Emotions as Foundations for Social Behavior

1. Emotions as Foundations for Social Behavior • Emotions as social signals • facial expressions • universal • serve as signals to influence behavior • the happy smile • see often when socially engaged • not as often when not socially engaged • Emotional contagion • spread of mood from one person to another • group laughter & group playfulness

2. Self-Conscious Emotions • Emotions linked to thoughts about the self or one’s own actions • pride, guilt, shame, embarrassment • Guilt as a motivator of relationship repair • focuses attention on others’ feelings • Shame as a motivator of social withdrawal • focuses attention on real or imagined flaw in ourselves

3. Self-Conscious Emotions • Embarrassment • inadvertent violation of social norm • receipt of unexpected or undesired attention • function is communicative value • Pride • directly opposite to shame • attention focused on own beauty and successes • increases self-esteem • motivates us to promote social acceptance

4. Social Pressure • Set of psychological forces exerted on an individual by other people or by the individual’s beliefs about other people

5. The life space Force 3 Person Force 1 Goal 1 Goal 2 Force 4 Force 2 Lewin’s Field Theory • Field of forces that push or pull us in certain directions • Some internal • wishes/desires • Some external • social pressure

6. Latane’s Social Impact Theory • Want to identify factors that increase/decrease social pressure • Wish to predict the impact of social pressure at any given time • number of sources • strength of a source • immediacy of a source

7. Impression Management • How we present ourselves to others • tend to try to look better than we really are • want to look good, modest, sincere – we are intuitive politicians • we also tend to engage in more impression management with new acquaintances than with old friends

8. Self-Monitoring • Attention paid to the impressions being made, then fine tuning the performance • high self monitors • watch themselves vigilantly • constantly modify behavior • low self monitors • less vigilant • more consistent from audience to audience • Differences between cultures

9. Facilitating/Interfering Effects of an Audience • Do we do better in groups or alone? • Social facilitation • enhancing effect of an audience on task performance • occurs with well-learned tasks • Social interference (social inhibition) • decline in performance when observers are present • occurs with new or difficult tasks

10. Presence of others Increased drive or arousal Improved performance of dominant responses (social facilitation) Worsened performance of nondominant responses (social Interference) Zajonc’s Theory • Linked social interference and facilitation to arousal level • High arousal improves simple or well-learned tasks • High arousal worsens complex or poorly-learned task

11. Deindividuation • Social loafing • when behavior is not monitored, performance goes down • e.g., group projects • Deindividuation • sense of reduced accountability and shifted attention away from the self that occurs in groups • responsible for riots, lynchings, gang rapes, and other group violence

12. Following Others’ Examples – Conformity • Adopting attitudes or behaviors of others because of pressure to do so • the pressure can be real or imagined • 2 general reasons for conformity • informational influence • other people can provide useful and crucial information • normative influence • desire to be accepted as part of a group leads to that group having an influence

13. Asch’s Experiments on Conformity • When? • 1951 • Previous research had shown • people will conform to others’ judgments more often when the evidence is ambiguous • Asch set out to prove that people will not conform when evidence is clear-cut or unambiguous • his question - will people still conform when group is clearly wrong?

14. 1 3 2 Standard lines Comparison lines Asch’s Experiments on Conformity • All but 1 in group was confederate • Seating was rigged • Asked to rate which line matched a “standard” line • Confederates were instructed to pick the wrong line 12/18 times

15. Asch’s Experiments on Conformity • Results • Asch found that 75% participants conformed to at least one wrong choice • subjects gave wrong answer (conformed) on 37% of the critical trials • Why did they conform to clearly wrong choices? • informational influence? • subjects reported having doubted their own perceptual abilities which led to their conformance – didn’t report seeing the lines the way the confederates had

16. Asch’s Experiments on conformity • Variations to test informational influence hypothesis • had subject come late • confederates voted out loud, but subjects wrote their vote down • Results • conformity dropped significantly • Suggests that the original subjects conformed due to normative influences, not informational

17. Effects of a Nonconformist • If everyone agrees, you are less likely to disagree • If one person disagrees, even if they give the wrong answer, you are more likely to express your nonconforming view • Asch tested this hypothesis • one confederate gave different answer from others • conformity dropped significantly

18. Summary • Emotions & Social behavior • emotions are social signals & regulators of behavior • self-conscious emotions • Social Pressure • Lewin’s Field Theory • Latane’s Social Impact Theory

19. Summary • Impression Management • how we present ourselves to others • self-monitoring • Audience Effects • facilitating vs. inhibiting • Conformity • Asch’s experiments • effects of nonconformists