Hefty Hardware

Chapter 7 - Social Influence

THIS CHAPTER WILL DISCUSS:

1. How group decisions often tend to be more extreme than individual decisions.

2. How proposals relating to social influence explain this tendency.

3. How group discussion can promote or discourage members' acceptance of proposals.

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, we shift attention from the issues of conformity and deviance, which concern group structure, and focus on the process of social influence, which occurs when group interaction causes members to conform.

We partially discussed social influence in Chapter 6. In many experiments that we have examined so far, however, group interaction was artificial. For instance, in some of the studies by Asch and by Sherif, interaction was limited to the expression of choices. In other experiments, also by Asch and by Moscovici and Schachter, interaction was artificial because the "choices" of confederates were not subject to group influence. These contrived circumstances hide insights about the process of social influence. Here, we look at studies that examine more natural group interaction. We can learn more about social influence by studying these naturally interacting groups.

We will look at decisions that naturally interacting groups make and then turn to proposals that account for this behavior. All these proposals relate to the process of social influence.

Natural Group Situations Versus Contrived Situations

We have stated that test groups can interact artificially or naturally. This distinction influences our ability to study the concept of social influence.

When groups are contrived, as in the experiment of Asch that we discussed earlier, interaction is not natural. One reason why Asch's groups were artificial was that social influence could occur in only one direction. The majority could, and often did, influence the deviant. The deviant, however, could never influence the majority because the majority was made up of confederates who had...