Social psychology
Meeting III
3.5. 2019
CONTENTS OF THE LECTURE
What would you like to talk about/learn?
1) Social groups
2) Social influence
3) Labeling theory
Social Group
Two or more humans who interact with one another,
share similar characteristics, and have a collective sense
of unity.
Characteristics of social group
• Collectivity
Consists from more than one individual . Groups vary in size from two members to
several hundred million. Members are aware of the fact that they belong to the
same group.
• Interaction
Distinctive interaction occurs among group members. For example in a classroom,
students exchange greetings and share information with each other and are treated
as a group by teachers.
• Mutual Awareness
Physical and symbolic interaction among the members of a group. Members are
aware of the existence of other members. Mutual awareness makes them respond
and behave in a particular ways and thus, influence one another.
• Reciprocity
Relations in group are reciprocal. Members are aware of the roles,
duties and obligations, as well as the privileges resulting from group
membership.
• We Feeling
Group members have common loyalties. They share some similar
values and see as well as set themselves apart from the rest of the
world because of their membership in one particular group
Classifications of groups:
•Number of criteria:
• Size (Small / Medium / Large)
• Membership (Member / Reference)
• Formation (formal / informal)
• Stability (transient / permanent)
• (….)
• C. H. Cooley: Primary / Secondary (Meaning, Influence on an
Individual)
Primary social group
Characterized by intimate face – to-face association and cooperation.
For instance: family, friends etc.
• Physical Proximity: The members of a group share close relationship and they
have intimate contact with each other.
• Small in size
• Stability in nature: Stability promotes closeness.
• Continuity in relationship: By meeting frequently and by exchanging thoughts,
intimacy increases.
• Common commitments among members
• Maximum control over group members: Family members control over family
affairs
Importance of Primary Group
• To develop the personality
• The efficiency of members increases and persons of the group get help,
inspiration and cooperation from one another.
• Satisfaction of total needs of the individuals: (physical, emotional, psychological,
social and spiritual)
• Group members provide love, security, belongingness and companionship to one
another.
• Socialization process initiates within the primary group.
„The nursery of human nature.“ (Ch.G. Cooley)
How knowledge about primary groups could be applied in
teaching practice?
Secondary group
Less intimate, personal and inclusive. Involves mainly indirect
interaction.
For instance: work place, classroom
• Position of a member depends upon their role and status.
• Self-dependence among members.
• Large in size.
• Formed for some purpose after attaining that it may dismantle.
• Group cannot exercise that much social control due to large size.
• Lacks stability and personal relationships.
• Has limited acquaintance and responsibility.
• Members play active and passive roles
• It is formed with definite objective, its function is not spontaneous
How knowledge about secondary groups could be applied in teaching
practice?
Class as a social group
a number of people who have a common identity, some feelings
of unity, and certain common goals and shared norms.
Class as a social group naturaly contains this:
1. Permanence beyond the meeting of the group
2. Means for identifying members
3. Ways of recruiting new members
4. Goals and purposes
5. Social statuses, roles = norms for behavior
6. Means of controlling members’ behavior
Group development
• there are a number of developmental stages that a group must
go through.
Stages of group development
(Tuckman & Jensen, 1977)
• Forming Stage: Members determine their place in the organization, go through a
testing or orientation process, and are more independent.
• Storming Stage: The organization has members who react negatively to the
demands of whatever tasks need to be accomplished, conflicts rise, and there is a
high level of emotion.
• Norming Stage: In-group feelings and cohesiveness develop. Members accept the
rules of behavior and discover new ways to work together.
• Performing Stage: The group is very functional in dealing with tasks and
responsibilities. They have worked through issues of membership and roles, and
focus their efforts to achieve their goals.
• Adjourning Stage: Groups bring finality to the process.
Some important thoughts on group
development
• The stages are not clearly divided steps through which groups
readily progress
• The stages are more continuous, slowly blending into one another
• It may become more difficult for group members to readily detect in
which stage they currently exist
• Groups do not necessarily go through the stages in sequence
• Groups may fluctuate between the stages during their time together.
• Lastly, groups that have a well-defined task prior to their inception
may move through the initial stages more quickly, as the goal of the
group has already been established and provides initial structure.
Social influence
The study of how thoughts, feelings and behaviour are influenced by
the actual, imagined or implied presence of others
Basic terminology – types of social influence
• Conformity:
Involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit with a group
(„yielding to group pressures“ – bully, persuasion, teasing, criticism)
• Obedience to authority:
Individual acts in response to direct order from another individual, who is usually an authority figure
May often goes against internal beliefs (e.g. change of behavior not accompanied by attitude change; direct influence)
• influence of the minority:
Smaller group makes a larger majority conform to their view
• willingness to comply:
„I'll do what YOU say“
• Conversion:
A change that changes internal beliefs
Types of CONFORMITY
• Compliance:
Publicly acting in accord with social pressure while privately disagreeing
• Identification:
Adopting particular behavior because it puts us in a satysfying relationship to the
person with whom we are identifying
• Internalization (acceptance)
Acting and believing in accord with social pressure
Asch Experiment
• Solomon Asch (1951) conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to
which social pressure from a group could affect a person to conform.
• Using the line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with four
to six confederates. The confederates had agreed in advance what their
responses would be when presented with the line task. The real participant
did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven participants
were also real participants like themselves. Each person in the room had to
state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line.
• The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row
and gave his or her answer last.
• In some trials, the seven confederates gave the wrong answer. There were 18
trials in total and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trials (called
the critical trials). Asch was interested to see if the real participant would
conform to the majority view.
A B C X
Which line is closest in length to X
Results:
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority
view. On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in
this situation went along and conformed. Over the 12 critical trials about 75% of
participants conformed at least once and 25% of participant never conformed.
Asch Experiment
What this experiment told us about the role of a
teacher „authority“ in every day practice?
Types of social influence: OBEDIENCE
The Milgram Experiment
• The Milgram Experiment – BBC Documentation 2009
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZwk)
• 1962: conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram
• Measurement of willingness to obey an authority
• Conflict with participant´s personal conscience
• Follow orders despite violating moral beliefs
Procedure of an experiment
• 3 participants:
• Teacher
• Learner
• Experimenter (Professor)
• Teacher & learner in separated rooms  were able to communicate, but could not see each other
• Teacher read word pairs, learner had to remember the correct pairs
• If answer incorrect  teacher had to administer electric shock to learner
• Teacher believed that learner received shocks BUT in reality: No shocks; Not the learner who responded 
a tape recorder integrated in the electro-shock generator
• Various reactions of the teachers: From “Desire to stop” to laughing
• Experiment only stopped if:
a) Teacher wished to stop
b) After giving 450 V three times
• 1:00 – 4:00
Results
• 65% of participants administered final 450 V shock
• Ordinary people can become agents in a terrible destructive process
• Even if teachers wanted to stop, only a few had resources to resist
authority (experimenter)
What this experiment told us about the role of a
teacher „authority“ in every day practice?
Types of social influence: influence of the minority
Minorities can be influential too, provided they adopt the
appropriate style of behaviour.
(If people simply went along with the majority all the time and minority views
never prevailed, there would be no change, no innovation )
Minority influence
• History shows that it is not majorities that have the most powerful influence
– minorities can be powerful social influencers.
• These minorities tend to be initially low in status, ‘weirdos’/troublemakers
but this doesn’t stop them influencing the majority
Minority Influence
• Active, organised and consistent minorities can create conflict and
uncertainty within the majority.
• This can lead to an internalisation of the minority’s beliefs as members of
the majority convert to their opinions – but this takes more time than
majority influence.
Minority influence = internalisation of minority view by
the majority.
Moscovici et al. (1969)
• 32 groups of 6 women were tested.
4 real participants and 2 confederates.
Moscovici et al. (1969)
• Participants were told the study was about colour
perception.
• They were shown 36 blue coloured slides and were
asked to state the colour of the slide out loud.
Moscovici et al. (1969)
• 1st part of the experiment the 2 confederates said all
36 of the slides were green.
• 2nd part of the experiment said green 24 times and
blue 12 times – therefore inconsistent.
• There was also a control group with 6 real ppts and no
confederates.
Moscovici et al. (1969)
• The ppts agreed with the minority
(confederates) in 8.42% of the trials.
• 32% of participants gave the same
answer as the minority at least once.
• When the minority (confederates) were
inconsistent in the 2nd part of the
experiment conformity with the
minority reduced to 1.25%.
Behavioural styles of influential minorities:
• Consistency - must be consistent in their opposition to the
majority. Consistency is recognized as ‘resolution,
certainty, clarity of definition and coherence’
• Not dogmatic – they must not appear dogmatic by rigidly
reiterating the same arguments. They need to
demonstrate a degree of flexibility
• Acting from principle (not out of self-interest)
• Have made sacrifices in order to maintain their position
• Similar to the majority in terms of class, age and gender
• Advocate views that are consistent with current social
trends
What this experiment told us about the role of a
teacher „authority“ in every day practice?
The Stanford Prison Experiment
• Phillip Zimbardo (1971) …experiment was stopped after 6 days
• A simulated prison environment
• 24 participants (some were made prisoners; some were guards)
• Group dynamics:
• Deindividuation
0:27 – 1:40
More information about the experiment
• http://www.prisonexp.org/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
• Zimbardo, P.G., The Lucipher effect: Understanding how good people
turn evil
What this experiment told us about the role of a
teacher „authority“ in every day practice?
Groupthink
„Groupthink occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because
group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality
testing, and moral judgment”
(Irving Janis, 1972)
Groups sometimes fall into a style of thinking where the maintenance of the
group’s cohesion and togetherness becomes all-important and results in very
bad decision-making.
Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to
minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing,
and evaluating ideas. Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent
thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness, as are the advantages
of reasonable balance in choice and thought that might normally be
obtained by making decisions as a group.
SYMPTOMS OF GROUPTHINK
• Illusion of invulnerability
members feel that they cannot be wrong
• Belief in inherent morality
the group never questions that it is on the side of truth, justice, and goodness
• Collective rationalization
Members reassure one another of certain beliefs
• Out-group stereotypes
Cuban air force was seen as obsolete, the army as weak, & Castro as stupid--all wrong
• Self-Censorship
An individual may not want to be an isolated, dissenting voice--there is a pressure toward uniformity;
• Illusion of Unanimity
An atmosphere of assumed consensus--silence is taken for consent
Direct Pressure on Dissenters
the discussion is structures so as to suppress negative reactions; the agreement to do X becomes associated
with some value--e.g., manhood
Self-Appointed Mindguards:
“Mindguards” protect a leader from assault by troublesome ideas (e.g., “now is the time to just stand by the
leader“
Remedies for Groupthink
• Challenge students to think
• Knowledge is Power
• Teach children how to access a variety of media sources from around the
world
• Teach children to think carefully and deeply about actions, policy, and their
underlying assumptions
• Time to time assign one student the role of critical evaluator
• Teach children how to discuss and to discuss
Labeling theory
What is his diagnosis?
• Tom is 8 yrs old, during the lecture he can not sit still, sometimes he is
daydreaming, he forgets things, has trouble focusing. When teacher
ask question he does not raise his hand, he simply shout answer out
loud. He is also interrupting girls in front of him. When he is warned
by teacher he acts emotionally very instable and impulsive. His selfconfidence
is very instable.
•May be ADHD
What is the diagnosis?
• Johny is 9 years old, during the lecture, he walks around the class, when
teacher tells him to sit down, he can sit maximally for five minutes. He is
very hyperactive, talk very fast, he makes impression his thougths are
running. During the break he touches girl´s bottoms and „breasts“ and
laughing loudly. His mom says he has so much energy that he can sleep
only four hours and he is still full of energy. He also has problems with
focusing on what is taught.
•May be BIPOLAR DISORDER (MANIC EPISODE)
•
OVERINTERPRETATION
• Tom is 8 yrs old, during the lecture he can not sit still, sometimes he is
daydreaming, he forgets things, has trouble focusing. When teacher ask question
he does not raise his hand, he simply shout answer out loud. He is also
interrupting girls in front of him. When he is warned by teacher he acts
emotionally very instable and impulsive. His self-confidence is very instable.
• Johny is 9 years old, during the lecture, he walks around the class, when teacher
tells him to sit down, he can sit maximally for five minutes. He is very hyperactive,
talk very fast, he makes impression his thougths are running (RACING
THOUGHTS). During the break he touches girl´s bottoms and „breasts“ and laughs
loudly (SEXUAL DESINHIBITION). His mom says he has so much energy that he can
sleep only four hours (DECREASE NEED FOR SLEEP) and he is still full of energy. He
also has problems with focusing on what is taught
Labeling theory
Labeling theory assumes labeling someone as deviant will reinforce
deviant behavior
• Primary deviation: initial act of transgression
• Secondary deviation: individual accepts the label and sees
oneself as deviant
• No act is intrinsically criminal (or normal)
• Labeling theorists are interested in how behavior is defined as
deviant and why certain groups, but not others, are labeled
deviant
Thinking excercise
Talk in pair and find out at least 8 specific groups of
children that would require specific attention from
teacher, and explain why
- Children with mental health problems
- Children with physical health problems
- Exceptionally gifted children
- Neurotic and anxious children
- Young carers
- Children whose parents are divorcing
- Children who suffered any kind of trauma
- Children from lower socioeconomical background