Persuasion

Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• Persuasion is another form of social influence

• An attempt to change a person’s attitude
• Aristotole identifies 3 elements necessary for persuasion
• Emotional appeal (pathos)
• Intellectual appeal (Logos)
• Charisma ( ethos)
Components of persuasion
• Who: message source
• Says what: message
• To whom: audience
Persuasion research

Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights

Reserved.
 Two routes to persuasion
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• Elaboration likelihood model and

heuristic/systematic model
• Both propose automatic and conscious
processing are involved in persuasion
• Central route involves the deliberate mind:
careful and thoughtful consideration
• Peripheral route involves the automatic mind:
influenced by some simple cue
 Two routes to persuasion
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

(cont’d.)
• Peripheral cues
• Experts know best
• The more arguments, the better
• Expensive products are good
• Rare products are good
• What is beautiful is good
 Resisting social influence
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

techniques
• Attitude inoculation
• Exposure increases strength
• Forewarned is forearmed
• Allows for defense preparation
• Stockpile resources
• Physical, cognitive, and social
 Summary
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• People’s ideas and beliefs are influenced by

others around them
• Many techniques are used to influence and
persuade other people
• People are susceptible to persuasion, but can be
taught to resist it
 Unit 11
Groups
Chapter 14
By Mpilo MT
Learning objectives
• Explain how humans, as cultural animals, form
groups that differ from the groups of other
social animals, emphasising how selves and
roles alter the nature of human groups.
• Discuss how roles and the inner processes of
the self affect group behaviour.
• Describe group outcomes that result from
being individually identified in the group
versus feeling submerged in the group.
• Describe how individuals within a group share
information, including brainstorming and
groupthink.
• Describe the traits of successful leadership
and the five crucial effects that power has on
people.
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
INTRODUCTION

Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights

Reserved.
 What groups are and do
 Group a collection of at least two people who are
doing or being something together
 Usually the group consists of people who have
common interests and characteristics and
periodically do something together
 Humans can use the power of culture to form
groups that can achieve far more than collections
of individuals operating alone.

Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

 Introduction continues…
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

In human evolution, a tendency to form groups may have been beneficial

because:
❍ Group members can find safety in numbers.
❍ Group members can help each other find food.
❍ Groups can accomplish tasks that would be too difficult for lone
individuals.
❍ Cultural groups preserve information and pass it along to future
generations.
❍ Cultural groups can use information, as well as reason from
experience, to organise themselves.
❍ Cultural groups benefit from role differentiation and division of
labour.
 Group roles and selves
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• Complementary roles (as in the role

differentiation of cultural groups) produce better
results than simply having everyone do the
same thing.
• Human roles work in the context of a large system in which
most other people do something else.
• In fascist movements, the individual’s self-interest is
subordinated to the best interests of the group.
• Putting the best interests of the collective (that is, society as a
whole) above those of the individual makes tyranny more
likely.
 Group roles and selves
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• Culture creates roles that are independent of the

individuals who occupy those roles.
• Human selves are flexible enough to take on (and
occasionally drop) roles.
• Identifying people in groups and holding them
accountable for their actions produces better
outcomes in groups.
 Group
actions
The effect of working in a
group (as compared to
working alone) is variable.
Sometimes the group
produces improvement; other
times, disaster.
Social facilitation Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
 Group actions
• Zajonc’s theory of social facilitation states that the presence of others increases
arousal, which increasesthe dominant response tendency (the most common
response in that situation).
• Social facilitation theory states that the presence of others can make people
perform better, especially on easy and familiar tasks.
• The presence of others can change people’s eating patterns.

Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Group actions
• Evaluation apprehension affects performance among
humans, and it may intensify the effects of others’
presence.
• A judgemental observer has a stronger effect; the
possibility of evaluation seems to inspire certain kinds
of people to do their best.
• Narcissists: perform best when others are watching/ reward; tend to
slack off when there is no opportunity to bring credit to themselves
 Group actions
Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

• Social loafing (also called the free rider problem) refers to the
finding that people reduce effort when working in a group,
compared to when working alone, especially if their work is not
individually identifiable.
• The bad apple effect refers to the finding that one loafer can cause
other workers to loaf as well.
• Free rider problem
• Punishing cheaters and free riders
When participants recognise that other players are showing signs
of social loafing or free riding, they will punish them – even if it
costs the participant money to punish the free rider
altruistic punishment the finding that people will sometimes sacrifice
their own gain for the betterment of all, by punishing people who cheat
the system
 Group
actions

Deindividuation and mob violence

Deindividuation refers to a loss of
self-awareness and of individual
accountability in a group, which can
lead to antisocial behaviour.
People in groups often feel less
individual responsibility for their
behavior and may feel that they will
be able to act with more anonymity.

Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Group actions

Deindividuation is thought to be facilitated be a few different things,

including:
•Anonymity: When people are part of a crowd, their personal identity is less
likely to be singled out. This lack of accountability allows them to engage in
behavior that might not be socially acceptable if they were acting alone.
•Contagion: In group settings, behavior is known to spread quickly from
person to person.
•Suggestibility: It’s theorized that people in crowds may be more
suggestible, causing them to be more open to imitating the beliefs or actions
of their group members.
Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Group actions

Shared Resources and the commons dilemma

The commons dilemma is the tendency for shared or jointly owned
resources to be squandered and not used in an optimal or
advantageous fashion (the ‘tragedy of the commons’).
• Communication, personality, mood and the behaviour of others all
affect the tendency to overuse
• Resources can either be shared or privately owned, but what
happens when groups share?
• Resources that are not owned by anyone do not receive the preserving
care that they get from individual owners
Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

How groups think

Brainstorming involves encouraging group members to share and generate as many
ideas as possible without holding back or worrying about being wrong;
it produces less creative output but is liked better than working separately.
Large groups of people can make better predictions than the smartest members of
the group if people operate as separate, independent members and then pool and
share their diverse information.
Working in teams satisfies their need to belong. It enables them to feel confident,
effective and superior
Transactive memory: Here, you remember this
Refers to a process by which the members of a small group remember different
kinds of information.
Remember Ford’s assembly line: instead of hiring mechanics who know how to
build an entire car, he could hire people with little knowledge and just train them in
a specific skill.
Transactive memory begins at the learning stage, not just at the remembering stage
How groups think cont...

Groupthink refers to the

tendency of group members to Groupthink is marked by these
think alike. It is especially likely if symptoms:
the group:
• ❍ Is similar and cohesive. • ❍ Pressure toward conformity.
• ❍ Has a strong, directive • ❍ An appearance of
leader. unanimous agreement.
• ❍ Is isolated from other ideas. • ❍ An illusion of invulnerability.
• ❍ Has high self-esteem. • ❍ A sense of moral
superiority.
• ❍ Underestimation of
opponents

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserve

d.
 How groups
Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

think cont...
Foolish committees: Groups tend to focus more on the information
held in common by all members than on the unique information
each person has.
Group polarisation and risk shift
Group polarisation is a shift toward a more extreme position
resulting from group discussion.
The risky shift is the tendency for groups to take greater risks than
the same individuals (on average) would have decided to take
individually.
Power and leadership
• Many groups aim for equality. In practice, however, equality is not very efficient
for making decisions, and it may have other drawbacks.
• most groups have leaders
Large groups don’t just have leaders; they generally have a hierarchy of power,
ranging from a leader at the top, down through several ranks of others who have
some authority but must respect what the top leader says, down to the lowest levels
of people who take orders
• armies
• institutions/ organisations

Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserve

d.
Power and leadership cont…
• Successful leaders are humble and extremely persistent.
• People who are perceived as good leaders have integrity,
decisiveness, competence and vision.
• Power refers to one person’s control over another person’s
outcomes and behaviour.
• Power has five crucial effects on the powerful: it feels good, it
alters attention to rewards and punishments, it changes the
relationships between people, it makes people rely more on
automatic processing, and it removes inhibitions against taking
action.
• People with less power are especially prone to fostering peace
and harmony. They adapt to the expectations ofhigh-power
people, even without realising it.
Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserve
d.