Social psychology second exam summary (UvA social and organizational psychology, first year, second semester)

SP II
Norms conformity
Social norms: Implicit/explicit rules that govern the behaviors, values,
and beliefs of group members
- Social category groups share common features like gender or
interests but may not interact much
- Face-to-face groups (such as sports teams or lab groups), interact
directly to achieve common goals
Injunctive norms: Rules about how people are supposed to behave
- Connotes approval or disapproval by group
- Again, implicit, or explicit
Descriptive norms: How people actually behave
- Based on observations of people around you, no explicit instructions

Social roles: Shared expectations by group members about how
particular people or sub-groups in the group are supposed to behave
o Clearly divided and defined social roles, allow people to
perform functions effectively
o But they are restrictive and they perpetuate inequality
sometimes

- Why we form social norms:
o Belonging: Societal-Value Perspective
 Foster group cohesion (belonging)
 Norms are culturally relativistic and arbitrary
 Arbitrary norms are established and internalized
 Sanctions are established to reinforce norms

o Mastery: Functional Perspective
 Content of norms are not arbitrary, but confer survival
advantage
Norms = Functionality (Mastery) + Group Differences (Belonging)

o Integrative perspective: (on why we form social norms)
 Norms emerge due to fundamental challenges to
survival
 Manifestation of norms will differ by culture
 Examples:
o Relationship status signals
o Greeting




- How we form social norms

,  We are influenced by the ideas, emotions, and behavior
of others
Within groups
Group polarization: Tendency for group decisions to be more extreme
than those made by individuals
- Direction of polarization depends on one’s initial inclination (group
discussion shifts initial inclination)
o Especially true of homogenous groups
- Superficial processing (relying on others' positions) and
systematic processing (attending to both positions and
arguments) can contribute to group polarization

Dynamic Social Impact Theory (DSIT): Individuals influence each other
primarily through interactions, leading to clusters of like-minded people
- Majority arguments are exaggerated:
o More people (majority) hold that argument and everyone
gives information about it
o They are more discussed
o They seem more compelling (people making the same
argument gives it extra impact)
o Presented as being more compelling
- People oriented in social space that allows for interactions and
mutual influence causes DSIT process resulting in clustering
- Clustering especially strong for more important attitudes
o We talk about the important attitudes more
o We are motivated to be “better than average” in the attitudes
we find more important

Conformity: Change in behavior due to real OR imagined influence of
other people
- Neither inherently positive nor negative (depends on culture and
situation)

Different forms of Conformity:
- Public compliance
o Doing what others are doing
o Problem: Inferring the injunctive norms
 Pluralistic ignorance: Everyone publicly complies
without private acceptance but then THINKS everyone
else privately accepts the norm
- Private acceptance
 Genuinely believe that copied thoughts, beliefs, and
actions are correct and should be copied

These forms can cause:
o Fear of repercussion
 Due to normative influence
 Solomon Asch’s “line study” (going with the group even
though the answer is obviously different)

, o False consensus effect
 Tendency to overestimate others’ agreement with one’s
own opinions
 Consensus is based on our reference group (who we
think is the appropriate source to get our information
from)
 Groups we share attributes with (we trust them
more)
 Relying on biases and heuristics

Motivations for conformity:
- Normative influence (belonging)
o Conform so that we are liked and accepted by others (relies
on social acceptance and our social identity)
o Relies on:
 Wanting to be liked
 Desire for companionship
 Conjunctive norms
o Important aspects:
 Failure to comply: Ridicule, punishment, exclusion
 Can be with groups consisting of people we don’t even
know
o Public compliance OR private acceptance

- Informative influence (information)
o Conforming to other’s behavior due to belief that other’s
interpretations of ambiguous situations is correct
 We belief that other people can help us construct
appropriate reality (we accept privately to maintain
mastery of reality)
 Disagreement causes us confusion and loss of reality
o Mundane situations to extraordinary situations
o More likely to conform due to:
 Ambiguous situation
 Crisis situation
 Experts present
o Relies on:
 Descriptive norms
o Public compliance AND private acceptance

Negative consequence norm following and consensus:
Groupthink: Faulty decisions group make because consensus is prioritized
over correctness
- Function of:
o Highly cohesive group
o Social pressure to reach consensus
o Consensus more important than critical scrutiny of
important issues

, - Irving Janis’ (1972) model of groupthink:




- Preventing groupthink
o Leader refrains from expressing own opinions at the
beginning
o Group must not be isolated from external input
o Designate group members to play devil’s advocate
o Create subgroups that meet before the meeting to come up
with different recommendations
o Seek anonymous opinions

Cultural tightness versus looseness:
- Tight cultures
o Strong expectations of adherence to social norms
o Little tolerance for deviance
 History of threats in the environment produce higher
tightness
 Extreme climate
 Natural disasters
 Less natural recourses
 Poverty
 History of diseases
 More summiting (team work) but also more deaths
(groupthink)
- Loose cultures
o Fewer expectations for conformity
o May encourage new forms of behavior