Psychology Chapter part 2 questions.
How can group interaction enable group polarization?
In group polarization, group discussions with like-minded others strengthen members' prevailing beliefs and attitudes.
How does the presence of others influence our actions, via social facilitation, social loafing, and deindividuation?
In social facilitation, the mere presence of others arouses us, improving our performance on easy or well-learned tasks but decreasing it on difficult ones. In social loafing, group work makes us feel less responsible, and we may free ride on others' efforts. When the presence of others both arouses us and makes us feel anonymous, we may experience deindividuation—loss of self-awareness and self-restraint.
How can group interaction enable groupthink?
Internet communication magnifies the effect of connecting like-minded people, for better and for worse. People find sup- port, which strengthens their ideas, but also often isolation from those with different opinions. Separation plus conversa- tion may thus lead to group polarization.
Dr. Huang, a popular music professor, delivers fascinating lectures on music history but gets nervous and makes mistakes when describing exam statistics in front of the class. Why does his performance vary by task?
3. The presence of a large audience generates arousal and strengthens Dr. Huang's most likely response: enhanced performance on a task he has mastered (teaching music history) and impaired performance on a task he finds dif- ficult (statistics).
2. In Milgram's experiments, the rate of compliance was highest when a. the "learner" was at a distance from the "teacher." b. the "learner" was close at hand. c. other "teachers" refused to go along with the experimenter. d. the "teacher" disliked the "learner."
A
1. Researchers have found that a person is most likely to conform to a group if a. the group members have diverse opinions. b. the person feels competent and secure. c. the person admires the group's status. d. no one else will observe the person's behavior.
C
In a group situation that fosters arousal and anonymity, a person sometimes loses self-consciousness and self-control. This phenomenon is called .
De individuation
When like-minded groups discuss a topic, and the result is the strengthening of the prevailing opinion, this is called
Group Polarization
When a group's desire for harmony overrides its realistic analysis of other options, has occurred.
Group Think
Sharing our opinions with like-minded others tends to strengthen our views, a phenomenon referred to as
Group polarization
What is social contagion, and how do conformity experi- ments reveal the power of social influence?
Social contagion (the chameleon effect)—our tendency to unconsciously imitate others' behavior, expressions, pos- tures, inflections, and moods—is a form of conformity. Social networks serve as contagious pathways for moods, both good and bad. Solomon Asch and others have found that we are most likely to adjust our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard when we feel incompetent or insecure, our group has at least three people, everyone else agrees, we admire the group's status and attractiveness, we have not already committed to another response, we know we are being observed, and our culture encourages respect for social standards. We may conform to gain approval (nor- mative social influence) or because we are willing to accept others' opinions as new information (informational social influence).
People tend to exert less effort when working with a group than they would alone, which is called
Social loafing
You are organizing a meeting of fiercely competitive political candidates. To add to the fun, friends have suggested handing out masks of the candidates' faces for sup- porters to wear. What phenomenon might these masks engage?
The anonymity provided by the masks, combined with the arousal of the contentious setting, might create deindividuation (lessened self-awareness -
What do the social influence studies teach us about ourselves? How much power do we have as individuals?
These experiments have demonstrated that strong social influ ences can make people conform to falsehoods or capitulate to cruelty. The power of the individual (personal control) and the power of the situation (social control) interact. A small minority that consistently expresses its views may sway the majority, as may even a single committed individual.
What is social facilitation, and why is it more likely to occur with a well-learned task?
This improved performance in the presence of others is most likely to occur with a well-learned task, because the added arousal caused by an audience tends to strengthen the most likely response. This also predicts poorer performance on a difficult task in others' presence.
