David Myers

Chapter Eight
Group Influence

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What Is a Group?

Two or more people who, for longer than a few

moments, interact with and influence one another
and perceive one another as “us” (M. Shaw, ‘81)
For
 Affiliation
 To achieve

 Social identity

What are some groups you belong to?

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Topics:
Collective influence
 (can occur in minimal group situations):
Social facilitation
Social loafing
Deindividuation
Influence occurring with interacting groups:
Polarization
Groupthink
Minority influence

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Social Facilitation: How Are We
Affected by the Presence of Others?
Crowding: The Presence of Many Others
Effect of others’ presence increases with their number
Being in a crowd intensifies positive or negative
reactions
Enhances arousal

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Social Facilitation: How Are We
Affected by the Presence of
Others?
(biking with others – N. Triplett, ‘90)
Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others?
Evaluation apprehension
 Concern for how others are evaluating us
Driven by distraction
 When we wonder how co-actors are doing or how an audience
is reacting, we become distracted
Mere presence
 Can be arousing even when we are not evaluated or distracted

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 Social facilitation (& hindrance)
evaluation apprehension causes arousal
R. Zajonc
Dominant response theory:
Group presence
 Boosts performance on easy tasks
 Hurts performance on difficult tasks

If the dominant response is correct and well learned

 Performance increases
If the dominant response is incorrect (not well-learned)
 Performance decreases

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 Crowding

Evaluation apprehension
Dominant response theory is enhanced
 With increased apprehension
Distraction
More difficult to pay attention to the task
Mere presence
Arousal occurs just with the mere presence of others
 -Zajonc (with all sorts of species)

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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
Many Hands Make Light Work
Effort decreases as group size increases
Free riders
 People who benefit from the group but give little in return

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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
Social Loafing
Tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool
their efforts toward a common goal than when they are
individually accountable
 Give some personal examples of where this has happened to
you.
 Have you ever been a ‘social loafer’?

Does it happen with “tug o’ war”? (Ringlemann)

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Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert
Less Effort in a Group?
Social Loafing in Everyday Life
People in groups loaf less when the task is
 Challenging
 Appealing
 Rewards are significant

 Involving
 Team spirit

 When held accountable / effort is visible

 Interdependent tasks with specific roles

 When the reward (output) is for self/small group

 Is this why communism usually doesn’t work?

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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Deindividuation
Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension;
occurs in group situations that foster responsiveness to
group norms, good or bad
Looting in
 Iraq, London, Ferguson

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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone
Group size
 Larger the group the more its members lose self-awareness
and become willing to commit atrocities
 Lnychings, encouraging suicidial persons to jump to their

death
 People’s attention is focused on the situation, not on

themselves
 “Everyone’s doing it” attitude

 They contribute their behavior to the situation rather than to

their own choices

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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Doing Together What We
Would Not Do Alone
Anonymity
 Being anonymous makes one
less self-conscious, more
group-conscious, and more
responsive to cues present in
the situation, whether
negative or positive
 Dressed to cover their
identity delivered more
electric shocks Zimbardo ©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
(‘79; ‘02)

13
Deindividuation: When Do People Lose
Their Sense of Self in Groups?
“flaming” Always bad behavior?
Download to MP3 Klan hoods v. nurse
Smoked car windows uniforms
Incivility when driving Why not?
Single or multiple Response to situational
checks for restaurant cues
bill? Anti-social v.
Halloween Pro-social
Masked vs unmasked
 Which take more candy?
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Deindividuation: When Do People Lose
Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone
Arousing and distracting activities
 When we act in an impulsive way as a group, we are not thinking

about our values; we are reacting to the immediate situation

 i.e. “situational cues” overwhelm “held values”

 Impulsive group action absorbs our attention

 Starting, encouraging chants in demonstrations

 Purposely done by protest organizers

 to induce disinhibited behaviors

 - makes us think others feel as we do (social comparison theory

 - and induces false consensus beliefs

 - and compliance with social (group) norms

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Deindividuation: When Do People
Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Self-Awareness
 Opposite of deindividuation
Tend to increase people’s responsiveness to the
immediate situation, be it negative or positive
 Take a mirror with you everywhere you go

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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
Group Polarization
Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting
tendencies; a strengthening of the members’ average
tendency, not a split within the group

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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our
Opinions?
-first comes:
“Risky Shift” Phenomenon (J. Stoner, ’61)
What would you advise Helen to do?
 Cheap westerns or a significant novel?
What would you advise Roger to do?
 Sell or not sell his life insurance policy?
Occurs not only when a group decides by consensus; after
a brief discussion, individuals, too, will alter their decisions
 Juries
 Business committees

 Military organizations

 Teen drivers

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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
Do Groups Intensify Opinions?
Group polarization experiments
 Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969)
 After French students discussion how did initial attitudes change

toward Americans and the French President?

 Mititoshi Isozaki (1984)

 Japanese judgements of “guilty” for traffic violations

 Were award damages from group larger or smaller that for

individual awards?
 Markus Brauer, et al. (2001)
 After discussion did French students dislike certain other people

more or less? Why?

What effect does discussion ofmoral issues have on
individuals in the group?
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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
Do Groups Intensify Opinions?
Group polarization in everyday life (echo chamber)
 Schools
 Accentuation effect

 How does this apply to gender orientation?

 Communities
 Self-segregation

 Internet

 U.S. Congress
 Gerrymandering phenomenon?

 Terrorists organizations
 What’s the solution to prevent radicalization of these

individuals?

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Group Polarization: Do Groups
Intensify Our Opinions?
Explaining Polarization
Informational influence
 Arguments
 Favor given to the initial ones

 Active participation
 “Don’t you agree….?”

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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?

Explaining Polarization
Normative influence (social influence)
 Social comparison
 Evaluating one’s opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with

others
 Pluralistic ignorance
 A false impression of what most other people are thinking or feeling,

or how they are responding

 When we find out what others think, we want to be unique and stand

out more by taking a stronger position (“I’m not like everyone else!”)
Explain the “bandwagon effect” for why songs become popular
(Salganik, ‘06)

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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions?
(Irving Janis, 71)
Mode of thinking that persons engage in when
concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a
cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic
appraisal of alternative courses of action
Caused by
 Cohesive group
 Isolation of the group from dissenting viewpoints

 Directive leader

Perl Harbor
Bay of Pigs
Vietnam war

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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Symptoms of Groupthink
Following lead group members to overestimate their
group’s might and right
 Illusion of invulnerability
 Admiral Kimmel’s laugh (Diamond Head)

 Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality

 Kennedy vs. William Fulbright Arthur Schlesinger

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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Symptoms of Groupthink
Following leads group members to become closed-
minded
 Rationalization
 “Tuesday Lunch group” (explain and justify focus)

 Stereotyped view of opponent

 Castro’s military? ….much too weak!

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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Symptoms of Groupthink
Following leads group to feel pressure toward
uniformity
 Conformity pressure
 Here comes Bill Moyers, “Mr. stop the bombing”

 Self-censorship
 What should Arthur have done?

 Illusion of unanimity
 Adolf’s team / Vietnam / Bay of Pigs / Pearl Harbor / Iraq

 Mindguards
 Bobby Kennedy / Dean Rusk

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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Critiquing Groupthink
Directive leadership is associated with poorer decisions
Groups do prefer supporting over challenging information
Groups make smart decisions by widely distributed
conversation with members who take turns speaking
Group acceptance, approval, and social identity, suppress
disagreeable thoughts among members
Diverse groups produce more creativity
Groups may not always benefit from all that members
know

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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Preventing Groupthink
Be impartial
Encourage critical evaluation
Occasionally subdivide the group, then reunite to air
differences
Welcome critiques from outside experts and associates
Call a second-chance meeting

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Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions?
Group Problem Solving
Combine group and solitary brainstorming
Have group members interact by writing
Incorporate electronic brainstorming
 How to evaluate the correctness of the decision?
Not on the outcome/ results
But on the decision process itself (I. Janis)
Anyone can be a Monday morning quarter back
 Remember counter-factual thinking?

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The Influence of the Minority:
How Do Individuals Influence the Group?
Consistency
Minority slowness effect
Self-Confidence
Portrayed by consistency and persistence
Defections from the Majority
Minority person who defects from the majority is more
persuasive than a consistent minority voice

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The Influence of the Minority:
How Do Individuals Influence the Group?
Is Leadership Minority Influence?
Leadership
 Process by which certain group members motivate and guide
the group
 Formal and informal group leaders exert disproportionate

influence

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The Influence of the Minority: How
Do Individuals Influence the Group?
Is Leadership Minority Influence?
Task leadership
 Organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals
Social leadership
 Builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support
Transformational leadership
 Enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration, exerts significant
influence

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