The Environment and the Individual

We're all a part of various groups that influence us; you might be a part of a family, chess club, lacrosse team, AP Psychology class, or maybe a church group. These groups influence your behavior through their norms, or rules about how members are expected to behave.

The Presence of Others

Do you think you would work harder to win at tug of war pulling alone or as part of a group? Even the mere presence of a group can arouse a person to the point of behaving differently. People who are good at a task (like NBA players attempting a free throw) are significantly better at the task when surrounded by a crowd. Psychologists call this social facilitation: with the arousal of a crowd watching, a person becomes even better at a task that they're already very skilled at doing. People who are bad at a task (like me trying a free throw) are worse at the task when surrounded by a crowd; this is social impairment. The arousal of the crowd encourages the most likely response, which is failure. If you've ever thought that you always trip when you're walking in front of people, it may be true! If you're not so good at walking and you're aware that people are watching, you might be even worse at that time. Home teams really do have an advantage; about 60 percent of home games are won by the home team, possibly because of their increased performance when surrounded by their hometown crowd.

Groups can also influence a person's willingness to work hard. Imagine playing tug of war. Do you think you would work harder when pulling alone or as part of a group? Researchers asked participants to pull on a rope while blindfolded, either telling them they were working alone or as part of a four-person team. When they thought they were pulling as part of a group, participants only pulled with 82 percent of the power they used when they thought they were pulling alone. The same thing happened when researchers asked people with blindfolds and headphones to clap and scream as loudly as they could. If they thought others were cheering with them, they only produced about 70 percent of the noise they produced when they thought they were cheering alone. This tendency to exert less effort when working in a group is known as social loafing. People exert less effort because they feel like their individual efforts are unessential and because they feel less accountable for the final outcome.

Sometimes when people are part of a crowd, they experience deindividuation; they're aroused and they feel anonymous, so they behave in ways that they normally would not behave. This happens at concerts, when people scream and dance in ways that they wouldn't when alone. It happens at ball games, when people scream and cheer and shout things that they would not when alone. It happens during riots, when people loot and burn and attack in ways that they would never do alone.

Interacting with Others

Groups don't always influence us because of their mere presence. Groups can also influence us because of the way we interact with the group.

Consider sitting down to talk with a group of like-minded people, like a religious group or political group that you've chosen to be part of. You all agree on a topic, and your conversation involves statements like, "yes, and also... " or "I agree, and how about... " If all your opinions on the topic were in agreement and fairly strong at the start of the talk, by the end of your conversation, everyone's opinions will be very strong. Interacting with like-minded individuals leads to more intense opinions. This phenomenon, called group polarization, can be great: if you care about helping others and join a group of people who also want to help, your opinions on helping will be strengthened. If you have a strong faith, and you join a faith-based group, your faith will be strengthened. What about terrorists though? It is likely that they had a belief about hurting others, and through interacting with people who held similar beliefs, their own hurtful opinions were strengthened. Group polarization can occur in person or in online environments. In order to avoid the harmful effects, it's important not to isolate yourself from people who hold different opinions. When individuals seek out the opinions of people who think differently, they're less likely to experience extremism.

Group interaction can also lead to specific outcomes when people have different opinions, but suppress them to maintain group harmony, a process called groupthink. In groups where a strong leader established a feeling of harmony in the group, members often want to avoid disrupting the good feeling, so they hide their differing opinions in order to keep everyone happy. Members of various established groups can succumb to this problem, going along with a leader's bad ideas because they don't want to share an opinion that might be unfavorable. Many bad national decisions can be attributed to groupthink; the president expressed an idea and his cabinet members felt like they had to go along. In groupthink, group members do not consider alternative ideas, they don't examine the possible risks associated with a decision, they don't do research, and they don't consider what to do if the plan fails. In order to avoid groupthink, the leader should ask someone to play devil's advocate - pointing out every possible flaw in the plan and the leader should ask for ideas and model careful consideration of every idea presented.

An Individual's Influence

Martin Luther King, Jr. meeting President Johnson. Happily, we aren't all just followers who go with the crowd. Individuals can influence the majority if they're determined to do so. The ability of an individual or small minority group to influence the majority is known as minority influence. In order to influence the majority, the minority must:

consistently express the opinion
get the majority to think about ideas for and against the new idea
express the ability to be reasonable and willingness to compromise

History is full of examples of minority influence. Martin Luther and the protestant movement, Martin Luther King, Jr and the civil rights movement, Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years' War, Gandhi and the Indian independence movement, William Wallace and the Scotch independence movement, the suffragette movement, Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement. These individuals and minority groups held firm to their beliefs, convinced people in the majority group to consider their ideas, and showed a willingness to be reasonable. Their influences can be seen clearly today.

Complete the practice with environmental influences activity below:

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