45 – Power, Influence, and Influence Tactics – Richard L. Hughes, Robert C. Ginnett, and Gordon Curphy • One cannot understand leadership without understanding the concepts of power, influence, and influence tactics. • Power: the capacity to produce effects on others or the potential to influence. • Influence: change in a target agent’s attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors as the result of influence tactics, • Influence tactics: one person’s actual behaviors designed to change another person’s attitudes beliefs, values, or behaviors. • It is important to remember that followers can also wield a considerable amount of power and influence, and that followers also use a variety of influence tactics to change the attitudes, values, beliefs, • “Groupy” – group has norms that they follow. One of the most common norms is remaining loyal to the group by sticking with polices the group established even when polices are obviously working out badly (disturb each member), characteristic of groupthink. • 1984 – groupthink takes on an invidious connotation when the deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgments as a result of group pressure. The symptoms of groupthink arise when the members of decision-making groups become motivated to avoid being too harsh in their judgments of their leaders’ or their colleagues’ ideas. They have a “we-feeling” atmosphere. • Kill – soft-headed groups are often hard-headed when it comes to dealing with outgroups or enemies. • Norms – groupthink type of conformity tends to increase as group cohesiveness increases. A cohesive group agrees with what the leader or the majority believes. • Stress – Not all cohesive groups suffer from groupthink. • Symptoms – invulnerability, rationale, morality, stereotypes, pressure, self-censorship, unanimity, and o Pressure – victims of groupthink apply direct pressure to any individual who momentarily expresses doubts about any of the group’s shared illusions or who questions the validity of the arguments supporting a policy alternative favored by the majority. o Self-censorship – victims of groupthink avoid deviating from what appears to be group consensus; they keep silent about their misgivings and even minimize to themselves the importance of their doubts. o Unanimity – victims of groupthink share an illusion of unanimity within the group concerning almost all judgments expressed by members who speak in favor of the majority view. o Mindguards – victims of groupthink sometimes appoint themselves as mindguards to protect the leader and follow members for adverse information that might break the complacency they shared about the effectiveness and morality of past decisions. • Products – products of poor decision-making practices; limits discussion on alternative courses of action, fails to reexamine the course of action, are not likely to obtain information from experts, do not plan things
... speaks up against it.People are less influenced by views from a group than by views from separate individuals. This is perhaps because of the possibility for group consensus to be contaminated. In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is a situation where a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but assume incorrectly that most others accept it,[1] also described as "no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes."[2] In short, pluralistic ignorance is a bias about a social group, held by a social group.[3] Lack of p
Groupthink relates to the movie The Ghost of Abu Ghraib because Military Intelligence were a cohesive group, so what one did they all did. Even though most of the Military Police didn’t believe what they were doing to the detainees were humanely correct, they did it anyways because their higher rank told them to do it. If they were telling them to do these violent acts, then they must have been okay in doing. Intelligence wanted the information quickly and this was one of the reason why they interrogated the detainees. The military police were angry and everyone wanted answers. The higher ranked intelligence guys thought abuse was the way to get the answers they needed and quickly. The textbook, ORGB, mentions illusions of invulnerability, which is when group members feel that they are above criticism, leading to risk taking. One of the top intelligence guys, Corporal Graner, was hungry for the power. Abusing the detainees made he feel powerful, so he did it more and
It is clear that the film Prisoners of Silence holds many illustrations of concepts explained by Social Psychology. While the examples of belief perseverance and the confirmation bias are specifically pointed out here, one could find numerous others. This shows that one can examine situations and events occurring around and within one's own life and see Social Psychology at work.
In 1972, Irving Janis presented a set of hypothesis that he extracted from observing small groups performing problem solving tasks; he collectively referred to these hypotheses as groupthink¹. He defined groupthink as “a quick and easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action²” A successful group brings varied ideas, collective knowledge, and focus on the task at hand. The importance of groups is to accomplish tasks that individuals can not do on their own. The Bay of Pigs, Watergate, and the Challenger disaster are all forms of failure within a group. Specifically, you can see the effect of groupthink of Americans before September 11, 2001. The thought of harm to the United States was unfathomable, but only after the attacks did they realize they were not invincible. When a solid, highly cohesive group is only concerned with maintaining agreement, they fail to see their alternatives and any other available options. When a group experiences groupthink, they may feel uninterested about a task, don't feel like they will be successful, and the group members do not challenge ideas. Stress is also a factor in the failure of groupthink. An effective group needs to have clear goals, trust, accountability, support, and training. Some indicators that groupthink may be happening are; making unethical decisions, they think they are never wrong, close-minded about situations, and ignore important information. Many things can be done to prevent groupthink from happening. One way is to make each person in the group a “critical evaluator”. The leader must ...
Turman, P. (October 13, 2000b). Group Decision Making & Problem Solving: Group Communication [Lecture] Cedar Falls, IA. University of Northern Iowa, Communication Studies Department.
Fear this is within all of us as people it is how we confront this demon among us all to live with ourselves among others. This is what gives us power over others their own fears used against them. Although when several people share a common fear of another group and wish to see them be demolished by the other they begin to make false accusations against other such as the crucible of those willing to do anything of their own personal fear to empower them to do what is necessary or what seems right to those at the time.
Numerous cases in history show that identification with a particular group can lead to dreadful outcomes. Together, with historical evidence, classic psychological studies tell a very powerful story. Decent people can take on oppressive roles and succumb to oppressive leaders. However, people often resist tyranny, and their resistance tends to be most effective when it is collective.
Zimbardo has done much research on studying the effects of deindividuation amongst people in groups. His results proved that when anonymous, people feel isolated from others and have no regard for their actions. Additionally, this state is also active when one is not held to the consequences of their actions. While in this state, people are more likely to be involved in impulsive behaviors due to a lower threshold for exhibiting actions that are usually held back. (Gilovich 2013)
ABC News directs a test, in either a group setting, or individual, where people answer questions, in the group, someone knows the answer, but they say the wrong answer, and most people, because they are scared of being the odd one out, so they come to the conclusion that, “human[s] need to conform”, and when they dont, a trigger goes off in “the fear center of the brain”. Proving that when people are put under pressure, and there are other influences around, they might choose to make the wrong decisions. But, humanity can only imagine what might happen if someone followed the mob mentality when it comes to a life changing decision. Similarly, in the teleplay written by Rod Serling, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”, mob mentality leads to bad decisions, and results in the neighbors scapegoating each other.
There are eight symptoms of groupthink. The first symptom is when all or most of the group view themselves as invincible which causes them to make decisions that may be risky. The group has an enormous amount of confidence and authority in their decisions as well as in themselves. They see themselves collectively better in all ways than any other group and they believe the event will go well not because of what it is, but because they are involved. The second symptom is the belief of the group that they are moral and upstanding, which leads the group to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of the decisions. The group engages in a total overestimation of its morality. There is never any question that the group is not doing the right thing, they just act. The disregarding of information or warnings that may lead to changes in past policy is the third symptom. Even if there is considerable evidence against their standpoint, they see no problems with their plan. Stereotyping of enemy leaders or others as weak or stupid is the fourth symptom. This symptom leads to close-mindedness to other individuals and their opinions. The fifth symptom is the self-censorship of an individual causing him to overlook his doubts. A group member basically keeps his mouth shut so the group can continue in harmony. Symptom number six refers to the illusion of unanimity; going along with the majority, and the assumption that silence signifies consent. Sometimes a group member who questions the rightness of the goals is pressured by others into concurring or agreeing, this is symptom number seven. The last symptom is the members that set themselves up as a buffer to protect the group from adverse information that may destroy their shared contentment regarding the group’s ...
Solomon Asch’s experiment in “Opinions and Social Pressure” studied a subject’s ability to yield to social pressure when placed within a group of strangers. His research helped illustrate how groups encourage conformity. During a typical experiment, members of the group were asked by the experimenter to claim two obvious mismatched lines were identical. The single individual who was not privy to this information was the focal point of the experiment. Twelve out of eighteen times the unsuspecting individual went along with the majority, dispelling his beliefs in favor of the opinions of the group.
Groupthink refers to the tendency of group members to think alike (especially when doing so leads to bad decisions). One sign of groupthink is the tendency to underestimate opponents. Groupthink helps groups
Schmidt, K. D.,Wilkinson, S. (1990). Intraorganizational influence tactics:exploration in getting one’s way. Journal of Applied Psychology 58(4):440-452.
Working in groups is challenging at times. Other times it is very rewarding. We are so focused on life that we do not take time to reflect on things as much as we should. Being in a Groups class has opened my eyes to a whole new world. I have begun to question, explore, and even understand how things work. I even get how they work sometimes. Not only is there a process involved in making individual decisions, process is involved in group decisions as well. This paper attempts give insight into my reflection of my group decision process.
Several experiments and researches have been conducted that have focused on how people behave in groups. The findings have revealed that groups affect peoples’ attitudes, behavior and perceptions. Groups are essential for personal life, as well as in work life.