Imagine yourself standing in a room, holding a fishing pole. Your task is to wind the reel as fast as you can. On some occasions you wind in the presence of another participant who is also winding as fast as possible. Will the other’s presence affect your own performance?
In one of social psychology’s first experiments, Norman Triplett (1898) found that adolescents would wind a fishing reel faster in the presence of someone doing the same thing. He and later social psychologists studied how others’ presence affects our behavior. Group influences operate in such simple groups – one person in the presence of another – and in more complex groups.
Triplett’s finding – of strengthened performance in others’ presence – is called social facilitation. But on tougher tasks (learning nonsense syllables or solving complex multiplication problems), people perform worse when observers or others working on the same task are present. Further studies revealed that the presence of others sometimes helps and sometimes hinders performance (Guerin, 1986; Zajonc, 1965). Why? Because when others observe us, we become aroused, and this arousal amplifies our other reactions. It strengthens our most likely response – the correct one on an easy task, an incorrect one on a difficult task. Thus, expert pool players who made 71 percent of their shots when alone made 80 percent when four people came to watch them (Michaels et al., 1982). Poor shooters, who made 36 percent of their shots when alone, made only 25 percent when watched.
The energizing effect of an enthusiastic audience probably contributes to the home advantage that has shown up in studies of more than a quarter-million college and professional athletic events in various countries Gamieson, 2010). Home teams win about 6 in 10 games (somewhat fewer for baseball, cricket, and football, somewhat more for basketball, rugby, and soccer – see TABLE 76.1 on the next page).
The point to remember: What you do well, you are likely to do even better in front of an audience, especially a friendly audience. What you normally find difficult may seem all but impossible when you are being watched.
Social facilitation also helps explain a funny effect of crowding. Comedians and actors know that a “good house” is a full one. Crowding triggers arousal, which, as we have seen, strengthens other reactions, too. Comedy routines that are mildly amusing to people in an uncrowded room seem funnier in a densely packed room (Aiello et al., 1983; Freedman & Pedick, 1979). And in experiments, when participants have been seated close to one another, they liked a friendly person even more, an unfriendly person even less (Schiffenbauer & Schiavo, 1976; Storms & Thomas, 1977) . So, for an energetic class or event, choose a room or set up seating that will just barely accommodate everyone.
Social facilitation experiments test the effect of others’ presence on performance on an individual task, such as shooting pool. But what happens to performance when people perform the task as a group? In a team tug-of-war, for example, do you suppose your effort would be more than, less than, or the same as the effort you would exert in a one-on-one tug-of-war? To find out, a University of Massachusetts research team asked blindfolded students “to pull as hard as you can” on a rope. When they fooled the students into believing three others were also pulling behind them, they exerted only 82 percent as much effort as when they thought they were pulling alone (Ingham et al., 1974). And consider what happened when blindfolded people seated in a group clapped or shouted as loud as they could while hearing (through headphones) other people clapping or shouting loudly (Latane, 1981). When they thought they were part of a group effort, the participants produced about one-third less noise than when clapping or shouting “alone.”
Bibb Latane and his colleagues (1981; Jackson & Williams, 1988) described this diminished effort as social loafing. Experiments in the United States, India, Thailand, Japan, China, and Taiwan have recorded social loafing on various tasks, though it was especially common among men in individualist cultures (Karau & Williams, 1993). What causes social loafing? Three things:
We’ve seen that the presence of others can arouse people (social facilitation), or it can diminish their feelings of responsibility (social loafing). But sometimes the presence of others does both. The uninhibited behavior that results can range from a food fight to vandalism or rioting. This process of losing self-awareness and self-restraint, called deindividuation, often occurs when group participation makes people both aroused and anonymous. In one experiment, New York University women dressed in depersonalizing Ku Klux Klan-style hoods. Compared with identifiable women in a control group, the hooded women delivered twice as much electric shock to a victim (Zimbardo, 1970). (As in all such experiments, the “victim” did not actually receive the shocks.)
Deindividuation thrives, for better or for worse, in many different settings. Tribal warriors who depersonalize themselves with face paints or masks are more likely than those with exposed faces to kill, torture, or mutilate captured enemies (Watson, 1973). Online, Internet trolls and bullies, who would never say “You’re so fake” to someone’s face, will hide behind anonymity. Whether in a mob, at a rock concert, at a ballgame, or at worship, when we shed self-awareness and self-restraint, we become more responsive to the group experience – bad or good.
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We have examined the conditions under which being in the presence of others can motivate people to exert themselves or tempt them to free ride on the efforts of others, make easy tasks easier and difficult tasks harder, and enhance humor or fuel mob violence. Research also shows that interacting with others can similarly have both bad and good effects.
Over time, initial differences between groups of college students tend to grow. If the first-year students at College X tend to be artistic and those at College Y tend to be business savvy, those differences will probably be even greater by the time they graduate. Similarly, gender differences tend to widen over time, as Eleanor Maccoby (2002) noted from her decades of observing gender development. Girls talk more intimately than boys do and play and fantasize less aggressively; these differences will be amplified as boys and girls interact mostly with their own gender.
In each case, the beliefs and attitudes we bring to a group grow stronger as we discuss them with like-minded others. This process, called group polarization, can have beneficial results, as when it amplifies a sought-after spiritual awareness or reinforces the resolve of those in a self-help group. But it can also have dire consequences. George Bishop and I discovered that when high-prejudice students discussed racial issues, they became more prejudiced (FIGURE 76.1). (Low-prejudice students became even more accepting.) Thus ideological separation + deliberation =polarization between groups.
Group polarization can feed extremism and even suicide terrorism. Analysis of terrorist organizations around the world reveals that the terrorist mentality does not erupt suddenly, on a whim (McCauley, 2002; McCauley & Segal, 1987; Merari, 2002). It usually begins slowly, among people who share a grievance. As they interact in isolation (sometimes with other “brothers” and “sisters” in camps) their views grow more and more extreme. Increasingly, they categorize the world as “us” against “them” (Moghaddam, 2005; Qirko, 2004). The like-minded echo chamber will continue to polarize people, speculated a 2006 U.S. National Intelligence estimate: “We assess that the operational threat from self-radicalized cells will grow.”
When I got my start in social psychology with experiments on group polarization, I never imagined the potential dangers, or the creative possibilities, of polarization in virtual groups. Electronic communication and social networking have created virtual town halls where people can isolate themselves from those whose perspective differs. People read blogs that reinforce their views, and those blogs link to kindred blogs (FIGURE 76.2). As the Internet connects the like-minded and pools their ideas, climate-change skeptics, those who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens, and conspiracy theorists find support for their shared ideas and suspicions. White supremacists may become more racist. And militia members may become more terrorism prone. In the echo chambers of virtual worlds, as in the real world, separation + conversation =polarization.
But the Internet-as-social-amplifier can also work for good. Social networking sites connect friends and family members sharing common interests or coping with challenges. Peacemakers, cancer survivors, and bereaved parents can find strength and solace from kindred spirits. By amplifying shared concerns and ideas, Internet-enhanced communication can also foster social ventures. (I know this personally from social networking with others with hearing loss to transform U S. assistive-listening technology.)
The point to remember: By linking and magnifying the inclinations of like-minded people, the Internet can be very, very bad, but also very, very good.
So group interaction can influence our personal decisions. Does it ever distort important national decisions? Consider the “Bay of Pigs fiasco.” In 1961, President John F. Kennedy and his advisers decided to invade Cuba with 1400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles. When the invaders were easily captured and soon linked to the US. government, Kennedy wondered in hindsight, “How could we have been so stupid?”
Social psychologist Irving Janis (1982) studied the decision-making procedures leading to the ill-fated invasion. He discovered that the soaring morale of the recently elected president and his advisers fostered undue confidence. To preserve the good feeling, group members suppressed or self-censored their dissenting views, especially after President Kennedy voiced his enthusiasm for the scheme. Since no one spoke strongly against the idea, everyone assumed the support was unanimous. To describe this harmonious but unrealistic group thinking, Janis coined the term groupthink.
Later studies showed that groupthink – fed by overconfidence, conformity, self-justification, and group polarization – contributed to other fiascos as well. Among them were the failure to anticipate the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; the escalation of the Vietnam war; the US. Watergate cover-up; the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident (Reason, 1987); the US. space shuttle Challenger explosion (Esser & Lindoerfer, 1989); and the Iraq war, launched on the false idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, 2004).
Despite the dangers of group think, two heads are better than one in solving many problems. Knowing this, Janis also studied instances in which US. presidents and their advisers collectively made good decisions, such as when the Truman administration formu1ated the Marshall Plan, which offered assistance to Europe after World War II, and when the Kennedy administration successfully prevented the Soviets from installing missiles in Cuba. In such instances – and in the business world, too, Janis believed – groupthink is prevented when a leader welcomes various opinions, invites experts’ critiques of developing plans, and assigns people to identify possible problems. Just as the suppression of dissent bends a group toward bad decisions, so open debate often shapes good ones. This is especially so with diverse groups, whose varied perspectives often enable creative or superior outcomes (Nemeth & Ormiston, 2007; Page, 2007). None of us is as smart as all of us.
In affirming the power of social influence, we must not overlook the power of individuals. Social control (the power of the situation) and personal control (the power of the individual) interact. People aren’t billiard balls. When feeling coerced, we may react by doing the opposite of what is expected, thereby reasserting our sense of freedom (Brehm & Brehm, 1981).
Committed individuals can sway the majority and make social history. Were this not so, communism would have remained an obscure theory, Christianity would be a small Middle Eastern sect, and Rosa Parks’refusal to sit at the back of the bus would not have ignited the US. civil rights movement. Technological history, too, is often made by innovative minorities who overcome the majority’s resistance to change. To many, the railroad was a nonsensical idea; some farmers even feared that train noise would prevent hens from laying eggs. People derided Robert Fulton’s steamboat as “Fulton’s Folly.” As Fulton later said, “Never did a single encouraging remark, a bright hope, a warm wish, cross my path.” Much the same reaction greeted the printing press, the telegraph, the incandescent lamp, and the typewriter (Cantril & Bumstead, 1960).
The power of one or two individuals to sway majorities is minority influence (Moscovici, 1985). In studies of groups in which one or two individuals consistently express a controversial attitude or an unusual perceptual judgment, one finding repeatedly stands out: When you are the minority, you are far more likely to sway the majority if you hold firmly to your position and don’t waffle. This tactic won’t make you popular, but it may make you influential, especially if your self-confidence stimulates others to consider why you react as you do. Even when a minority’s influence is not yet visible, people may privately develop sympathy for the minority position and rethink their views (Wood et al., 1994). The powers of social influence are enormous, but so are the powers of the committed individual.
Compared with the narrow path taken by flies, fish, and foxes, the road along which environment drives us is wider. The mark of our species – nature’s great gift to us – is our ability to learn and adapt. We come equipped with a huge cerebral hard drive ready to receive cultural software.
Culture is the behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next (Brislin, 1988; Cohen, 2009) , Human nature, notes Roy Baumeister (2005), seems designed for culture. We are social animals, but more. Wolves are social animals; they live and hunt in packs, Ants are incessantly social, never alone. But “culture is a better way of being social,” notes Baumeister. Wolves function pretty much as they did 10,000 years ago. You and I enjoy things unknown to most of our century – ago ancestors, including electricity, indoor plumbing, antibiotics, and the Internet. Culture works.
Other animals exhibit the rudiments of culture. Primates have local customs of tool use, grooming, and courtship. Younger chimpanzees and macaque monkeys sometimes invent customs – potato washing, in one famous example – and pass them on to their peers and offspring. But human culture does more. It supports our species’ survival and reproduction by enabling social and economic systems that give us an edge.
Thanks to our mastery of language, we humans enjoy the preservation of innovation. Within the span of this day, I have, thanks to my culture, made good use of Post-it Notes, Google, and digital hearing technology. Moreover, culture enables an efficient division of labor, Although one lucky person gets his name on this book’s cover, the product actually results from the coordination and commitment of a team of people, no one of whom could produce it alone.
Across cultures, we differ in our language, our monetary systems, our sports, which fork – if any – we eat with, even which side of the road we drive on. But beneath these differences is our great similarity – our capacity for culture, Culture transmits the customs and beliefs that enable us to communicate, to exchange money for things, to play, to eat, and to drive with agreed-upon rules and without crashing into one another.
We see our adaptability in cultural variations among our beliefs and our values, in how we raise our children and bury our dead, and in what we wear (or whether we wear anything at all). I am ever mindful that the readers of this book are culturally diverse. You and your ancestors reach from Australia to Africa and from Singapore to Sweden.
Riding along with a unified culture is like biking with the wind: As it carries us along, we hardly notice it is there. When we try riding against the wind, we feel its force. Face to face with a different culture, we become aware of the cultural winds. Stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait American and European soldiers were reminded how liberal their home cultures were.
Humans in varied cultures nevertheless share some basic moral ideas, as we noted earlier. Even before they can walk, babies display a moral sense by showing disapproval of what’s wrong or naughty (Bloom, 2010). Yet each cultural group also evolves its own norms – rules for accepted and expected behavior. The British have a norm for orderly waiting in line. Many South Asians use only the right hand’s fingers for eating. Sometimes social expectations seem oppressive: “Why should it matter how I dress?” Yet, norms grease the social machinery and free us from self-preoccupation.
When cultures collide, their differing norms often befuddle. Should we greet people by shaking hands or kissing each cheek? The answer depends on the surrounding culture. Learning when to clap or bow, how to order at a new restaurant and what sorts of gestures and compliments are appropriate help us avoid accidental insults and embarrassment.
When we don’t understand what’s expected or accepted, we may experience culture shock. People from Mediterranean cultures have perceived northern Europeans as efficient but cold and preoccupied with punctuality (Triandis, 1981). People from time-conscious Japan – where bank clocks keep exact time, pedestrians walk briskly, and postal clerks fill requests speedily – have found themselves growing impatient when visiting Indonesia, where clocks keep less accurate time and the pace of life is more leisurely (Levine & Norenzayan, 1999). In adjusting to their host countries, the first wave of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers reported that two of their greatest culture shocks, after the language differences, were the differing pace of life and the people’s differing sense of punctuality (Spradley & Phillips, 1972).
Like biological creatures, cultures vary and compete for resources, and thus evolve over time (Mesoudi, 2009). Consider how rapidly cultures may change. English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400) is separated from a modern Briton by only 25 generations, but the two would converse with great difficulty. In the thin slice of history since 1960, most Western cultures have changed with remarkable speed. Middle-class people today fly to places they once only read about. They enjoy the convenience of air-conditioned housing, online shopping, anywhere-anytime electronic communication, and – enriched by doubled per person real income – eating out more than twice as often as did their grandparents back in the culture of 1960. Many minority groups enjoy expanded human rights. And, with greater economic independence, today’s women more often marry for love and less often endure abusive relationships (Circle of Prevention, 2002).
But some changes seem not so wonderfully positive. Had you fallen asleep in the United States in 1960 and awakened today, you would open your eyes to a culture with more divorce and depression. You would also find North Americans – like their counterparts in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand – spending more hours at work, fewer hours with friends and family, and fewer hours asleep (BLS, 2011; Putnam, 2000).
Whether we love or loathe these changes, we cannot fail to be impressed by their breathtaking speed. And we cannot explain them by changes in the human gene pool, which evolves far too slowly to account for high-speed cultural transformations. Cultures vary. Cultures change. And cultures shape our lives.