Notes - February 17, 2014

Social Influence

• Conformity - adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

Conditions That Strengthen Conformity

• one is made to feel competent
• group is at least 3 people
• group is unanimous
• one admires the group's status
• one had made no prior commitment
• the person is observed

Reasons For Conformity

• Normative Social Influence - a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disappointment

• Information Social Influence - one's willingness to accept other's opinions about reality
• Obedience
• Social Facilitation - improved performance of tasks in the presence of others

• Social Loafing - tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable
• Deindividuation- the loss of self-awareness and self restraint occurring in groups that foster arousal and anonymity

• Groupthink - the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision making group overrides common sense
• Self Fulfilling Prophecy - Occurs when one person's belief about another leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to confirm the belief