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7B: Social Processes That Influence Human Behavior

What other people do to one person's behavior: helping falling as the crowd grows, a judgment sliding to match the group, norms and their sanctions.

17 topics · 65 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

7B. Social Facilitation

  1. How it worksHow does the mere presence of others raise arousal and strengthen whatever response is already dominant?
  2. Worked exampleShow me performance on a well-practiced task and a brand new one as observers are added.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the effect when the audience is evaluating you versus merely present?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't an audience simply a distraction that hurts performance across the board?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
An expert pool player sinks 24 of 40 attempted shots when alone in the room and 35 of 40 when six spectators are watching. By how many percentage points did the audience change their accuracy?

7B. Deindividuation

  1. How it worksHow do anonymity, diffused responsibility and group arousal loosen the usual self-monitoring?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't deindividuation always a slide toward destructive behavior?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the effect when a mirror or a name tag restores self-awareness?
Your turneasy1 of 3
In a laboratory study, participants in hoods and identical coats held the shock button down for a mean of 18 seconds, while participants wearing name tags and their own clothes held it for 8 seconds. By what percentage did anonymity lengthen the shock?

7B. The Bystander Effect

  1. How it worksHow do noticing, interpreting as an emergency, taking responsibility and knowing how to help form a five-step gate?
  2. How it worksWalk me through pluralistic ignorance where everyone reads everyone else's calm as evidence of no emergency.
  3. Worked exampleShow me helping rates plotted against 1, 2 and 5 bystanders present.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to helping when one person is singled out and addressed directly?
  5. Common mistakeWhy isn't the bystander effect caused by people in cities being colder than people elsewhere?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In a staged emergency, 85 percent of participants who believed they were the only witness went for help, against 34 percent of participants who believed four others could also hear. By what percentage did the presence of the others reduce helping?

7B. Social Loafing

  1. How it worksHow does individual effort become invisible in a group total and slacken as a result?
  2. Worked exampleShow me the force each person contributes as a tug-of-war team grows from one to eight.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't social loafing the same phenomenon as social facilitation with a minus sign?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Pulling alone, each member of a tug-of-war team exerts 65 kilograms of force. When the same people pull together in a team of 7, each exerts only 76 percent of their individual maximum. What total force does the team of 7 produce?

7B. Peer Pressure

  1. How it worksHow do normative influence to be liked and informational influence to be right push in the same direction?
  2. Going furtherWhat changes about peer influence as a person moves from adolescence into their thirties?
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't peer pressure always an explicit demand from someone else?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A survey of 718 adolescents finds that 59 percent privately disagreed with a decision their friendship group had made, and that 83 percent of those went along with it publicly anyway. How many adolescents complied against their private view?

7B. Conformity and the Asch Experiments

  1. How it worksHow does a unanimous majority bend a judgment that the person can plainly see is wrong?
  2. Worked exampleShow me conformity rates as the unanimous majority grows from one confederate to seven.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't conformity in the Asch task a matter of people actually seeing the lines differently?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to conformity when a single ally breaks the unanimity?
  5. Ties togetherHow does conformity connect to normative influence shaping which behaviors ever get tried?
Your turneasy1 of 3
In a line-judgement session a participant faces 16 critical trials on which a unanimous majority gives an obviously wrong answer. The participant goes along with the majority on 7 of them. On what percentage of critical trials did they conform?

7B. Obedience and the Milgram Experiments

  1. How it worksHow do legitimate authority, gradual escalation and diffused responsibility carry a person up the voltage ladder?
  2. Worked exampleShow me obedience rates across the proximity, authority and location variations of the study.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't obedience in this study explained by the volunteers being unusually cruel people?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't obedience the same construct as conformity to a group of peers?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens to obedience when a second participant refuses to continue first?
Your turneasy1 of 3
In the baseline obedience study, 28 of the 48 volunteers continued raising the shock dial to the maximum setting when instructed to do so. What percentage of volunteers was fully obedient?

7B. Social Control

  1. How it worksHow do internalized norms and external sanctions combine into formal and informal social control?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't social control mostly a matter of laws and police?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to informal control when a community becomes large and anonymous?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In a town of 69 thousand adults, a survey finds 70 percent say they would not drop litter even if certain nobody was watching, while 24 percent say only the risk of a fine stops them. How many more residents are governed by an internalised norm than by the threat of a penalty?

7B. Group Decision-Making: Group Polarization

  1. How it worksHow does discussion among like-minded people shift the whole distribution of opinion outward?
  2. Worked exampleShow me a jury's damage awards before deliberation and after it on the same axis.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens when the group contains a genuine spread of starting positions instead of a lean?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't group discussion a reliable way to average out individual extremes?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Before deliberating, the jurors in a case propose damage awards averaging 347 thousand dollars, and every juror favours some award. After deliberating together they agree on 1054 thousand dollars. By what percentage did discussion move the award?

7B. Group Decision-Making: Groupthink

  1. How it worksHow do cohesion, insulation, a directive leader and time pressure squeeze dissent out of a group?
  2. How it worksWalk me through illusion of unanimity, self-censorship and mindguards suppressing the last objection.
  3. Worked exampleShow me how assigning a devil's advocate changes the set of options that survive discussion.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't groupthink the same thing as group polarization?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A committee of 16 members approves a plan unanimously. Anonymous interviews afterwards reveal that 7 of them had private reservations they did not voice. What percentage of the committee privately doubted the plan they voted for?

7B. Social Norms and Sanctions

  1. How it worksHow does a norm define a band of acceptable behavior with sanctions waiting outside it?
  2. Going furtherWhat happens to a norm when the sanctions that enforced it stop being applied?
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a social norm the same thing as a rule that has been written down?
Your turneasy1 of 3
In one culture the mean comfortable distance for conversation between strangers is 114 centimetres. A stranger approaches to 46 centimetres and the other person steps back. By how many centimetres had the norm been violated?

7B. Folkways, Mores and Taboos

  1. How it worksHow do folkways, mores and taboos sit on one ladder of increasing moral weight and sanction severity?
  2. Worked exampleShow me four violations sorted onto that ladder by the reaction each one draws.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the severity of a sanction fixed by how much harm the act actually causes?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
An observational study records 548 norm violations. 56 percent drew nothing more than a raised eyebrow, 31 percent drew open disapproval or exclusion, and the remainder drew a legal penalty. How many violations drew a legal penalty?

7B. Anomie

  1. How it worksHow does rapid social change loosen the shared norms that told people what to expect from life?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't anomie the same as a person simply feeling lonely or alienated?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to anomie when a rapid change is followed by a long stable period?
Your turnhard1 of 3
During a decade of rapid economic expansion, the suicide rate in a country of 11 million people rises from 15 to 33 per hundred thousand per year. How many additional deaths per year does that increase represent?

7B. Deviance and Perspectives on It

  1. How it worksHow do differential association, labeling theory and strain theory each explain deviance from a different direction?
  2. How it worksWalk me through Merton's strain typology sorting people by whether they accept the goals and the means.
  3. Worked exampleShow me two identical first offenses diverging once one of them is officially labeled.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't deviance a property of the behavior itself?
  5. Ties togetherHow does labeling theory connect to stigma changing the way a person is treated afterward?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A study follows 818 young people arrested for identical first offences, splitting them evenly between formal prosecution and diversion out of the system. Within two years 54 percent of the prosecuted group and 29 percent of the diverted group have reoffended. How many more reoffenders does the prosecuted group contain?

7B. Collective Behavior: Fads, Mass Hysteria and Riots

  1. How it worksHow does a fad spread along an adoption curve that rises slowly, explodes and then collapses?
  2. Going furtherWhat changes about the curve for a fashion that becomes a lasting norm instead of a fad?
  3. Worked exampleShow me one rumor spreading through a crowd and producing symptoms with no physical cause.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a riot an event where a crowd loses all structure and acts at random?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A fad has reached 13 percent of a market of 189 thousand potential adopters by week six, and 76 percent by week ten. How many additional people adopted it in those four weeks?

7B. Agents of Socialization

  1. How it worksHow do family, school, peers, media and workplace hand over influence across the course of a life?
  2. How it worksWalk me through primary socialization in childhood and resocialization inside a total institution.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the weight of each agent as a person moves from age five to twenty-five to fifty?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't socialization something that finishes at the end of childhood?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A time-use diary records a fifteen-year-old spending 37 hours a week in the company of family, 31 hours in school classes and 38 hours with friends outside school. What percentage of that recorded time is spent with peers outside school?

7B. Norms, Values and Beliefs

  1. How it worksHow do abstract values generate concrete norms which then generate specific sanctions?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't a belief about how the world works the same thing as a value about how it should be?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the chain when a value changes but the old norms stay in place?
  4. Ties togetherHow do values and norms connect to the attitudes an individual ends up holding?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A survey of 1436 respondents finds that 79 percent endorse a general value, and that 60 percent of those who endorse it also endorse a specific rule of conduct derived from it. How many respondents endorse both the value and the rule?

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