{"id":2441,"date":"2016-11-07T15:16:17","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T15:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/waymaker-psychology\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=2441"},"modified":"2017-05-02T03:53:27","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T03:53:27","slug":"outcome-prosocial-behavior","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-fmcc-intropsych\/chapter\/outcome-prosocial-behavior\/","title":{"raw":"Putting It Together: Social Psychology","rendered":"Putting It Together: Social Psychology"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\nIn this module, you learned to\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>recognize aspects of social psychology, including the fundamental attribution error, biases, social roles, and social norms, in your daily life<\/li>\r\n \t<li>describe how attitudes can be changed through cognitive dissonance and persuasion<\/li>\r\n \t<li>explain how conformity, obedience, groupthink, social facilitation, social loafing, and altruism relate to group behavior<\/li>\r\n \t<li>explain prejudice, discrimination, and aggression<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\nIn this module, you learned about a wide spectrum of human behavior and interaction. Social psychology is fascinating, sometimes shocking (both figuratively and literally!), and ever-evolving. You learned about the way we attribute our own and other people's behavior to either situational or dispositional factors and how we have a tendency to fall prey to the fundamental attribution error. We are easily influence by those around us, whether it be through persuasion or a desire to conform or obey. We also behave differently in groups, and sometimes show prejudices or discriminate against those who aren't like us.\r\n\r\nJonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, recently wrote a book called\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/29frE7U\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior<\/em><\/a>, in which he examines our desire to fit in, yet not be like everyone else. He was interviewed by Ilaria Schlitz for <em>The Psych Report.\u00a0<\/em>Read\u00a0their interview below and consider how Berger's responses fit in with\u00a0the things you learned about in this module.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/855\/2016\/11\/02035143\/800px-Free_3D_Business_Men_Marching_Concept.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright wp-image-4402\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/855\/2016\/11\/02035143\/800px-Free_3D_Business_Men_Marching_Concept.jpg\" alt=\"3D stick figures carrying briefcases walking in rows, signifying conformity.\" width=\"544\" height=\"355\" \/><\/a>\r\n\r\n<strong>Ilaria Schlitz: You begin your book by talking about your research on BMW owners and how they perceive themselves and others. What were the origins of the research?<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>Jonah Berger:<\/strong> The research actually started with an anecdote. I was in Washington, DC visiting my family and talking to my father. I was telling him I was doing some research on social influence and he was lamenting social influence\u2019s affect on the world. He was saying, \u201cOh God, in DC, lawyers are all so heavily influenced. When they become partner, the first thing they do is buy a new BMW.\u201d What I pointed out is that that\u2019s true Dad, but you\u2019re a DC lawyer, you drive a BMW. He said, \u201cNo, but I drive a blue one and they all drive gray ones.\u201d\r\n\r\nSometimes we see influence\u2014we readily see our peers doing the same thing as the folks next to them. Yet there\u2019s one place where we often fail to see influence, and that is ourselves. Often because it has a nonconscious effect on our behavior, we are not aware that it is influencing us.\u00a0The effect that it has is not as simplistic as we might think. We often tend to think of influence as conforming or imitation, people doing the same thing as others. That happens sometimes, but just as often people differentiate themselves. People don\u2019t just do one or the other, they do both simultaneously. They want to be optimally distinct, or similar but different. <em>Invisible Influence<\/em> is all about how sometimes seemingly conflicting motivations shape our behavior, and how by understanding the science we can all live healthier and happier lives.\r\n\r\n<strong>IS: Is social influence really inevitable or is it possible to overcome it by being aware of the ways we are influenced?<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>JB:<\/strong> The most interesting question is not if we can correct against it, but should we correct against it. We definitely have this notion that being influenced is bad, and indeed there are cases where being influenced is bad, but there are just as many cases where being influenced is helpful. Imagine that you had to pick where to go out to eat or what movie to watch without talking to anyone else\u2014you couldn\u2019t use online reviews, you couldn\u2019t ask your friends. Life would be a lot harder. Others often provide useful information that helps us make better and faster decisions. They also help us get motivated. Comparing ourselves to others encourages us to work harder and perform better. Just as influence can hurt, it can also help. The reason I wrote the book was really to help people be aware of influence. If we understand what influence is and when it\u2019s happening, we can try to take advantage of its upsides and avoid its down sides\r\n\r\n<strong>IS: In your book, you mention the role of influence in politics. What are some of the ways that you\u2019ve noticed social influence being used in politics lately?<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>JB:<\/strong> I was recently working with a group that wanted conservatives to support clean energy. If you think about it, conservatives should love this type of energy. It\u2019s cheaper, which is something conservatives like. It reduces reliance on foreign oil, which helps national security. Conservatives should support clean energy and yet they don\u2019t. When you ask conservatives why, one politician said it very nicely, he said, \u201cClean energy? That\u2019s something Al Gore supports and if Al Gore supports something then it\u2019s probably not for me.\u201d\r\n\r\nEven something like politics, where we think it\u2019s all about the issues, what something signals or communicates has a big impact on behavior. There\u2019s a very nice body of research showing that party often matters more than policy. If you\u2019re looking at a particular policy, how you vote on that policy depends almost entirely on whether you think that policy is supported by your party or the opposite party. Even in important decisions such as how we vote, others have an impact on our decisions.\r\n\r\n<strong>IS: How do companies take advantage of the extent to which social influence affects what people buy? Is there a company that comes to mind that harnesses social influence in a particularly positive way?<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>JB:<\/strong> It\u2019s not just companies using influence to sell stuff. Movember [has] done a great job of using social influence to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for men\u2019s cancers. Donations are usually a private behavior, people have no idea what someone\u2019s donating to. Because of that, we can\u2019t follow suit. We have no idea what they\u2019re doing, so we can\u2019t imitate their behavior. Movember came along and said let\u2019s make a public signal of an otherwise private act. You\u2019re not just donating money, you\u2019re wearing a mustache. Because you\u2019re wearing a mustache, it\u2019s easier for people to see that you donated and as a result other people are more likely to donate. Whether we\u2019re buying a car because our neighbor bought one recently, or we\u2019re supporting a cause because we can tell that people are doing it, companies and organizations that make behavior visible can harness influence to get their message to catch on.\r\n\r\n<strong>IS: What are some ways that individuals can harness social influence to make positive changes in their own lives?<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>JB:<\/strong> Any time we\u2019re trying to achieve something, whether we\u2019re trying to lose weight, exercise more, put in extra hours at the office, peers are a powerful motivating force. We did some research showing that NBA basketball teams are actually more likely to win when they are behind, but just by a little, because that gap causes people to be motivated and try harder. If you\u2019re trying to lose weight for example, rather than just doing it by yourself, pair up with someone else and say \u201cHey, who can lose 15 pounds faster?\u201d Or if you\u2019re trying to run faster or train harder, rather than training at home, work out at the gym where other people are around. Running on a treadmill next to someone, rather than far away, will actually motivate you to work harder. Social facilitation can increase performance and encourage us to do better. Rather than trying to control or motivate our behavior by ourselves, others are often a better way to do it.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>IS: Is there anything else you\u2019d like to add?\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>JB:<\/strong> These motivations often don\u2019t live on their own. We often think about conforming and imitation and then we think about differentiation and uniqueness, but these two things often work in concert. We want to be similar but different. We want to be, in some sense, optimally distinct. It\u2019s a little bit like Goldilocks. I call it the Goldilocks effect, where too similar is bad\u2014we don\u2019t want to be the same as everybody else\u2014but too different is also bad\u2014we don\u2019t want to stand out and have no one else be like us. We\u2019re trying to walk the line between being similar and different\u2014being part of a group, feeling kinship, feeling support and validation for our choices, but also feeling unique and special by differentiating ourselves from the group.","rendered":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<p>In this module, you learned to<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>recognize aspects of social psychology, including the fundamental attribution error, biases, social roles, and social norms, in your daily life<\/li>\n<li>describe how attitudes can be changed through cognitive dissonance and persuasion<\/li>\n<li>explain how conformity, obedience, groupthink, social facilitation, social loafing, and altruism relate to group behavior<\/li>\n<li>explain prejudice, discrimination, and aggression<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>In this module, you learned about a wide spectrum of human behavior and interaction. Social psychology is fascinating, sometimes shocking (both figuratively and literally!), and ever-evolving. You learned about the way we attribute our own and other people&#8217;s behavior to either situational or dispositional factors and how we have a tendency to fall prey to the fundamental attribution error. We are easily influence by those around us, whether it be through persuasion or a desire to conform or obey. We also behave differently in groups, and sometimes show prejudices or discriminate against those who aren&#8217;t like us.<\/p>\n<p>Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, recently wrote a book called\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/29frE7U\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior<\/em><\/a>, in which he examines our desire to fit in, yet not be like everyone else. He was interviewed by Ilaria Schlitz for <em>The Psych Report.\u00a0<\/em>Read\u00a0their interview below and consider how Berger&#8217;s responses fit in with\u00a0the things you learned about in this module.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/855\/2016\/11\/02035143\/800px-Free_3D_Business_Men_Marching_Concept.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-4402\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/855\/2016\/11\/02035143\/800px-Free_3D_Business_Men_Marching_Concept.jpg\" alt=\"3D stick figures carrying briefcases walking in rows, signifying conformity.\" width=\"544\" height=\"355\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ilaria Schlitz: You begin your book by talking about your research on BMW owners and how they perceive themselves and others. What were the origins of the research?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jonah Berger:<\/strong> The research actually started with an anecdote. I was in Washington, DC visiting my family and talking to my father. I was telling him I was doing some research on social influence and he was lamenting social influence\u2019s affect on the world. He was saying, \u201cOh God, in DC, lawyers are all so heavily influenced. When they become partner, the first thing they do is buy a new BMW.\u201d What I pointed out is that that\u2019s true Dad, but you\u2019re a DC lawyer, you drive a BMW. He said, \u201cNo, but I drive a blue one and they all drive gray ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes we see influence\u2014we readily see our peers doing the same thing as the folks next to them. Yet there\u2019s one place where we often fail to see influence, and that is ourselves. Often because it has a nonconscious effect on our behavior, we are not aware that it is influencing us.\u00a0The effect that it has is not as simplistic as we might think. We often tend to think of influence as conforming or imitation, people doing the same thing as others. That happens sometimes, but just as often people differentiate themselves. People don\u2019t just do one or the other, they do both simultaneously. They want to be optimally distinct, or similar but different. <em>Invisible Influence<\/em> is all about how sometimes seemingly conflicting motivations shape our behavior, and how by understanding the science we can all live healthier and happier lives.<\/p>\n<p><strong>IS: Is social influence really inevitable or is it possible to overcome it by being aware of the ways we are influenced?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JB:<\/strong> The most interesting question is not if we can correct against it, but should we correct against it. We definitely have this notion that being influenced is bad, and indeed there are cases where being influenced is bad, but there are just as many cases where being influenced is helpful. Imagine that you had to pick where to go out to eat or what movie to watch without talking to anyone else\u2014you couldn\u2019t use online reviews, you couldn\u2019t ask your friends. Life would be a lot harder. Others often provide useful information that helps us make better and faster decisions. They also help us get motivated. Comparing ourselves to others encourages us to work harder and perform better. Just as influence can hurt, it can also help. The reason I wrote the book was really to help people be aware of influence. If we understand what influence is and when it\u2019s happening, we can try to take advantage of its upsides and avoid its down sides<\/p>\n<p><strong>IS: In your book, you mention the role of influence in politics. What are some of the ways that you\u2019ve noticed social influence being used in politics lately?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JB:<\/strong> I was recently working with a group that wanted conservatives to support clean energy. If you think about it, conservatives should love this type of energy. It\u2019s cheaper, which is something conservatives like. It reduces reliance on foreign oil, which helps national security. Conservatives should support clean energy and yet they don\u2019t. When you ask conservatives why, one politician said it very nicely, he said, \u201cClean energy? That\u2019s something Al Gore supports and if Al Gore supports something then it\u2019s probably not for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even something like politics, where we think it\u2019s all about the issues, what something signals or communicates has a big impact on behavior. There\u2019s a very nice body of research showing that party often matters more than policy. If you\u2019re looking at a particular policy, how you vote on that policy depends almost entirely on whether you think that policy is supported by your party or the opposite party. Even in important decisions such as how we vote, others have an impact on our decisions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>IS: How do companies take advantage of the extent to which social influence affects what people buy? Is there a company that comes to mind that harnesses social influence in a particularly positive way?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JB:<\/strong> It\u2019s not just companies using influence to sell stuff. Movember [has] done a great job of using social influence to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for men\u2019s cancers. Donations are usually a private behavior, people have no idea what someone\u2019s donating to. Because of that, we can\u2019t follow suit. We have no idea what they\u2019re doing, so we can\u2019t imitate their behavior. Movember came along and said let\u2019s make a public signal of an otherwise private act. You\u2019re not just donating money, you\u2019re wearing a mustache. Because you\u2019re wearing a mustache, it\u2019s easier for people to see that you donated and as a result other people are more likely to donate. Whether we\u2019re buying a car because our neighbor bought one recently, or we\u2019re supporting a cause because we can tell that people are doing it, companies and organizations that make behavior visible can harness influence to get their message to catch on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>IS: What are some ways that individuals can harness social influence to make positive changes in their own lives?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JB:<\/strong> Any time we\u2019re trying to achieve something, whether we\u2019re trying to lose weight, exercise more, put in extra hours at the office, peers are a powerful motivating force. We did some research showing that NBA basketball teams are actually more likely to win when they are behind, but just by a little, because that gap causes people to be motivated and try harder. If you\u2019re trying to lose weight for example, rather than just doing it by yourself, pair up with someone else and say \u201cHey, who can lose 15 pounds faster?\u201d Or if you\u2019re trying to run faster or train harder, rather than training at home, work out at the gym where other people are around. Running on a treadmill next to someone, rather than far away, will actually motivate you to work harder. Social facilitation can increase performance and encourage us to do better. Rather than trying to control or motivate our behavior by ourselves, others are often a better way to do it.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>IS: Is there anything else you\u2019d like to add?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JB:<\/strong> These motivations often don\u2019t live on their own. We often think about conforming and imitation and then we think about differentiation and uniqueness, but these two things often work in concert. We want to be similar but different. We want to be, in some sense, optimally distinct. It\u2019s a little bit like Goldilocks. I call it the Goldilocks effect, where too similar is bad\u2014we don\u2019t want to be the same as everybody else\u2014but too different is also bad\u2014we don\u2019t want to stand out and have no one else be like us. We\u2019re trying to walk the line between being similar and different\u2014being part of a group, feeling kinship, feeling support and validation for our choices, but also feeling unique and special by differentiating ourselves from the group.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-2441\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Original<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Putting It Together: Social Psychology. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Lumen Learning. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>How Other People Influence You and Why Thatu2019s Ok . <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Ilaria Schlitz. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: The Psych Report. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/thepsychreport.com\/society\/invisible-influence-how-other-people-think-for-you-and-why-thats-ok\/\">http:\/\/thepsychreport.com\/society\/invisible-influence-how-other-people-think-for-you-and-why-thats-ok\/<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>3D businessmen marching image. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: lumaxart. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Free_3D_Business_Men_Marching_Concept.jpg\">https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Free_3D_Business_Men_Marching_Concept.jpg<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section>","protected":false},"author":29,"menu_order":10,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"original\",\"description\":\"Putting It Together: Social Psychology\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"Lumen Learning\",\"url\":\"\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"How Other People Influence You and Why Thatu2019s Ok \",\"author\":\"Ilaria Schlitz\",\"organization\":\"The Psych Report\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/thepsychreport.com\/society\/invisible-influence-how-other-people-think-for-you-and-why-thats-ok\/\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by-nc-sa\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"3D businessmen marching 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