TASK 1: Revision Exercise (Social Influence Scenarios)
Part a.
a. In the UEFA Champions League football matches, each player tends to put more effort so that to outshine a player from the opposing team playing in the same position, as fans cheer them.
b. My first occasion to stand in front of a vast multitude was at lower primary to present a song. The audience made me scared and lowered my self-esteem to the extent of failing to perform as expected.
c. Ray Williams, the President of Ray Williams Associates on his post in the Financial Post on 12th April 2012, indicated that productivity could be hindered by teamwork especially when we believe collaboration is based on infatuation rather than reality (Williams, 2012).
d. I once forgot to carry a handkerchief to a movie theater, and I had a running nose. It happened that I sneezed uncouthly. My neighbors seemed irritated but didn't say any word.
e. The accusations propelled towards Russia by European Union, and the US is due to their failure to restore peace in Syria and Ukraine during the anti-terrorist operation. These countries use Russia as a scapegoat as explained in the stalkerzone.org. (Richardson, 2017).
Part b.
a. The case illustrated for players participating in the UEFA Champions league presents social facilitation. The final results of a team are in most cases dependent on the performance of the players. Therefore, players in one side work harder and try to outshine players from the opposing team. Similarly, the continuous cheering by the fans motivates the players, therefore, enabling them to work harder to win the match. This means that the performance of each player is dependent on co-action effects as well as audience effects. Co-action effects are provided by opponents while the audience effect is provided by fans.
b. Social inhibition occurs when someone feels restrained in their behavior when around others for fear of being judged (McCarty, 2017, p.165). It can be termed as the conscious avoidance of a situation that entails a person interacting with others. The reason why I felt naïve when presenting the song was due to the fear of being judged by the multitude, especially dignitaries who were present. Researchers indicate that appearance, behavior, reasons, and social interactions are the reasons behind one developing social inhibition (McCarty, 2017, p.165). Social inhibition causes an individual to have detrimental characteristics and be afraid, especially when they become too quiet or rude.
c. The post by Ray Williams on the Financial Posts concerning members developing a tendency of putting fewer efforts within a group is a psychological phenomenon referred to as social loafing. Whenever people are working as a group, there are times when some group members lack to put more efforts as required. Psychologists have tried to come up with various explanations concerning this scenario which includes a lack of motivation, diffusion of responsibility, expectations from the group, and size of the group (Cherry, 2017). For instance, members in a small group tend to feel much more critical compared to members of a larger group.
d. There are occurrences whereby people tend to have a misconception of others' values or beliefs. An example is when I sneezed uncouthly while at the Movie Theater. Despite my neighbor getting irritated by my action, he couldn't alter a word because he probably feared the other people present would make fun of him. What he didn't know was that my behavior had disguised many people, but none was brave enough to speak up first. This tendency is known as pluralistic estimation. It is a situation whereby most people reject a behavior privately but assume that the other members of the group have accepted it, therefore accepting it also.
e. Presence of EU and the US troops in Syria and Ukraine was meant to flush out terrorists and enable Israel to expand its territories. However, their mission was not possible because of the existence and mushrooming of radical groups. This made EU and the US start blaming Russia for supporting the terrorist groups. EU and the US planned to sell this narrative since they have failed in their mission, to secure a safe exit from Ukraine and Syria. This scenario in psychology is known as the diffusion of responsibility. The EU is less likely to take responsibility for the mess in Syria and Ukraine.
TASK 2: Reasons why People tend to Conform and be Obedient.
Introduction
Conformity and obedience are two terms that play an essential role when studying social influence. Since social control deals with a change of behavior through influence by another, either intentionally or unintentionally, understanding obedience and conformity assist us in understanding why people accept influence as well as the relationship between the changed individual and his or her influencer (PSYCHOLOGIST WORLD, 2018). Conformity is responsible for the sense of belonging and esteem as an individual tends to find acceptance and friendship from others. It is best explained through normative social influence as well as informational social influence. There are three types of conformity namely compliance, identification, and internalization. Since conformity deals with social roles, it is possible to be influenced by variables such as unanimity, task difficulty, as well as group size.
Obedience, on the other hand, is a form of social influence that allows an individual to respond to a direct order presented by another person. There must be the presence of authority for one to act as required (Milgram, 1963, p. 371). According to Milgram, obedience is affected by situational variables which include proximity, uniform, and location (McLeod, 2017, p.12). He experimented with obedience and concluded that the action occurs whenever an individual yields to instructions and details provided by the authority. Similarly, an experiment by Zimbardo concurred with that performed by Milgram, and they collectively concluded that obedience was dependent on factors namely proximity, expertise, the prestige of the experimenter, and deindividuation (Lumenlearning, 2018). Obedience and conformity play an essential role in bringing sanity in sectors that provide critical services such as hospitals. In hospitals, nurses are required to follow instructions given by the doctors (authority) without challenging them.
Types of conformity
Conformity occurs in three forms namely compliance, identification, and internalization. Compliance is a situation whereby an individual tends to agree with the majority, although holding a disagreement privately so that to be socially accepted (McLeod, 2017, p.2). It is merely a shallow behavior developed by an individual to seek public acceptance. For instance, when you are discussing politics with colleagues, and the majority share the same viewpoint contrary to yours, there is a high probability you will agree with their belief to receive social acceptance. Identification occurs when an individual tends to favor the demand of a particular social role although with no change of internal personal views. Zimbardo's experiment on prisoners presents a good example of this type of conformity (McLeod, 2017, p.7). Similarly, individuals in professions such as police, teaching tend to have identification type of conformity. Lastly, internalization appears as the deepest level of conformity since an individual tends to adopt beliefs of a certain group into own self-belief system. It is conformity whereby those with little knowledge pertaining to a given concept tend to concur with the majority since they cannot challenge the majority's position.
Conformity and Social Influence
As indicated earlier, conformity involves the change in behavior as a response to social pressure. The social influence may either be due to normative, informational, or identification depending on the social role involved. Whereas normative social influence biases decisions to promote social acceptance, informational social influence provides a platform for the provision of accurate responses (Raymond J. Dolan, 2015).
Normative social influence
Normative social influence is an act that involves changing one's behavior with a desire to be liked and fit within a specific social group (McLeod, 2017, p.3). It consists of conforming to receive acceptance in a social group. It is a requirement in normative social influence for individuals to some degree of agreement in behaviors, rules, and morals to minimize eruption of conflicts. For instance, when we find people queuing at a bus stop, it is because they want to conform to the social norms. Also, normative social influence makes drivers stick to their sides, either right or left, depending on traffic rules provided by their country. However, there is still the likelihood of them behaving independently and becoming non-compliant. An important observation is that people who are mostly influenced by this social concept have low-esteem, and can easily be controlled by others (Rosielombardi, 2014).
Informational social influence
In informational social influence, people tend to conform since they are in an ambiguous situation or lack knowledge. Such an individual tends to seek guidance from the group and ends up imitating the behavior of others. They believe that those whom they are emulating are more informed or they hold more accurate information. Informational conformity occurs as a result of panic-inducing situations and mostly involves internalization. Due to the requirements of this psychological concept, there is a likelihood of causing problems within society as people tend to cope with behaviors of their neighbors (Rosielombardi, 2014). For instance, a person boarding an airplane for the first time tends to imitate actions of others during the check-in process. He or she views fellow passengers as an example of the right behavior, therefore, mimicking them. Informational social influence can be categorized into two separate factors, public compliance, and private acceptance (Rosielombardi, 2014). Public compliance entails an individual copying the behavior of fellow members due to the fear of receiving rejection. Moreover, private acceptance involves an individual imitating another person due to a perception that he or she is correct. Such an individual ends up with an altered personality.
Adoption of prisoner-like behavior in Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment illustrates how individuals conform when faced with unusual circumstances. The "prisoners" had no alternative than to conform to the prisoner-like behavior in the simulated prison environment to avoid rejection by their peers (McLeod, 2017, p.8). However, various factors influenced the conformity of prisoners and the guards. These included unanimity, group size, and the nature of the task. Not all prisoners and guards came to a consensus on the norms of the social environment. Similarly, the nature guards had a difficult job of controlling the prisoners since they all had adopted prisoner-like behaviors (McLeod, 2017, p.8).
Obedience and Social Influence
Obedience is a social influence that involves an individual following direct orders provided by an authority figure (Milgram, 1963, p. 371). Milgram's experiment that examined the conflict between personal conscience and obedience to authority focused on determining whether the people would obey legitimate authority figures when provided with instruction to commit atrocities to fellow humans (Milgram, 1963, p. 371). The results he obtained enabled him to conclude that people can do anything without questioning as long as it is a directive from a person of higher status. Obedience can be explained using concepts such as the agentic state and social support (Milgram, 1963, p. 371). Agentic state explains that people tend to obey authority since they believe that those of higher profile are ready to take responsibility in case the directive given bears consequences. For instance, soldiers during deployment provide their services without fear since they believe it's the government that protects them against any critics. Similarly, social support as illustrated by Asch can make an individual either increase or decrease obedience (McLeod, 2017, p.5). For instance, the presence of a dissident brings the radicalization of individuals, therefore making them follow their own decisions and reject those given by authority figures.
Conclusion
Obedience and conformity play essential roles in social influence psychology. They provide important concepts that can be utilized when we want to influence behavior in individuals. In my opinion, it is hard to live without consulting these psychological concepts in our day to day activities. Similarly, the social changes we experience in our social groups or societies occur due to social influence processes. Although both concepts contribute a lot to social influence, conformity focuses mainly on altering the behavior to allow individuals to fit in a group while obedience deals with following orders given by an authority figure. These distinct differences make the two concepts unique.
Bibliography
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Williams, R. (2012). Productivity often hindered by teamwork. Financial Post, 12 April.
