Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking and Social Influence roles, which are patterns of behavior associated with particular social positions, are central to directing interactions. These roles can be delegated (through factors beyond individual control, such as gender or age) or acquired (earned through effort, such as teacher or scientist)
By the end of this section, you should know about:
- Humans in a Social Context— People, People, Everywhere
- Social Cognition—Behind Our Masks
- Attitudes—Belief Emotion Action
- Attitude Change—Why the Seekers Went Public
- Social Influence— Follow the Leader
Let’s take a closer look at them.
Test Your Knowledge
At the end of this section, take a fast and free pop quiz to see how much you know about Social Thinking and Social Influence.
Humans in a Social Context— People, People, Everywhere
Although roles facilitate to be predictable in day-to-day interactions can also lead to role conflict, where overlapping responsibilities create competing demands can withstand stress, a It can cause stress, burnout, and adverse health effects.
The great effect of roles on behavior was remarkable by the Stanford prison experiment, where college students assigned inmates and guards immediately internalized their roles to the point of abuse and non-abuse.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: Group structure, cohesion, and values
Teams have unique patterns of defined roles, communication channels, and capacity development. Well-organized groups, such as sports teams or soldiers, exhibit strict organization, whereas informal groups may vary in structure. The concept of group cohesion, the attraction and engagement of members, is critical to effective cohesion. Collaborative teams exhibit strong cohesiveness, attention, and shared affection, which can boost productivity and morale.
However, strong group identification can lead to in-group bias, whereby individuals favor their own group and view outsiders (outgroups) more favorably. This “us versus them” mentality is often the basis for social conflict and prejudice.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: Social status and power
The Social Thinking and Social Influence status determined by one’s position in the group influences the level of respect and opportunity. Those in higher positions tend to have good manners and compliance, when treated with contempt. This dynamic reflects social concerns about status symbols such as clothing or possessions, which often determine interpersonal interactions.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: The power of values
Norms, unwritten rules of acceptable behavior, have a profound effect on individuals. These values are comprehensive and subtly but powerfully guide behavior. For example, the “automatic effect” test showed how group consensus shapes perceptions, where individuals align their decisions to conform to group norms and showed that litter in public places gets people’s litter quality effects, and revealed how observed practices perpetuate implicit values.
Values are also formed by perceptions of the attitudes and actions of others. On college campuses, for example, negative perceptions of peer drinking can perpetuate false norms, demonstrating the role of social cognition—the way social dynamics are interpreted especially in standard setting.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: Social Cognition and Comparative Theory
An understanding of social behavior is often concerned with social cognition, action with respect to oneself and others in a social context. Social comparison, a subset of social cognition, is the way individuals evaluate themselves by comparing their actions, attitudes, and situations to those of others. This reflective process contributes to the development of personal and social identity.
The chapter sets the stage for further research on how individuals attribute meaning to the actions of others and shape attitudes by emphasizing the profound impact of social context on human behavior and thinking.
Social Cognition—Behind Our Masks
Social Thinking and Social Influence comparisons are an important way to understand ourselves, especially when there is no reference point. Developed by social psychologist Leon Festinger, this theory suggests that we do not evaluate our actions, emotions, intentions, or abilities by comparing them to others. This process often affects the groups we belong to and our self-worth. For example, a student may test his or her academic ability by comparing his or her test performance with that of his or her classmates.
Comparisons are not random but are often made with people from similar backgrounds or backgrounds. A tennis player like Wendy may feel a sense of accomplishment compared to others on her team, but not the professional players. Social comparisons also serve emotional purposes. To protect themselves, people may engage in downward comparisons—comparing themselves to the worst, such as someone who finds comfort in reduced work hours by a friend who is working from his alcohol problems. On the other hand, horizontal comparisons can be discouraging when the differences are too great.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: Adjective theory
Attribution refers to inferences we make about our own or others’ causes of actions’. These decisions play an important role in social cognition, influencing how we communicate and form relationships. Harold Kelly’s framework emphasizes three key factors we consider when making attributions: consistency, specificity, and situational context.
For example, when someone like Tam constantly avoids someone in many situations, it shows definite meaning. Specificity refers to whether the behavior occurs only in a particular context. If Tama avoids everyone, the behavior may embarrass her, but if she avoids just one person, it could mean she doesn’t want it herself. Situational demands—pressures to behave in particular ways in given environments—reorganize coercion. When external pressures are strong, people underestimate intrinsic motivations. For example, a professional athlete who endorses a product is thought to do so for financial incentives rather than for personal gain.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: The main attribution error is actor-observer bias
Even when external factors are at play, the actions of others are attributed to internal factors. This is known as the basic attribution error. For example, when we see someone act a certain way at a party, we ignore outside influences and assume that it reflects their personality.
However, when explaining our own behavior, we emphasize external factors. This discrepancy is called actor-observer bias. For example, we think someone didn’t leave a tip because they were stingy, but we blame it on poor service if we don’t tip. These biases highlight the complexity and potential shortcomings of interpreting social behavior.
Attitudes—Belief Emotion Action
Attitude is a combination of beliefs and emotions that determine how a person responds positively or negatively to people, objects, or ideas. Attitudes summarize the analyzes and are strong predictors of future behavior. They permeate a variety of social domains, affecting friendships, voting behavior, preferences, and even broader social attitudes.
For example, a typical study during the Northern Ireland conflict revealed how attitudes influence behavior. English households with anti-Irish sentiments previously identified through the survey were less likely to return “misdirected” letters with Irish names in. This showed how attitudes expressed by belief, emotions and actions prepare us to respond coherently to the social world.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: Factors affecting attitudes
Beliefs: This includes what a person thinks about a subject or an object. For example, when it comes to gun control, beliefs revolve around their potential impact on crime rates.
Emotional Factor: This refers to a person’s emotional response to something, such as finding a gun scary or beautiful.
Action Phase: This includes actions associated with attitudes, such as attending a pro- or anti-gun group.
How are attributes formed?
Behaviors are determined by different factors:
Direct communication: Individual experiences can have a profound effect on attitudes. For example, the experience of pollution in the vicinity of a factory may lead to strong opposition to environmental pollution.
Spontaneity and context: Even chance encounters can determine attitudes. For example, negative experiences with psychologists can lead to negative attitudes toward the field in general.
Social: Conversations with others, especially in peer groups, often influence behavior. Friends who support recycling can encourage someone to adopt a similar belief.
Child rearing: Parental influence plays a key role, as children tend to adopt their parents’ political and social views.
Media influence: Media exposure can shape attitudes to a great extent. For example, prolonged exposure to violent television content can lead to a “negative worldview,” where the individual perceives the world as threatening and threatening.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: Behavior
While attitudes influence behavior, they do not always directly determine it. Immediate factors, such as convenience or fear of social judgment, often override habits. For example, a woman who doesn’t like air pollution can still drive to work every day because of its convenience.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: Limitations of the project:
Immediate results often outweigh long-term performance.
Social expectations can get in the way of performance; For example, fear of criticism may discourage them from publicly expressing certain beliefs.
Habits can undermine attempts to align behavior with attitudes, so that people revert to old behaviors despite conscious decisions to change.
However, the qualities held by strong beliefs are likely to translate into action. Belief arises when an issue evokes strong emotions, is shared frequently, and is supported by deep knowledge, resulting in significant behavioral change.
How are attitudes measured?
Open interviews: These allow individuals to express themselves freely on issues such as free speech on campus.
Social distance scales: These measure the willingness to deal differently with different social groups, and reflect bias or acceptance.
Attitudinal scale: The list asks for agreement or disagreement with issues such as national health policies. Responses on a scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” help quantify public attitudes, especially in large-scale surveys.
Attitude Change—Why the Seekers Went Public
While attitudes are often stable, they can be changed in a variety of ways including external influences such as pressure and internal processes such as cognitive conflict. Understanding how and why attitudes change helps to human behavior is explained in a variety of contexts, from marketing to team dynamics.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: The role of reference groups in attitude change
Reference groups—those with whom we compare or contrast ourselves—have power in shaping attitudes. Importantly, physical contact with these groups is not necessary; The introduction is sufficient. A famous study by Theodore Newcomb in the 1930s found that students from conservative homes at Bennington College moved toward liberal views because of the liberal atmosphere of the college. Students who maintained their conservative beliefs were committed to their families as their primary reference group.
Attraction: The art of behavior modification
In addition to deliberate efforts to influence attitudes through information and argument. Effectiveness depends primarily on three factors: the communicator, the message, and the audience.
Communicators: Effective seducers are likeable, trustworthy, articulate, and perceived as experts. The similarity of the communicator to the audience also increases attractiveness.
Messages: Messages that evoke emotion, especially fear, when coupled with actionable advice are more believable. Clear conclusions, supported by facts and figures, and often repeated reinforce the impact of the message. A well-informed audience responds favorably to a balanced argument, whereas an uninformed audience benefits from a one-sided approach.
Audience: The audience’s existing attitudes, level of knowledge, and openness to new ideas determine how easily they can be persuaded.
Billions of dollars are spent each year on advertising campaigns that use these principles, from selling consumer goods to encouraging political candidates.
Cognitive paradoxes: Endogenous pressures to conform attitudes to behavior
Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that discrepancies between thoughts, beliefs, or actions make a person uncomfortable. This stress motivates the person to seek stability by changing their behavior or rationalizing their actions.
Social Thinking and Social Influence: Examples in everyday life:
Smoking: Smokers can reduce the risks of smoking by looking at anecdotal evidence from long-term smokers or by avoiding issues related to smoking and cancer.
Romantic relationships: Psychological discrepancies often lead people to reinterpret their partner’s flaws as virtues—e.g., “cheap” becomes “protective,” or “aggressive” becomes “principled.”
Consumer remorse: Having made a choice, people tend to focus on the positive aspects of the choice and minimize choice rejection to reduce post-decision conflict
The power of commitment: The infamous case of Mrs Keech and the Seekers illustrates the psychological paradox at work. When the predicted revelation did not come, the group doubled down on their faith, claiming that their faith had prevented disaster. This reinforced their commitments and encouraged them to engage others, further solidifying their beliefs.
Misunderstanding and changing attitudes: A repetitive experiment shows how friction arises when actions are insufficiently rational. College students worked freelance and were paid $1 or $20 to lie about being interested. Those who paid $20 justified their lie with money, but those who paid $1, unable to rationalize their actions, changed their behavior and rated the task as interesting.
Social Influence— Follow the Leader
Social Thinking and Social Influence refers to changes in behavior through the actions or presence of others. This is a central theme in social psychology, which shows how interactions shape individual behavior. Social influence ranges from subtle to severe. For example, the mere presence of others can influence behavior as people change their behavior to appear more socially acceptable. Conformity occurs when individuals adapt their behavior to conform to the group, usually in order to comply with social norms. Compliance is a more directed influence in which people respond to a request from a non-authority. Obedience, on the other hand, involves following a direct order from an authority figure. The strongest social influence is stress, a change in behavior due to threat or force.
The New York City experiment illustrates the power of social influence. As a crowd stood on a busy street looking out of a sixth-floor window, passers-by mimicked their actions. Interestingly, the larger the group looking out the window, the more passers-by swung to join, highlighting the power of collective influence.
The power of life
Social Thinking and Social Influence power is the ability to influence or control the actions of others, arises in social situations, and disappears with the end of a social relationship. Unlike individual competence, power is a relational phenomenon based on interpersonal interactions.
There are five major types of social forces. The power to pay wages depends on the power of compliance incentives, such as employers offering wages and salaries. The ability to punish gives rise to coercive power, as seen in legal systems that impose punishment or imprisonment. Legitimate authority derives from socially recognized roles, such as the authority of a teacher in the classroom or the role of an elected official in government. Power representation is based on appreciation or reference, where people look to respected individuals or groups for guidance. Experts can be based on specialized knowledge or skills such as those of doctors, lawyers, or engineers.
Social Thinking and Social Influence power is dynamic, and its effectiveness varies from situation to situation. For example, a person with legitimate authority in one case may not be influential in another. Regardless of the source, the presence of social power shapes communication and behavior to a great extent.
Mere Presence—Just Because You Are There
The mere presence of others can have a profound effect on behavior, often leading to change even without direct interaction. For example, a person in a room may feel less self-aware of certain behaviors such as picking their nose than if a stranger enters the room This perception is built on how others are simply observed or aware that their presence emphasizes actions.
Social comfort and social loafing
Mere presence can enhance or hurt productivity, depending on the person’s level of confidence and career choice. Social development, first studied by Norman Triplett, refers to the tendency to perform better in front of others when they are confident in their abilities. For example, skilled pool players improve their accuracy when they are aware. In contrast, less confident individuals may have impaired performance under similar circumstances.
However, Social Thinking and Social Influence loafing occurs when people work less hard in a group than when they work alone. In a typical experiment, participants exerted less effort when they thought they were doing solo drag than when they thought they were part of a group.
Private residence
Personal space, the invisible realm that individuals treat as their private property, also reflects the effects of mere presence. Violation of this space often makes them uncomfortable, as people can easily retreat, turn away, or create obstacles. A systematic examination of such values, called proxemics, recognizes that self-location varies across relationships, functions, and cultures.
spatial values
Edward Hall identified four major areas of private space in North America:
Close Circumference: Up to 18 inches and reserved for intimate relationships, such as family or romantic partners.
Personal distance: ranges from 18 inches to 4 feet in width, and occurs most frequently in communication with friends.
Social spacing: ranges from 4 to 12 feet wide and is more common in professional or casual areas.
Public Circle: More than 12 feet, used for formal communication such as speeches or presentations.
Cultural differences play a crucial role in spatial behavior. For instance, Middle Eastern individuals may converse at closer distances, whereas Northern Europeans tend to maintain more space. Misalignments in these norms can lead to misunderstandings, as one person may feel intruded upon while the other feels distanced or rejected.