Developing individual in society Lecture 9: 15/03/2021 Social Influence Lecturer: Dr. Ava Horowitz Social Facilitation - The presence of others around you. Least influencing factor. - Audience vs No audience Early studies: - Allport (1924), audience & co-actors improved performance on tasks, a result of social facilitation. - Social facilitation can be in any direction of effect, positive or negative. - Sometimes audiences made people worse. Zajonc's (1965) Drive Theory: - Easy/Well-Learnt area = Audience improves performance. - Hard/New area = Audience impedes performance. - Michaels et al (1982) studied this with students playing pool. - Good playing participants performed better with an audience vs Worse playing participants who become even worse with an audience. Another's presence Increased arousal Easy Task Dominant response strengthened Difficult Task Correct Response Performance enhancement Incorrect Response Performance impairment
Cottrell's (1968, 1927) Evaluation Apprehension Model: - Not just the presence of audience, but fear of being evaluated by the audience. - Being judged by others due to your performance. - This strengthens the dominant response. - Found that there is a difference between a regular audience, and an audience which is capable of judging. - Therefore, supports evaluation apprehension. (Cottrell et al., 1968) Another's presence "Evaluation Apprehension" Increased arousal Easy Task Dominant response strengthened Correct Response Performance enhancement Difficult Task Incorrect Response Performance impairment Sanders et al., (1978) Distraction-Conflict Theory: - Audience is a direct distraction to performance - Everyone is distracted by an audience, but in a difficult task the distraction enhances the dominant response, impairing performance. Another's presence Easy Task Arousal enhances dominant response Minus Distraction Impairs Performance Correct Response Performance enhancement Difficult Task Plus Incorrect Response Performance impairment
Conformity Asch's (1951) Line Judgement task: - Gave participants a clear cut easy visual task. - However, had confederates within the groups who purposefully answered incorrectly some of the time. - Will you also think it is C if all other 6 'participants' answered C despite clearly being able to see the answer is Bffi - Participants yielded to group influence over the trust of their own eyes. - Some participants went along with the group to avoid the uncomfortableness of standing out from the rest. - Sometimes also based on the genuine belief the rest of the group is correct, a distortion of their own eyes. Standard Line A Comparison Lines Asch found: - Control group in isolation, judgements = 0.7% error, 95% made no mistakes. - Experiment group of 7 (6 confederates), judgements = 37% errors, 25% made no mistakes. Asch's research had a great impact: - Had far-reaching implications. - Sparked lots of follow-up conformity studies which looked into effects of gender, conditions, etc. Such as someone else answering correctly alongside the participant. Had wider repercussions: 1. Made people take social influence seriously. 2. Spread into other areas of social influence. 3. Ethics of experimentation & research.