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Summary Social Psychology Part 2
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This is an elaborated summary of the last 7 chapters of the book Social Psychology by Smith, Mackie and Claypool. It contains all the content of the last 7 chapters.
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Summary Social Psychology (book and lecture notes), ISBN: 9781848728943 Introduction to Social Psychology
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Chapter 9Norms and conformity
Conformity: Movement of thoughts, feelings and behavior towards a social norm.
● Forced conformity, voluntary conformity, functional conformity.
Conformity to social norms
What are social norms?: When people talk about “a well-known fact”, “public opinion” or
“the way we do things”, they talk about social norms.
● Descriptive social norms: Mental representations of what others think, feel and do.
● Prescriptive (injunctive) social norms: Explicit (laws) and / or implicit
(unwritten) → should think, feel and do.
Development of social norms:
● People are influenced by the ideas, emotions and behavior of others.
● Experiment students living home or at campus (Newcomb): Interaction between
individuals makes their thoughts, feelings and behaviors (in this study political view)
more similar.
● Autokinetic illusion (Sheriff): Dark room, one dot, dot “moves” → people see
difference in movement → later they conform to same centimetres of
movement.
● Length judgments (Asch): 8 confederates, 1 participant → most
confederates judge length of a line wrong on purpose → participants
conforms.
Public versus private conformity:
● Public conformity: Behavior consistent with social norms that are not privately
accepted.
● Private conformity: Private acceptance of social norms.
Conformity and culture: Surprising that high levels of conformity found in individualist
cultures that put such high value on individual autonomy. Conformity seen much more
positively in collectivist cultures because they see themselves as part of a group and see
conformity as social glue.
Motivational functions of conformity to norms
Expecting consensus: We expect everyone to see the world the same way.
● False consensus: Overestimating others’ agreement with one’s own opinions,
characteristics and behaviors.
● We usually expect to see the world the same way others do → gives
confidence.
Norms fulfil mastery motives: Informational influence → group norms are privately
accepted to achieve or maintain mastery of reality.
● Especially when the situation is ambiguous, you are uncertain about yourself or when
a large number of people does it.
Norms fulfil connectedness motives: Normative influence → when members
conform to attain a positive and valued social identity → satisfies our needs for
connectedness. Fear of being ridiculed and pain of social exclusion → ostracism.
● Wanting to be part of the group and not be ridiculed.
, ● Cyberball (Williams): Online game where ball is thrown between players →
at certain point you’re excluded.
○ Increased heart-rate and blood pressure.
○ FMRI-scans show pattern similar to physical pain.
Me and mine norms are the ones that count: People expect to agree with those who
share attributes relevant to the judgment at hand → reference group. People are far
more affected by social influence from in-group than out-group members.
● To who do we conform?
○ Simple skills → everyone.
○ Complex skills → similar others.
○ Social and personal judgements → peers.
● We conform to relevant reference groups:
○ More shared features → more identifications → more cohesion →
more impact by the group.
Mastery, connectedness or me and mine?: Particular circumstances can make one
motive more important than another, but agreeing with in-groups fulfils mastery,
connectedness and me and mine.
How groups form norms: Processes of social influence
Group polarization: A group’s initial average position becomes more extreme following
group interaction.
Explaining polarized norm formation:
● Superficial processing: Consensus is sufficient for persuasion → we want to
represent the group norm.
○ When undecided members of a group adopt the majority consensus, average
position moves toward the extreme.
○ People often want to be the best possible members of their group, leads to
adoption of extreme positions.
● Systematic processing: More majority arguments → shared more, because
lower likelihood of counterarguments → expressed with more confidence.
○ Majority arguments are more numerous: Greater number people who
hold viewpoint → more numerous arguments favoring that position
is likely to be.
○ Majority arguments are discussed more: When people think that others
share their views, they are more likely to express them.
, ○ Majority arguments seem more compelling: When several people
make same argument, it has extra impact → familiarity when heard
several times.
○ Majority arguments are presented more compellingly: Majority
arguments are presented in ways that make them particularly
persuasive → expressed faster and with more confidence.
Extreme forms of polarization, cults: Groups that distance themselves from an
original group based on different views about how the belief should be
interpreted. Authoritarian, dominant and charismatic leadership styles → self-
appointed.
● Peoples temple & Jonestown: Town where only people from the cult lived.
Congressman came by → people let him know they wanted to leave. Cult
leader found out and killed congressman and all 909 people from the cult
tried to kill themselves.
● Informational and normative: Cult gives solution to all problems and
provides a strong sense of belonging → extreme conformity to norms.
Undermining true consensus
When consensus seeking goes awry:
● Consensus without consideration: If people skip careful consideration of the
evidence, the consensus they contribute to is not trustworthy.
○ Solution: groups need to in carefully processing available evidence and
alternatives and encourage dissenting perspectives and points of view.
● Consensus without independence: When people reaching a consensus might
have been influenced and thus contaminated one another’s views power is reduced.
○ Solution: Intentionally selection group membership for diversity →
seeing problems in different ways and advocate different solutions.
● Consensus without acceptance: When people publicly support norms that they do
not privately accept as correct.
■ Pluralistic ignorance: When everyone publicly conforms to an
apparent norm that no one in fact privately accepts.
○ Solution: Public votes should be the exception rather than the rule.
Consensus seeking at its worst, groupthink: Group decision making that is impaired by
the drive to reach consensus regardless of how the consensus is formed.
Minority influence
Successful minority influence:
● Offering an alternative consensus: Influences when minority …
○ Cohesive subgroup → when agreeing among group, likely to sway
majority.
○ Consistent over time → majorities are hardly ever swayed
immediately.
● Negotiating similarity and difference: When the minority agrees with majority on
other topics than the on.
● Promoting systematic processing: If the majority becomes uncertain about their
own convictions.
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