Social Pressure and Altruism: Detailed Framework

Social Pressure

1. Conformity

• Definition: The adjustment of one's behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs to match those of others, due to real or imagined group pressure.

• Key Study: Asch's line experiment, where individuals conformed to incorrect group judgments about line lengths.

• Factors Influencing Conformity: Group size, unanimity, cohesion, status, public response, and prior commitment.

2. Social Norms

• Definition: Implicit or explicit rules that govern the behavior of group members, defining acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.

• Types: Descriptive norms (what is commonly done) and injunctive norms (what is approved or disapproved by the society).

3. Reciprocity Norm

• Definition: The expectation that people will respond to each other in kind, returning benefits for benefits and responding with either indifference or hostility to harms.

• Application: Plays a crucial role in the development and maintenance of social relationships and in practices such as gift-giving and altruism.

4. Compliance Techniques

• Foot-in-the-Door Technique: Agreement to a small request increases the likelihood of agreement to a larger request later.

• Door-in-the-Face Technique: Refusal of a large request is followed by agreement to a more reasonable, smaller request.

• Low Balling: Securing agreement with a request but then revealing hidden costs or downsides.

5. Obedience

• Definition: Compliance with commands given by an authority figure.

• Key Study: Milgram's obedience study, where participants administered what they believed were electric shocks to another person under the instruction of an authority figure.

Altruism

1. Bystander Intervention

• Definition: The act of helping strangers in an emergency situation.

• Determinants: Situational ambiguity, perceived risk, diffusion of responsibility, and the bystander's mood and competency.

2. Bystander Effect

• Definition: The phenomenon where individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present.

• Explanation: Attributed to the diffusion of responsibility and social influence.

3. Social Facilitation

• Definition: The tendency for people to perform differently when in the presence of others than when alone, typically performing better on well-practiced tasks.

• Theory: Presence of others increases physiological arousal, enhancing the execution of simple tasks and hindering complex tasks.

4. Social Loafing

• Definition: The phenomenon of individuals exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone.

• Causes: Diffusion of responsibility, feeling of lesser accountability, and belief that others will compensate for the lack of effort.

5. Risky Shift

• Definition: The tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members, often toward greater risk.

• Extension: Group polarization, where group discussion strengthens the original inclinations of group members.

6. Deindividuation

• Definition: The loss of self-awareness and individual accountability in groups, which can lead to disinhibited and impulsive behavior.

• Factors: Anonymity, diffusion of responsibility, group size, and arousal.

7. Groupthink

• Definition: A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when members' striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.

• Symptoms: Illusion of invulnerability, collective rationalization, direct pressure on dissenters, and self-censorship.

This detailed framework outlines the key concepts of social pressure and altruism as covered in AP Psychology, providing insights into how individual and group behaviors are influenced by the social environment and internal motivations.