Social influence refers to the phenomenon of changes in individual thoughts, feelings and behaviors under the influence of others
Social influence includes the influence of groups on us and the influence of individuals on us
Social psychology focuses more on the influence of groups on us
What is a group? It is a collection of people who have the **** same purpose
In many cases people staying together is not necessarily a group, for example, we are all waiting for the bus, all in the same place, but the purpose is different, it is difficult to form a sense of group, if we are all watching the ball, all at school, all listening to lectures with the **** the same purpose, it is the real meaning of the group.
A herd
The group's influence on us will sometimes let us go to do some of their own less willing to do things called the herd, from the herd is not simply refers to us and everyone's behavior is the same as the herd, from the herd is in the group's pressure, individuals in the cognitive judgment, beliefs and behaviors voluntarily in the cognitive and beliefs of the majority of the people in line with the phenomenon. It is commonly known as following the crowd.
For example, although the red light is crossing the street, but see no cars, you may continue to walk, and if you see others are waiting in place not to go, you continue to run the red light will greatly reduce the possibility of you will be concerned about the views of others, do not want to be different from others and change their original behavior.
The crowd has the function of promoting the formation of society *** with the same norms *** with the same values
For example, we have to queue up to buy things, consciously abide by the rules of the road, be kind to others, and the minority obey the majority
Ancient China advocated the cultivation of the body and qijiazhi ruling the country and the world's values, and now the citizens advocate the patriotism, dedication, honesty, and friendliness of the core values.
In a herd society, individuals need to adapt to the future world in a subservient way, with a unified culture, unified folklore, unified beliefs, etc., to facilitate group communication and interaction. It makes the society more organized, which in turn leads to consistency and favors ****same-sex development.
Submissive also allows us to save time, for example, we go to Taobao to buy things, will be through the sales volume, positive feedback to choose. We go to the restaurant to eat, will look at the number of customers to choose to save our own time to choose
Types of followers
There are a lot of forms of followers
1 true followers: for example, we will be on time after dinner to participate in the neighborhood square dance, storm troopers
Because we believe that exercise is good for health, this kind of heartfelt and sincere followers, called the
The first time, we will be able to see the results of the workout, and then we can see the results.
Elderly people who believe that health products can prolong their lives are also true followers
Individuals are not only consistent with the external behavior of the group, but also believe that the group's judgments, which is a kind of consistent followers of the behavior and cognition, and there is no inner conflict
2, rights and interests from the crowd
For example, during the meeting of the unit, everyone agrees with the A plan, but you feel that option B is better, but due to the pressure of the group, temporarily conform to the group in behavior, sometimes to follow the norm of majority rule, sometimes in order to get rewards or avoid punishment. Internal and external inconsistency can lead to anxiety, cognitive dissonance
3, anti-following the crowd
For example, sometimes you will agree with the group's ideas or behavior want to go with the flow to do some things, the group's feelings of indignation, you would like to whine together, get uproarious, but consider their own status such as your status as a teacher, the unit's leadership, and can not do that. You also have to show a very rational and sober appearance on the surface.
Reasons to follow the crowd
Why do we follow the crowd?
The fear of deviation makes us follow the crowd if we do not follow the crowd will be abandoned by the majority of the people there will be a pressure to seek behavioral references, follow the crowd will not make a big mistake, the eyes of the masses are bright
1, seek behavioral references, also known as informational followers
Through other people's behavior to understand the facts and reasons for the collection of information, we are not confident enough to understand the truth and reason of the external world, we will not be able to understand the truth and reasons for the collection of information, we will not be able to understand the truth and reasons for the collection of information. The world sometimes do not have enough confidence, enough knowledge, enough to understand others can help us understand these,
Many cases are through the observation of other people's behavior to determine their own understanding and judgment. There is an experiment called the Sharif experiment to the phenomenon of autonomous movement to experiment, let the subjects to judge the darkness of the point of light moved how much, the results of the answer is an individual difference, some people think that the movement of 25 centimeters, some people think that the movement of 2.5 centimeters, and then he let the three people to form a group, a few times after the test, people reached a **** with the same valuation of the value of the group of each member of the group to comply with the valuation of this valuation, after attending the group judgment and then judged individually, the subjects still reported this valuation, which indicates that each group member accepted the result, and the 25-centimeter group assumed it was 25 centimeters.
Subordination tends to occur when the task is more difficult and the individual feels incapable of performing it, and when the individual cares about the correctness of the behavior. Stems from our desire to do the right thing.
2, Another reason for subordination is the fear of deviation. Also known as normative conformity
Wood shows in the forest and the wind will destroy it, the gun hits the head, and sometimes being different often faces strong pressure from the group. We are forced to comply with this pressure to do their own less willing to do behavior
There is an experiment to verify the existence of normative herd is the famous Ash experiment
The American psychologist Solomon Ash has recruited volunteers in the campus, claiming to do a psychological experiment on visual perception. Each group invited six volunteers, but in fact, five of them were "trustees" who conspired with Ash in advance, and only one volunteer was the real subject.
After the experiment began, Ash took out a card with a vertical line drawn on it, and then asked everyone to judge which of the three lines on the card was as long as the other one. This judgment*** was made eighteen times. In fact, the difference in the lengths of the lines was so obvious that it was easy for a normal person to make a correct judgment. However, after two normal judgments, the five "trustees" intentionally gave a wrong answer in unison. Then they all looked at the real volunteers together. How would the deluded volunteers react? Many volunteers become confused, do they firmly believe in their own eyesight, or do they say an answer that is the same as the others, but which they think is incorrect in their own minds? After several questions in a row, the volunteers completely discarded the correct answer. Seventy-five percent of the volunteers were biased by the "trustees" and made at least one herd error.
When it was over, the volunteer realized what had happened, and said, "I knew they were wrong, but everyone chose b, and I was the only one who chose c, and I didn't want to look too different, so I went with them.
The great cost of deviating from the group can cause one to conform to the group against one's will, or at least to suppress one's opposing views. Deviating from the group is painful, and there is often an emotional cost if we deviate from the group norm. Normative influence stems from our desire to be liked by others.
Factors affecting submissiveness
In what situations do people exhibit submissive behavior? Who is more likely to exhibit herd behavior? Which people are more likely to resist pressure to follow the herd behavior?
Group factors
1, the consistency of group members
When the more consistent the cognitive judgment of the group members, the greater the pressure to follow the crowd
In the Ash experiment, if there is a person and the volunteer's judgment is the same, and there is just one is with us *** with the same understanding of the confederates, our pressure to follow the crowd will become smaller.
2. The greater the cohesion of the group, the stronger the attraction to the individual, and the easier it is for the individual to follow the herd. This is why advertisers spare no expense to hire famous stars to do it. If the group members are more important to us, they are our classmates, friends and superiors and subordinates, then the more our behavior will be influenced by them, if the group is randomly formed, other people are not so important to us, the pressure on us to follow the herd will be much smaller.
The most extreme example is the Cultural Revolution, when new China was just founded and group cohesion was particularly high, with the Great Leap Forward and the Great Steelmaking. Even if everyone psychologically feel wrong bad but all follow.
3, the size of the group
A certain range of group size will increase the increase in people's herd behavior, the critical value of the group size is 3 to 4 people
1-2 people are less likely to be followed by the herd 3-4 people to follow the increase in herd behavior, and more than this range is not obvious, not sure.
3-4 people produce the maximum degree of subordination, beyond which the increase in subordinate behavior is not obvious.
It was Ash who discovered that when he got 3-4 people to be trustees, the percentage of followers increased, and when he got 10 people it was instead insignificant, and volunteers became skeptical.
Individual personality factors
In the group to become a minority of those who are different, it is really not easy, in the Ahi experiment, there are still 24% of the people, adhere to their own judgments, did not follow the crowd
You go your sunny way, I go my one-way street,
1, self-evaluation of the higher, the more independence of the people who have fewer followers of the herd behavior the less,
2, the lower the self-evaluation of the individual, the higher the individual dependence is easy to follow the crowd.
3, cultural background
Eastern culture emphasizes collectivist behavioral tendencies, the pressure to follow the crowd, more likely to be influenced by others
Western emphasis on individualistic behavioral tendencies, the pressure to follow the crowd will be less
For example, this outbreak of our country's preventive and control measures to implement more effectively, we are more compliant with the social norms, such as going out to wear a mask, and people to maintain a social distance, not congregating, etc. While not following the crowd can help with creative problem solving, it's the group effort that makes a difference in the face of a crisis.
4, gender, intelligence and other factors also have a certain influence, but have not found a clear relationship between these factors and follow the crowd of deterministic
Social psychology attaches importance to the power of social pressure, but also pay attention to the power of human beings, we are not passive puppets, when the social coercion has become too high-profile and attention-grabbing, people will often show rebelliousness
To restore a sense of freedom, the blatantly obvious, and to restore a sense of freedom. When social coercion becomes too high-profile and visible, people often show a rebellious streak - the motivation to brazenly defy coercive forces in order to regain a sense of freedom, as in Romeo and Juliet. It is uncomfortable to deviate too far from the group, but we also don't want to conform too much to the others, so we act in that way that asserts our uniqueness and individuality, and it is in the group that we are most likely to realize our uniqueness, and we seek not only uniqueness, but uniqueness that is ethical, and we seek uniqueness that is not only distinctive, but also better than the crowd<
We cannot make value judgments about the merits of following the crowd in an absolute sense; we have to balance our need for self-reliance with our need for attachment, our privacy with our public ****, our personal identity with our social identity.
Social facilitation versus social slacking
The influence of groups can manifest itself in a number of ways, and there are times when the mere presence of others can influence us, and the presence of others can make us do things a little more positively, a little more efficiently, and a little more quickly.
The psychologist M. Triplett (1897) conducted an experiment in which he asked subjects to complete a 25-kilometer ride on a bicycle in three contexts. The first was a solo ride timed to show an average speed of 24 miles per hour (1 British hour = 1.61 kilometers); the second with someone running to accompany you averaged 31 miles per hour; and the third while riding at the same time as other cyclists averaged 32.5 miles per hour. He found that the presence of others or group activities significantly promotes the efficiency of people's behavior. This phenomenon is called social facilitation or social facilitation.
There are two effects of social facilitation
1The companionship effect
If you are working, next to your favorite friend of the opposite sex to accompany you, you are not dry more energetic, as the saying goes, men and women work together. Students write homework together faster than alone. Because the individual will feel the pressure of social comparison, which will increase the efficiency of work.
2 Audience effect
For example, the cheering and shouting of the audience will stimulate the morale of the players
The psychologist Robert suggested that arousal promotes a dominant response, which is an action that has already been learned and mastered quite skillfully, and which can be performed without thinking. For example, riding a bicycle, winding a fishing line...
Since the presence of another person triggers a state of arousal, the efficiency of a simple task can be increased. On the other hand, if an unskilled, learning, or cerebral individual completes the task, which requires concentration and a series of complex reasoning and judgmental thought processes, the presence of another person, on the contrary, can have a interference effect, so that the efficiency of their activities. For example, if the teacher is standing next to you, you will be less efficient in answering questions.
The first thing you need to know is how to use the computer to make sure you're getting the best out of it.
? So is the power of many really great? : We all know the story of the three monks: a monk picking water to eat, two monks carry water to eat, three monks have no water to eat. Why is it that more people are less efficient instead?
French engineer Ringelmann 1913, the efficiency of the horse-drawn carriage survey, she found that two horses together to pull a carriage efficiency is not twice the efficiency of a horse, this result surprised him, so he will extend the investigation to humans, he let many people together to pull a rope to measure the strength of each person released, he found that the two people together to pull a rope, on average, each person will be invested in the force He found that when two people pulled a rope together, each person would put in an average of 93% of the force, if three people pulled together, each person would put in 85%, and when eight people pulled together, each person would be left with only 49% of the force they had put in. He put this individual in the group less effort phenomenon known as "social slack", that is, we often say "grinding work, hitchhiking".
Social slacking is not only in physical efficiency, but also in mental slacking, for example, the larger the team at a meeting, the lower the level of our personal involvement. We won't be as focused, and we might just go off on the occasional tangent, what am I going to cook for dinner at home tonight? What am I going to wear to the party tonight? ...
Crowds can make each other dependent and slack off. When there are a lot of people, we think that if we use half of our strength, we won't draw attention to ourselves, so why do we need to use all of our strength?
So when do groups make us more active and when do they make us slack off?
Psychologists have found that social facilitation and social slacking are like two sides of the same coin, and at the very core of it is the presence or absence of evaluation. If there is evaluation, we tend to become facilitated, and if there is no evaluation, we tend to become slack.
For example, would you put the same effort into a solo performance as you would into a choral performance?
? Solo you become the center of attention the audience is watching you, this is when your individual effort can be evaluated individually, you consciously monitor your behavior, evaluation scruples are enhanced, and social facilitation occurs. And when you disappear into the crowd during the chorus, your individual efforts can't be individually evaluated, and evaluative scruples are diminished. Social slacking occurs.
? Secondly, social slack is also related to the weakening of the sense of responsibility, once the individual is in the group, more or less will go to personalization, our identity is hidden in the group, the sense of responsibility will also decline, making the enthusiasm and efficiency is also reduced.
Third, we know the causes of social slack, how to reduce social slack?
Let's start with an example: when I first joined the work, the management of the unit is to eat a pot of rice mode, income distribution, do more or less the same, do good or bad are the same. Depending on the self-consciousness, some people to the busy time will not see the shadow of the people. Make the real work will be more hard, over time, we are psychologically unbalanced, are not active, but also affect the unity of colleagues. The department would like to carry out some new projects, but also can not carry out, we feel that to carry out new projects have to work more, the income will not increase, are not motivated. Later, the unit carried out a reform, each position are clear specific responsibilities, and quantitative, workload and income linked to more work, less work, less income, after the reform of the mobilization of everyone's motivation, the previous grind of the person instead of becoming the most active one.
Another example: before the child to write homework old dawdling, especially the weekend half-day homework, a day to write not finished, inefficient, for which I often urge him, reasoning, arguing are ineffective. Then I let him put each homework according to the amount of homework budget time, and then calculate the total time of homework, the provisions of the budget time to finish, early homework, the rest of the time by his own free to dispose of. As a result, the efficiency of writing homework has greatly improved.
? From the above example, we can see that to reduce social slack we need to highlight the efficiency of individuals as much as possible, so that individual homework results can be identified, quantified, and evaluated, so that everyone realizes that more will get more, and individuals will be more willing to work hard, and motivation will increase.
When the task is challenging, the degree of slackness of group members will also diminish. For example, in a relay race, everyone will think that their part of the effort is essential, and they can't drag the team down by dropping the chain themselves. All everyone will give their best effort. Individuals in small groups will also consider themselves essential, so controlling the size of the team is also a way to do this.
? For example: We have 50 people in this psychosocial service teacher training class, formed a weibo group, required every homework to be sent to the group, at first I was quite active, every time after the class on time to complete the homework. Slowly, I was less likely to send my assignments on time, thinking that with so many people, I wouldn't be able to tell if I sent my assignments a day or two late, so I started to be lazy and procrastinate a lot. If we divide these people into 10 groups of 5, then who did not send homework on which day is clear, I think the phenomenon of procrastination of homework will be reduced.
Third, imitation, suggestion and social contagion
Imitation: is in the absence of external pressure conditions, the individual affected by others to imitate others, is the same or similar phenomenon and others.
For example, celebrities are often imitated in their dress, and in recent years, the state has introduced a number of moral models, which have the power of example to be imitated by the public.
The significance of imitation:
1, imitation is the basis of learning
Children especially like to imitate, imitate adults to speak, tone of voice, imitation of television, advertising in the image of the characters, which is a way of learning and self-development. When my child was small he liked to watch the cartoon "Bear", and for a long time he imitated the tone of Bear's voice. It was all about how I am, how I am. The way of using chopsticks is also exactly the same as me. They say whoever's child is like who.