The Social Context
Psychologists working the Sociocultural perspective explore psychological questions by examining the individual in a social context.
The social side of this perspective, which includes the specialties of social psychology and industrial/organizational psychology, focuses on the social and situational influences on behavior, thoughts, and feelings.
Norms and roles place powerful constraints on human behavior, and role requirements can cause a person to behave in ways that violate his or her feelings, personal wishes, and sense of self.
Roles And Rules
People obey orders to avoid being punished, to show respect for authority, and to gain advantages.
Even when they would rather not obey, they may do so because they have a strong respect for authority and regard its decisions as legitimate, thereby absolving themselves of responsibility for their actions; Because the role is routinized into duties that are performed mindlessly; Because they are embarrassed to break the rules of good manners and lack the words to protest; Or because they have been entrapped.
Groups that are strongly cohesive, are isolated from other views, are under outside pressure, and have strong leaders are vulnerable to groupthink, the tendency of group members to think alike, censor themselves, actively suppress disagreement, and feel that their decisions are invulnerable.
Groupthink often produces faulty decisions because group members fail to seek disconfirming evidence for their ideas.
Groups can be structured to counteract groupthink.
Deindividuation increases when people feel anonymous, as in a large group or crowd, or when they are wearing masks or uniforms.
In some situations, crowd norms lead deindividuated people to behave aggressively, but in others, crowd norms foster helpfulness.
The willingness to speak up for an unpopular opinion, blow the whistle on illegal or immoral practices, or help someone in trouble (altruism) is partly a matter of personal belief and conscience.
Several social and situational factors are also important such as:
Seeing a need for help, which increases when there are few environmental stimuli to attend.
Deciding to take responsibility, which increases when there are few situational risks of independent action.
Deciding that the costs of not doing anything are greater than the costs of getting involved.
Becoming entrapped in a commitment to help or dissent.
Social Influences On Belief
The fundamental attribution error occurs when people overestimate personality traits as a cause of behavior and underestimate the influence of the situation.
A self-serving bias allows people to excuse their mistakes by blaming the situation yet take credit for their good deeds.
The belief that the world is fair and that people get what they deserve (the just-world hypothesis) often leads to blaming the victims for provoking or deserving bad things that happen to them instead of blaming the perpetrators.
Other persuasion techniques include associating a product or message with someone who is famous, attractive, or expert, and linking the product with good feelings.
Fear tactics tend to backfire.
Some methods of persuasion are intentionally manipulative.
Techniques of coercive persuasion include putting a person under extreme distress, defining problems simplistically, offering the appearance of unconditional love and acceptance in exchange for unquestioning loyalty, creating a new identity for the person, using entrapment, and controlling access to outside information.
Social Influences And Motivation
Work motivation also depends on working conditions and opportunities to achieve.
Key working conditions that promote motivation and satisfaction are those that provide workers with a sense of meaningfulness, control, variation in tasks, clear rules, supportive relationships, feedback, and opportunities for advancement and learning.
Competition in business can lead to better services and products and new inventions, but it can also decrease work motivation, make people feel insecure, and foster hostility.
Conflict and hostility between groups can be reduced by promoting interdependence in reaching mutual goals.
In business, cooperative teamwork can produce better problem solving, worker satisfaction, and increased performance, as long as groupthink is avoided and individual innovation is also rewarded.
The Question Of Human Nature
Talk about groupthink in terms of group witnessed rapes
Psychologists working the Sociocultural perspective explore psychological questions by examining the individual in a social context.