Persuasion and Group Behavior in Social Psychology

Introduction

Social psychology deals with different aspects of social life and social behavior. People not only have feelings and opinions about nearly everything they come into contact with, but the argument has been made that we need to have these feelings and opinions. This essay explores the principles of persuasion influencing group behavior. Its foundation is the textbook Social Psychology by Myers (2010), which discusses attitude theory and persuasion, reviewing how attitudes are structured and how that structure influences their susceptibility to change.

The essay is divided into four sections. The first section evaluates recent research and pertinent literature related to social psychology and group behavior, focusing on trends in recent literature and the emerging topics in this field. The second section discusses key concepts of social psychology, with particular attention to the ways in which different factors affect our perceptions, attitudes, and reactions. The third section describes how social factors — such as our relationships with family and friends and our socioeconomic status — shape our attitudes and behaviors, including both positive and negative influences. The fourth section examines cultural and gender influences, exploring how ways of life within a culture affect social behavior, including the influence of culture on identity and the role of group norms and peer persuasion.

Research Evaluation: Persuasion and Attitude Change

Attitude change that is directly influenced by exposure to a communication is called persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Persuasion research grew rapidly as a psychological topic of inquiry following World War II. Researchers worked to map out the properties of persuasive messages, beginning with the source. Three main features of a source were determined to best predict attitude change: expertise, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. Messages delivered by an expert, or by someone who was attractive or trustworthy, most often resulted in the desired change in receiver attitudes (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953). However, this was not always the case, and researchers began examining message content for further explanations. The strength of arguments presented an intriguing variable for predicting persuasion, but even well-constructed arguments were not always more persuasive than weaker ones. Eventually, psychologists turned to the receiver and discovered that what was most predictive of attitude change was neither source nor message characteristics, but rather the cognitive deliberations of the receiver.

Two models were developed to account for this active role of the receiver in the persuasion process. Both are based on dual modes of processing and remain the leading models used in current persuasion research. Quite similar in many respects, the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) use the extent of cognitive resources deployed during processing as the mediator of source and message effects. For clarity, this essay focuses primarily on the ELM.

Social psychologists have spent decades investigating the structure of attitudes and the conditions under which they can be changed. Attitudes are not isolated psychological constructs; they exist within an elaborate network of stored representations related to the attitude object. This intra-attitudinal structure is connected to related attitudes, creating a parallel inter-attitudinal structure. Greater experience with the attitude object and acquired knowledge can increase the complexity and stability of both dimensions (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Somewhat like Hebb's law in neurobiology, a greater number of connections and the frequency with which those connections are exercised leads to stronger overall structures.

Researchers have also reviewed the varying educational trajectories of adolescents from different ethnic groups using a range of theoretical frameworks. Differences in educational performance are frequently discussed in the context of the gap between White students and students of other racial and ethnic groups, with recent literature increasingly attending to gender and cultural dimensions of these disparities.

People have feelings and opinions about nearly everything they encounter, and it has been argued that forming such evaluations is a fundamental human need. We are motivated to evaluate all aspects of our lives, and the results of these evaluations are attitudes.

Concepts of Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Identity

People tend to hold strong attitudes about some issues — such as abortion or gun control — while their attitudes about other issues, such as education reform, may be weaker. Attitude strength has been defined as the level of personal importance attached to an attitude object or issue and has many subcomponents, of which attitude importance is one. Attitude importance measures the degree to which an attitude is central to the self-concept and has been associated with information-seeking behavior. More important attitudes are typically accessible, resistant to change, predictive of behavior, and embedded in a strong intra-attitudinal network (Bassili, 2008). In the context of persuasion, this characteristic has been shown to significantly influence how a persuasive message is processed.

Social Identity Theory (hereafter SIT) focuses on how categorical group memberships alter the perceptions and behaviors of individuals in social settings (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). The theory emerged from seminal experimental work by Tajfel and colleagues, who found that people's perceptions of physical objects became distorted when those objects were categorized — that is, explicitly placed into groups. Specifically, individuals perceived greater similarity among objects within a group and greater dissimilarity between groups. Tajfel (1959) labeled this the accentuation effect and argued that people rely on category labels as aids to simplify and understand their environment.

The process of categorization and the resulting accentuation effect also bias judgments of social phenomena. The most fundamental hypothesis of SIT is that the mere categorization of an individual as a member of a "minimal group" will produce a bias in favor of in-group over out-group members. Social categorization leads individuals to first define themselves as members of a group and then to perceive greater similarity among in-group members and greater distinctiveness from out-group members, causing them to favor fellow in-group members in a variety of settings — including the allocation of resources, interpersonal trust, cooperation, and conflict.

Early research also found that social identity effects emerge even in situations where subjects did not interact or see one another, but were simply given nominal labels and asked to allocate rewards to in-group and out-group members (Tajfel, 1979). A substantial body of research has continued to support the theory's main arguments.

In the social identity framework, when people classify themselves as in-group members, the in-group serves as a reference point for social comparison, and individuals adopt the prototypical in-group behaviors and values as their own. Building on this analysis, Turner (1994) suggested that groups exert influence through a process he called referent informational influence. In this view, group members agree with one another, and this agreement is seen as helpful for improving individual and group confidence, suggesting that shared attitudes reflect external reality. If similar others disagree on an issue, this signals subjective doubt and motivates people to resolve the difference through social influence, reasoning to explain the disagreement, or behavioral adjustment.

This perspective implies that individuals are influential only to the degree that they represent the prototypical attitudes, behaviors, and values of the group. Studies of leaders' ability to achieve legitimacy and influence have supported this point. As Turner (1994) argues, social categorization is the causal driver of influence. The self-categorization process differs from standard approaches to persuasion by emphasizing group identity as the primary determinant of attitude change, rather than individuals' understanding of the issues themselves.

Conclusion

Group differences and socioeconomic status also influence individuals' behaviors and attitudes in important ways. Students' academic performance, for example, is often attributed to the availability of resources — primarily financial. Although low socioeconomic status is a contributor to poor educational outcomes, cross-cultural research and U.S. education census data show that some ethnic groups still report better academic performance than White students, even while their socioeconomic status is lower. This indicates that socioeconomic status alone cannot fully explain differences in student academic performance.

Research studies have further shown that both culture and gender influence individual performance. Sociocultural theory proposes that individuals will achieve better adjustment and more successful performance through assimilation into mainstream culture. A counter-position — often supported by researchers — argues that assimilation is not necessary for reducing inequality and may, in fact, diminish the cultural advantages that minorities bring with them.

This essay examined the principles of persuasion influencing group behavior, with particular focus on social, cultural, and gender influences on individual and collective attitudes. Persuasion refers to the attitude change directly produced by exposure to a communication. Operating beneath persuasion are the intertwined forces of social, gender, and cultural behavior. Our feelings, thoughts, and perceptions are shaped by our environment — our parents, friends, and broader society — and social behavior, gender differences, and cultural differences all exert significant influence on our attitudes.

Gender and cultural background have been shown to have a strong impact on a person's social life, achievements, and performance. Socioeconomic factors, linguistic factors, family characteristics, and peer influences all carry predictive associations for group behavior. This is apparent in communication research showing that in-group sources are more persuasive than out-group sources. More recent work has revealed a social motivation underlying this group effect in persuasion. For instance, pro-attitudinal messages typically receive more attention than counter-attitudinal messages. Under conditions of self-affirmation, however, receivers become more motivated to process counter-attitudinal messages and to engage with pro-attitudinal messages in a less biased fashion. These findings suggest that cognitive resources otherwise dedicated to preserving a stable connection with the group can be redirected toward processing otherwise threatening information.