Social Influence and Group Dynamics

Social Influence and Group Behavior

Obedience

Conformity

Which route is this?

• Obeying an order from someone you accept as an authority figure
• Believe you don't have a choice
• Ties in with the idea of ultimate power

• Conformity is changing how you behave to be more like others or peers.
• Plays to belonging and self-esteem needs as we seek the approval of others
• Can change our beliefs and values

Group Think

Social Influence and Power

• psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome
• group members minimize conflict + reach decisions without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by suppressing dissenting viewpoints and by isolating themselves from outside influences

• Raven (1965) defined social influence as a change in a person's cognition, attitude or behavior, which has its origin in another person or group.
• Social power: can be Public Dependent, Private Dependent, or Independent, meaning whether or not the observation of the influencing agent is necessary for influence to occur.
• Raven describes 6 different types of power:
• Legitimate
• Reward
• Coercive
• Expert
• Referent
• Informational

Social Influence:

Persuasion

• In order to get someone to comply, one must persuade them using many different techniques
• Routes to persuasion
• Central- involves being persuaded by the arguments or the content of a message.
• Peripheral- involves being persuaded in a manner that is not based on the arguments or the message. Superficial cues!

Social influence is the change in behavior that one person causes in another, intentionally or unintentionally, as a result of the way the changed person perceives themselves in relationship to the influencer, other people and society in general. There are 3 areas of social influence: Conformity, Obedience and

Compliance.

Social Impact Theory

Compliance Identification and Internalization

Versus

• Developed by Bibb Latané in 1981
• Consists of 3 basic rules that consider how sources can become targets of social influence
• Social influence is determined by strength, immediacy and number of sources present to describe how majority and minority group members influence each other.

• Kelman's theory about 3 processes of opinion change: compliance, identification and internalization
• Compliance
• individual accepts influence because he or she hopes to receive favorable reaction from another person or group
• Identification
• individual accepts influence because he wants to establish/maintain relationship to another person or group
• Internalization
• individual accepts influence because content of induced behavior is intrinsically rewarding

Symptoms of Group Think

Cognitive Dissonance in Groups

• Overestimation of Group Power
• Illusions of invulnerability
• Unquestioned Belief
• Closed Mindedness
• Rationalizing warnings
• Stereotyping
• Pressures towards uniformity
• Self Censorship
• Illusions of unanimity
• Direct Pressure
• Mindguards

Let's see this in action...

• Cognitive dissonance is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or attitudes in relation to behavioral decisions and attitude change.
• According to psychologist L. Festinger, disagreement from others in a group generates dissonance, and subsequent movement toward group consensus reduces this negative tension.
• This explains why group members accept group norms, beliefs or behaviors in order to reduce group tension and come to a consensus.

Leadership In Organizations

Examples of Group Think

Compliance

• Clearly, leaders have significant power when influencing those around them
• when entering the workforce, important not to let the wrong things influence you too much like:
• compliance, fear of authority, groupthink, cognitive biases, wanting to belong
• as long as you're aware of the peripheral influences on your life, you can overcome them

• Person does something that they are asked to do by someone else
• Choice- you can or can not comply to the demands
• Social reward and/or punishment can lead to compliance even if the person doesn't want to do the action

• Bay of Pigs Invasion
• invasion plan initiated by Eisenhower Administration
• Kennedy White House took over, "uncritically accepted" CIA's plan despite warnings
• operation failed
• Pearl Harbor
• Shared illusions and rationalizations contributed to lack of precautions taken
• messages of Japanese plans of attack were intercepted,
• ultimately rationalized why an attack was unlikely + didn't prepare

How to Prevent Groupthink

• Leaders shouldn't express opinions when assigning tasks
• Leaders should absent themselves from some group meetings to avoid influencing outcome
• Organizations should set up independent groups working on the same problem
• All effective alternatives should be examined
• Groups should invite outside experts in