, damage
was reported closer to Seattle. On April 14, reports of
damage to windshields came from a small town only
65 miles away and then from a naval station just 45
miles from Seattle city limits. Before night fell on April
15, 242 persons phoned the Seattle Police Department
to report damage to more than 3000 automobiles.
The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic
Typically, the damage was described as pitting marks
that grew into bubbles the size of a thumbnail. Some
residents covered their windshields with floor mats or
newspapers, others kept their cars in their garages.
The mayor of Seattle finally made emergency appeals
to the governor and to President Eisenhower.
The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic
Although different explanations were offered for the
pitting – from cosmic rays to sandflea eggs hatching in
the glass – most of the discussion centered on possible
radioactive fallout from H-bomb testing earlier in the
year. A few newspaper reporters wrote of the
possibility of mass hysteria: Given the situation,
people were perhaps for the first time looking at rather
than through their windshields. On April 16, reports to
the police dropped to fewer than 50; by the 18th, no
more calls were received. Shortly thereafter, the
governor asked the University of Washington
Environmental Research Laboratory to investigate the
pitting. Their report? No evidence of pitting that
could not be explained by ordinary road damage.
The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic
What caused the mass hysteria as well as its quick
demise? Nahum Medalia and Otto Larsen suggest that
the windshield pitting epidemic may ironically have
relieved the anxiety associated with the H-bomb
explosions. How? First, it focused the anxiety on a
narrower area of experience – windshields. Second,
the doom and disaster that many experts had
predicted was now over. Third, the responses to the
threat – calling the police, covering the windshields,
appealing to the president – gave people the feeling
they were doing something about the danger that
threatened.
Conformity & Obedience
Behavior is contagious, modeled by one
followed by another. We follow behavior of
others to conform.
Other behaviors may be an expression of
compliance (obedience) toward authority.
Conformity
Obedience
The Chameleon Effect
Conformity: Adjusting one’s behavior or
thinking to coincide with a group standard
(Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).
Group Pressure & Conformity
Suggestibility is a subtle type of conformity,
adjusting our behavior or thinking toward
some group standard.
Group Pressure & Conformity
An influence resulting from one’s willingness to
accept others’ opinions about reality.
William Vandivert/ Scientific
American
Conditions that Strengthen
Conformity
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
One is made to feel incompetent or insecure.
The group has at least three people.
The group is unanimous.
One admires the group’s status and
attractiveness.
One has no prior commitment to a response.
The group observes one’s behavior.
One’s culture strongly encourages respect for a
social standard
Reasons for Conforming
Normative Social Influence: Influence
resulting from a person’s desire to gain
approval or avoid rejection. A person may
respect normative behavior because there may
be a severe price to pay if not respected.
Informational Social Influence: The group
may provide valuable information, but
stubborn people will never listen to others.
Obedience
Courtesy of CUNY Graduate School
and University Center
People comply to social
pressures. How would
they respond to outright
command?
Stanley Milgram
designed a study that
investigates the effects of
authority on obedience.
Stanley Milgram
(1933-1984)
Milgram’s Study
Milgram’s Study: Results
Individual Resistance
A third of the individuals in Milgram’s study
resisted social coercion.
AP/ Wide World Photos
An unarmed individual single-handedly
challenged a line of tanks at Tiananmen Square.
Lessons from the Conformity and
Obedience Studies
In both Asch's and Milgram's studies,
participants were pressured to choose
between following their standards and
being responsive to others.
In Milgram’s study, participants were torn
between hearing the victims pleas and the
experimenter’s orders.
Group Influence
How do groups affect our behavior? Social
psychologists study various groups:
1.
2.
3.
4.
One person affecting another
Families
Teams
Committees
Individual Behavior in the Presence
of Others
Michelle Agnis/ NYT Pictures
Social facilitation:
Refers to improved
performance on tasks in
the presence of others.
Triplett (1898) noticed
cyclists’ race times were
faster when they
competed against others
than when they just
raced against the clock.
Social Loafing
The tendency of an individual in a group
to exert less effort toward attaining a
common goal than when tested
individually (Latané, 1981).
Answer in Your Notes
If you could do anything
humanly possible with
complete assurance that you
would not be detected or
held responsible, what
would you do?
Deindividuation
The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group
situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
Mob behavior
So does deindividuation always bring out hostility and
aggression? Not necessarily. Imagine yourself as a participant
in a study by Kenneth Gergen and his associates.
The researcher ushers you into a chamber that is either
fully lighted or totally dark, except for a tiny red light
over the door so that you can find your way out if you
want to leave the experiment. He says, “You will be
left in the room for no more than an hour with some
other people, and there are no rules as to what you
should do together. At the end you will leave the
room alone and will never meet the other
participants.” Then you and seven strangers of both
sexes spend the next 60 minutes together. What will
happen?
So does deindividuation always bring out hostility and
aggression? Not necessarily. Imagine yourself as a participant
in a study by Kenneth Gergen and his associates.
In the original experiment participants who spent an
hour in a lighted room sat around making light
conversation. In contrast, the people in the dark talked
less, but about more important things. Ninety percent
intentionally touched someone and half hugged
another. Very few disliked the experience; in fact,
most volunteered to return without pay. Anonymity
had released intimacy.
Gergen, K.J., Gergen, M.M., & Barton, W.H. (1979, October).
Deviance in the dark. Psychology Today, 129-130.
Effects of Group Interaction
Group Polarization
enhances a group’s
prevailing attitudes
through a discussion.
If a group is likeminded, discussion
strengthens its
prevailing opinions
and attitudes.
Groupthink
A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire
for harmony in a decision-making group
overrides the realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Watergate Cover-up
Chernobyl Reactor Accident
Power of Individuals
Margaret Bourke-White/ Life Magazine.
© 1946 Time Warner, Inc.
The power of social
influence is enormous,
but so is the power of
the individual.
Non-violent fasts and
appeals by Gandhi led
to the independence of
India from the British.
Gandhi
Homework
Read p.691-697
“So it happens when people succumb,
gradually, to evil. In any society, great evils
sometimes grow out of people’s compliance
with lesser evils.”
- David Myers