Related Concept Videos

Social Proof 00:52

27.5K

Social proof is a form of persuasion based on comparison and conformity. People compare their behavior and actions to what others are doing and will change to conform to do what their peers do.

A good example of social proof is from laugh tracks on television shows. Fullery & Skeffington (1974) found that adding group laughter sounds to material increased how humorous the participants perceived that material, regardless of whether the content itself was funny or not. By adding a laugh...

Social Facilitation 01:04

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Not all intergroup interactions lead to negative outcomes. Sometimes, being in a group situation can improve performance. Social facilitation occurs when an individual performs better when an audience is watching than when the individual performs the behavior alone. This typically occurs when people are performing a task for which they are skilled.

Can you think of an example in which having an audience could improve performance? One common example is sports. Skilled basketball...

The Stanford Prison Experiment 03:20

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The famous and controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University, demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts.

Social Roles

One major social determinant of human behavior is our social role—a pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group (Hare, 2003). Each one of us has several social roles. You may be, at the same time, a student, a parent, an aspiring...

Persuasion Strategies 01:52

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Researchers have tested many persuasion strategies, including the foot-in-the door and the door-in-the-face techniques, in a variety of contexts. Ultimately, the principles are effective in selling products and changing people’s attitude, ideas, and behaviors (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004).

Get Your Foot in the Door

The first effective strategy is the foot-in-the-door technique (Cialdini, 2001; Pliner, Hart, Kohl, & Saari, 1974): If a persuader—such as a...

Relationship Formation 02:12

39.8K

What do you think is the single most influential factor in determining with whom you become friends and whom you form romantic relationships? You might be surprised to learn that the answer is simple: the people with whom you have the most contact. This most important factor is proximity. You are more likely to be friends with people you have regular contact with. For example, there are decades of research that shows that you are more likely to become friends with people who live in your dorm,...

In- and Out-Groups 01:31

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People all belong to a gender, race, age, and social economic group. These groups provide a powerful source of our identity and self-esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and serve as our in-groups. An in-group is a group that we identify with or see ourselves as belonging to.

A group that we don’t belong to, an out-group, is a group that we view as fundamentally different from us. For example, if you are female, your gender in-group includes all females, and your gender out-group...