Social influences on the individual behaviour

Social influences on the individual behaviour

1. Power and status

   • Power and status are two different concepts. Status within a group is their position within the group, while their social power is the amount of influence the are able to exert over others
   • Zimbardo's experiement
     • Aim: To investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life
     • Hypothesis: Zimbardo didn't really have a hypothesis however he did want to know, "what happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?"
     • To summarise the findings: the participants quickly morphed their personality into the roles that they were given. Zimbardo's aim of trying to make the experiment as realistic as possible surely did the job and just hours after the start of the experiment the guards already started harassing the prisoners. The added uniforms and roles of both prisoners and guard immediately changed the participants attitudes to their role, despite their previous personalities. 
     • Just days after the experiment had began the prisoner began to feel even more traumatised and dehumanised. Some prisoners had to be let go early due to uncontrollable anger, crying and screaming. Within 6 days of the experiment begin, it was shut down due to the danger of participants being truely physically of mentally damaged. http://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html  
   • Status
     • Status as mentioned under Power and Status is the position the individual is within the group
   • Social power
     • Social power as mentioned in the topic under power and status is the influence someone within the group exert over others
     • Types of social powers
       • Reward: The ability to reward other who had followed desired behaviour Coercive: The ability to punish others for failure to comply Legitimate: Power based on acceptance of a person and an agent of established higher order
       • Referent: We want to be like the person Expert: Recognises the person has high knowledge of the field

2. Obiedence

   • Obedience is changing ones own behaviour through direct command of people of higher status and social power
   • Social influences on individual behaviour
   • Teacher and learner experiment
   • Stanley Milgram
   • Social Proximity
     • Social proximity is the social distance from one person to another. 
   • Group pressure
     • Support can greatly reduce obedience
   • Legitimacy of Authority
     • If the person giving orders is truely a person of authority, the order us more likely to be obeyed 

3. Conformity

   • Comformity is when an individual changes their behaviour as a result of real or implied pressure from others
   • Soloman Asch
     • Experiment
   • Group size
     • The larger the group the easier it is to conform or to give into, the less people there are their harder it is for someone to conform you
   • Cultural influence
     • The impact of the culture on an individuals behaviour
   • Deindividualiasation
     • To be deindividualised in to become less self conscious and less inhibited. This is the loss of social identity and inhibition, causing a person to lose responsibility for their own actions and causing them to ignore possible consequences
   • Unanimity
     • Everyone in the group agrees or does the same thing
   • Normity influence
     • The impact of the established behaviour of the group. You may have a different opinion, however you choose to follow the others response due to avoid feeling ridiculed by others
   • Social loafing
     • The tendency for an individual to reduce their efforts in a group
   • Informational Influence
     • When the social environment or situational cues are used by individuals to help them monitor or adapt their behaviour to fit with the behaviour of those around them

4. Experiments

   • Experiments

5. Group influence

   • Peer pressure
     • Actual or implied pressure from friends or others around you in order behave in a certain way
   • Risk taking behaviour