Chapter 9 Of Textbook

Question 1

Homophony

Answer 1

The tendency for people to associate disproportionately with people who are like them

Question 2

Social influence

Answer 2

The many ways people affect one another, including changes in attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and behavior resulting from the comments, actions, or even the mere presence of others

Question 3

Conformity

Answer 3

Changing one’s behavior or beliefs in response to explicit or implicit pressure (real or imagined) from others

Question 4

Compliance

Answer 4

Responding favorably to an explicit request by another person

Question 5

Obedience

Answer 5

In an unequal power relationship, submitting to the demands of the person in authority

Question 6

Ideomotor action

Answer 6

The phenomenon whereby merely thinking about a behavior makes performing it more likely

Question 7

Informational social influence

Answer 7

The influence of other people that results from taking their comments or actions as a source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective

Question 8

Solomon Asch

Answer 8

A pioneer of conformity research, Asch studied the effect of normative social influence

Question 9

Normative social influence

Answer 9

The influence of other people that comes from the desire to avoid their disapproval and other social sanctions (ridicule, barbs, ostracism)

Question 10

Internalization

Answer 10

Private acceptance of a proposition, orientation, or ideology

Question 11

Norm of reciprocity

Answer 11

A norm dictating that people should provide benefits to those who benefit them

Question 12

Reciprocal concessions technique

Answer 12

A compliance approach that involves asking someone for a very large favor that will certainly be refuses and then following that request with one for a smaller favor (which tends to be seen as a concession the target feels compelled to honor)

Question 13

Foot-in-the-door-technique

Answer 13

A compliance approach that involves making an initial request with which nearly everyone complies, followed by a larger request involving the real behavior of interest

Question 14

Why does a positive mood tend to increase our compliance?

Answer 14

Our mood colors how we interpret events and it feels good to feel good, so we typically want that feeling to last as long as possible

Question 15

Negative state relief hypothesis

Answer 15

The idea that people engage in certain actions, such as agreeing to a request, to relieve their negative feelings and feel better about themselves

Question 16

Descriptive norm

Answer 16

The behavior exhibited by most people in a given context

Question 17

Prescriptive norm

Answer 17

The way a person is supposed to behave in a given context; also called injunctive norm

Question 18

Reactance theory

Answer 18

The idea that people reassert their prerogatives in response to the unpleasant state of arousal they experience when they believe their freedoms are threatened

Question 19

What Is Social Influence?

Answer 19

There are three types of social influence. Conformity involves a change in a person’s attitudes or behavior in response to explicit or implicit pressure from others. Compliance involves going along with explicit requests made by others. Obedience is submitting to the demands of a person in authority.

Question 20

What are reasons why people conform?

Answer 20

People sometimes conform because of informational social influence: they view the actions of others as informative about what is correct or proper. People also conform because of normative social influence: they conform with others to avoid disapproval and other social sanctions.

Question 21

What does conformity pressure depend on?

Answer 21

Conformity pressure depends on group characteristics.
The larger the size, the greater the group’s influence, but only up to about four people. Unanimous groups exert more pressure to conform than those with even a single dissenter. The greater the expertise and status of the group members, the greater their influence.

Question 22

T/F: People from interdependent cultures are more likely to conform than people from independent cultures.

Answer 22

True

Question 23

What do reason-based approaches to compliance include?

Answer 23

Reason-based approaches to compliance include invoking the norm of reciprocity by doing a favor for someone who then feels obligated to do a favor for you in return or by making a concession and using the reciprocal concessions technique (door-in-the-face technique) to get the target person to make a concession as well. With the foot-in-the-door technique, a person first gets someone to agree to a small request before making a more substantial request.

Question 24

What do emotion-based approaches to compliance include?

Answer 24

Emotion-based approaches to compliance include getting the targeted person in a good mood, which is likely to increase compliance because of mood maintenance and because of the influence of the good mood on how the request is interpreted.

Question 25

T/F: Compliance may also result from a desire for negative state relief

Answer 25

True

Question 26

What do descriptive norms and prescriptive norms indicate?

Answer 26

Descriptive norms indicate how people actually behave in specific contexts, and prescriptive norms indicate how people should behave in various situations. To get people to adhere to a prescriptive norm, the two should not be pitted against each other.

Question 27

The study of obedience has been dominated by the Milgram experiments which demonstrated…

Answer 27

the surprising willingness of most people to go along with the seemingly harmful demands of an authority.

Question 28

Participants in obedience studies are caught in a conflict between two opposing forces: ________ ______ _______ and ______ _________.

Answer 28

normative social influence; moral imperatives

Question 29

Although Milgram’s results strike nearly everyone as wildly counterintuitive, they can be rendered less surprising by considering that most participants made (ineffective) attempts to terminate the experiment, the experimenter took responsibility for what was happening (chus alleviating the participants’ sense of responsibility for what they were doing).

What did this catch the participants in?

Answer 29

the participants were caught on a “slippery slope” because of the stepwise nature of the demands.

Question 30

T/F: Women tend to conform more than men, but both men and women conform less in domains in which they have less knowledge.

Answer 30

False, Women tend to conform more than men, but both men and women conform MORE in domains in which they have less knowledge.

Question 31

What two reasons appear to explain why people so often mimic one another?

Answer 31

The two explanations for mimicry are as follows:
Because of ideomotor action, we are more likely to do something if it pops into our mind by virtue of witnessing someone else do it. (2) Mimicry enhances rapport and prepares us to have smooth interactions.

Question 32

Suppose your dining hall is having a contest, and you have to guess how many gumballs are in a giant jar (the closest guess wins) You and a few friends walk up to the gumball jar and tell your guesses to the volunteer running the contest. Your friends all say their guesses out loud, and you go last. You find yourself increasing your gumball estimate to be closen to those of your friends. How could each type of social influence (normative and normational) have affected your guess? How could you reduce the normative social influence in this situation?

Answer 32

Given that you’re making a judgment about something uncertain (there’s not an obvious right answer), you may have used your friends’ guesses as a useful source of information, helping you arrive at a judgment that seemed more accurate; this is informational social influence. But given that you’re also stating these judgments publicly, there is pressure to state a judgment that is similar to those of your friends, so you won’t be seen as odd or clucless; this is normative social influence. You could reduce the normative social influence inherent in this situation by privately submitting your answers on pieces of paper, rather than stating them out loud.

Question 33

In the battle for LGBTQ rights, what kind of social influence can minority LGBTQ groups exert on the majority? Should their goal be to engage public support or private internalization and acceptance of their arguments among members of the majority?

Answer 33

When minority groups influence majority groups to enact social change, it is typically via informational social influence, convincing members of the majority group to hear out their arguments and better understand their perspective. Luckily, informational social influence is a powerful force, one that is more likely to result in private acceptance and internalization of the minority perspective among members of the majority, which will likely aid the LGBTQ cause more in the long run.

Question 34

Suppose you want to increase voting rates among millennials (people born in the 1980s and 1990s). Describe one reason-based approach, one emotion-based approach, and one norm-based approach you could use to do so.

Answer 34

Reason-based approach: you could use foot-in-the-door technique, asking eligible voters to do small volunteering duties for the election.
Emotion-based approach: you could give away cookies on the street on clection day to induce positive emotion before reminding people to vote.
Norm-based approach: you could create flyers that highlight how many people vote in certain neighborhoods and age-groups, but you’d have to be careful nor to advertise a norm of not voting if rates were low; adding a smiling face along with the numbers could help communicate that high voting rates are desirable.

Question 35

5. In the context of the Milgram experiment, give an example of
   “tuning in the learner” and an example of “tuning out the experimenter,” and explain how each one affects obedience rates.

Answer 35

“Tuning in the learner” means heightening the salience of the learner and the consequences of the participant’s actions for the learner’s health and well-being. In contrast, “tuning out the experimenter” means reducing the salience of the experimenter. This tends to reduce the experimenter’s authority and influence over the participant, thus reducing obedience.