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Free Webinar: The Basics of Social Influence

Dr. David Matsumoto, Director of Humintell, led a free webinar on The Basics of Social Influence where he provided participants with an introduction to evidenced-based topics of social influence.

These included the topics of:

  • Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience
  • Cooperation
  • Emotion Contagion
  • Social Loafing and Social Striving
  • Leadership
  • Persuasion and Influence

Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience

In social science and social psychology these topics (conformity, compliance and obedience) are generally considered together within the larger rubric of social influence.

They are all important constructs in any social system as ways of reinforcing behaviors.

Some of these words may have a negative connotation, but in reality they are important concepts for any group or society as ways of reinforcing behaviors.

Definitions of conformity, compliance and obedience can be found in the graphic to the left.

In this area of psychology there are a few studies that form the backbone of what we know about these three topics. Let’s explore them!

The Ash Experiments

A researcher named Solomon Ash conducted a very well-known set of experiments that are some of the first and classic studies on conformity and compliance.

In one of his most famous studies, a participant went into a room with seven confederates who were part of the experimental team.

The participants were given lines (see example). You can see there is a target line and other lines on the right hand side.

Every person in the room was asked which line on the right hand side matches the target line on the left. There was an obvious correct and incorrect answer.

The results of the study showed that when the participant is the last to answer and everyone before them has given the incorrect answer, it increases the likelihood that the participant will also give the incorrect answer.

On average 32% conformed to the incorrect answer. In over 12 trials, 75% conformed at least once.

The Milgram Experiments

Like the Ash experiments, any people have heard about the Milgram experiments led by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram.

In one of his most famous studies (that could not be conducted today due to ethical reasons), Milgram recruited 40 men to come to a laboratory with equipment that was labeled with shock danger warnings.

The participant was told that they are the teacher who is going to deliver a shock to a student in a neighboring room. They couldn’t see the student (and who was not actually being shocked contrary to what the participant is told).

Every time the student answered a question wrong, the participant was instructed to deliver a shock to them of increasing intensity. The student in the other room banged on the wall, made other sounds, then eventually went silent.

The participants asked the experimenter if they should continue (to which they are told yes). In the study with 40 men, 26 delivered the maximum shock and 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels.

Like the Ash study, the Milgram studies demonstrates an amazing amount of conformity and obedience.

Over the years, these findings have been replicated many times all around the world in various countries suggesting that conformity, compliance and obedience may be universal human phenomenons.

Cooperation

Cooperation refers to people’s ability to work together towards common goals. Cooperation is necessary in every society and based on unique cognitive abilities, especially a concept called shared intentionality.

Dr. Matsumoto believes that shared intentionality is at the root of human cultures. He also believes that the main purpose and function of human communication including language and non-verbal behavior is to share intentions.

Cooperation is a universal phenomenon that is part of the basis of social influence. It has been studied extensively in social psychology.

However, there is some research that suggest there are cultural and individual differences in cooperation.

Some research suggests that the rates of cooperation tends to be higher in collectivistic societies (e.g. East Asia, SE Asia, Latin/South America) compared to individualistic societies (e.g. USA, Canada).

Additional research suggests that individual differences in cooperation exist due to levels of trustworthiness (high trusters vs low trusters).

Research on cooperation has also been conducted regarding the sanctioning systems across various cultures as well as inter and intra-cultural environments.

Dr. Matsumoto’s research suggests that when people from different cultures come together, they generally cooperate less.

Emotion Contagion

The concept of emotion contagion started with researcher Elaine Hatfield and others in 1993.

What is emotion contagion?

Emotion contagion is a phenomenon when someone’s emotions lead to or produce similar emotions in others.

What Hatfield and colleagues have demonstrated is when there’s a group of people, one person or several people’s emotions can affect the emotions of the rest of the people.

Why does emotion contagion occur?

The truth is that science has not gotten to the point where we know exactly why emotion contagion occurs.

However, there’s interesting literature within the emotion contagion literature that pertain to what’s called mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are essentially special types of brain cells that are triggered when viewing the actions of other individuals. For example, when we see another person fall and hurt themselves, our mirror neurons trigger the part of our own brain that would be activated if we had fallen.

Facial feedback is another concept that suggests that when we have an expression on our face our brains tell us we’re having that emotion and thus turns our emotional system on inside of us.

This may be the reason why some research suggests that smiling can improve your mood. 

Social Loafing and Social Striving

When people are in a group and they have a task to do, sometimes individual productivity and motivation is reduced. This concept is called social loafing.

Social loafing has led to the concept of freeriders- members of a group who are not producing as much as others

On the other hand, there’s the opposite effect called social striving. Sometimes working in a group enhances individual performance rather than diminish it so then the product of the group is greater than the sum of the individual members.

One factor that has been shown to influence whether members of a group either loaf or strive is leadership.

Research has put issues faced by leaders into two buckets: 1) task performance and 2) group maintenance.

There has been extensive studies about the characteristics of leaders that are universally endorsed all around the world and the most influential set of researchers are known as the GLOBE project.

The GLOBE project has produced a number of amazing findings that are universally endorsed as good leaders are:

  • Charisma: ability to connect and persuade others
  • Team Orientation: focus on the team as a whole
  • Empathy: the degree to which leaders are perceived as being empathetic

Persuasion and Influence

Without a doubt, the most influential psychologist in the area of persuasion and influence is Robert Cialdini.

The seven psychological principles underlying persuasion, influence, and compliance that Cialdini has compiled are:

  • Reciprocity
  • Consistency
  • Social Proof (related to conformity)
  • Liking (related to cooperation)
  • Authority (related to obedience)
  • Scarcity
  • Unity

Cialdini has done an amazing amount of research himself but has also done a great job of integrating the knowledge in the field to come up with these various principles of persuasion and influence.

One of the points that Cialdini makes which Dr. Matsumoto finds absolutely true is that these principles exist because societies and cultures and all groups need them.

These principles work because they work to mobilize emotion, either through what’s known as cognitive dissonance or anxiety or something that motivates people to alleviate their emotion.

Other Social Influence Constructs

There are actually many other social influence constructs that have been demonstrated and documented in science including:

  • Mere Exposure Effect
  • Trust and Trustworthiness
  • Rapport

Want to Learn More?

Our Tactical Social Influence Workshop, explores how to use various psychological techniques to discern points of views and detect nonverbal emotions, behaviors, and reactions in order to advocate, influence, and convince others.

LEARN MORE

The post Free Webinar: The Basics of Social Influence first appeared on Humintell.

Can Getting Angry Help You Achieve Your Goals?

When we think about potentially destructive emotions, we often think about anger. And for good reason; anger is probably the most common emotion that leads to feelings of regret later.

Dr. Matsumoto doesn’t believe anger is inherently a “bad” emotion. Getting angry can result in some good in our lives and in society. Anger, and all other basic emotions, exist for a reason.

In fact, according to new research by Heather Lench et al, anger can be a powerful motivator for people to achieve challenging goals in their lives.

Their study entitled Anger Has Benefits for Attaining Goals was recently published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Anger Study Methodology

Lench and her team of researchers conducted a series of 6 different experiments involving more than 1,000 participants and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 respondents.

In each experiment, researchers elicited either an emotional response (such as anger, amusement, desire or sadness) or a neutral emotional state, and then presented participants with a challenging goal.

Participants were then asked to perform various tasks such as solves a series of word puzzles or attain high scores on a skiing video game.

Anger Study Results

Across all the experiments, anger improved people’s ability to reach their goals compared with a neutral condition in a variety of challenging situations.

Here is a summary of the 6 study results taken from the article’s abstract:

  1. Anger resulted in more difficult puzzles solved correctly.
  2. Anger increased cheating rates and numbers of unearned prizes.
  3. With a goal to do well in a video game, Anger increased scores on a game with challenges to be avoided, but not other scores.
  4. In two studies, examining the consequences of anger in response to the challenging task that was the focus of that anger, anger decreased reaction time with goals to win trials.
  5. Anger also predicted making the effort to vote in two contentious elections.
  6. With a goal to protect financial resources, anger increased action taken to prevent loss compared to a physiological arousal condition.

Anger Implications

The functionalist theory of emotion, which has been studied for decades, suggests that all emotions, good or bad, are reactions to events within a person’s environment and serve the purpose of alerting that person to important situations that require actions.

Each emotion may call for a different response. For example, sadness may indicate that a person needs to seek help or emotional support, while anger may suggest they need to take action to overcome an obstacle.

“People often believe that a state of happiness is ideal, and the majority of people consider the pursuit of happiness a major life goal,” said lead author Heather Lench, Ph.D., a professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Texas A&M University.

“The view that positive emotion is ideal for mental health and well-being has been prominent in lay and psychological accounts of emotion, but previous research suggests that a mix of emotions, including negative emotions like anger, result in the best outcomes.”

“These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success,” said Lench.

Appraisal Theories of Emotion

Indeed, most emotion scientists (including Humintell Director Dr. Matsumoto) believe that emotions are triggered by how we evaluate events.

These events include not only what happens around us, but also thoughts and feelings in our heads, because those thoughts and feelings can themselves trigger emotions.

This evaluation process is known as appraisal, and over the decades there have been tons of research that have led to many different appraisal theories of emotion.

Although there are differences among them, these theories generally state that there are different emotions are triggered (or elicited) by different ways we appraise or evaluate events, and that different emotions are triggered by different appraisals.

We’ve written about this extensively in a past blog entitled “What Triggers Emotions in Humans?”

The results of this study make perfect sense as the universal, psychological theme that triggers anger all around the world is goal obstruction.

That is, anger is the emotion that is triggered when our goals are blocked or obstructed.

When our goals are blocked, anger helps prepare our bodies to fight in order to removal those obstacles. This may perhaps explain why participants performed better on certain tasks when this emotion was elicited.

Want to improve your ability to detect anger as well as the other basic emotions?

Take a look at our best-selling emotion recognition training program, MiX Enhanced!

Show me how to read emotions!

The post Can Getting Angry Help You Achieve Your Goals? first appeared on Humintell.

Childhood Maltreatment, Depression, and Emotion Recognition

Could there be a link between childhood maltreatment, depression, and emotion recognition?

Researchers Kristine Kahr Nilsson, et al investigated this question by comparing the emotion decoding abilities of major depressive disorder (MDD) patients with and without a history of childhood maltreatment.

The results of their study suggests that individuals who have experienced childhood maltreatment and suffer from depression tend to have greater difficulty understanding and decoding emotions in others’ faces.

Their findings appeared in their paper entitled “Valence in the eyes: An emotion decoding profile of adults with major depressive disorder and a history of childhood maltreatment” which was published in Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy.

What is Major Depressive Disorder?

Also known as Clinical Depression, Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a common mental health condition that affects millions of people worldwide. In fact, over 8% of adults living in the United States have experienced at least one major depressive episode.

MDD is typically characterized by persistent sadness, low energy, and difficulty finding joy in daily life. It can affect how you feel and your ability to function on a day-to-day basis.

While substantial progress has been made in recent years to understand depression, it’s a complex condition with different variations. Researchers have been exploring various factors that may contribute to depression and its severity, and one area of interest is childhood experiences.

What is Childhood Maltreatment?

Childhood maltreatment encompasses various forms of abuse and neglect that some individuals endure during their early years. These experiences can have lasting effects on mental health and well-being.

Child maltreatment is a global problem with serious life-long consequences. International studies reveal that nearly 3 in 4 children aged 2-4 years regularly suffer physical punishment and/or psychological violence at the hands of parents.

Previous studies such at this meta analysis have also suggested a link between childhood maltreatment and a higher risk of developing depression later in life.

However, not all individuals with depression have experienced childhood maltreatment, and researchers want to understand why some individuals with depression may have more severe symptoms and difficulties in their daily lives.

Study Methodology

For their study, the Danish researchers recruited 342 participants who had been formally diagnosed with MDD by medical professionals and were receiving antidepressant medication.

The participants were asked about their experiences of childhood maltreatment using a questionnaire called the Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire (ACE-Q). This questionnaire included questions about different types of maltreatment, such as emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, as well as emotional and physical neglect during their first 18 years of life.

Reading Emotions

To assess their emotion decoding abilities, the participants completed a test known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET).

This test has been widely used to measure theory of mind—the ability to recognize and understand another person’s mental state—or social intelligence by looking at the subtle expressions in people’s eyes. It contains various sub-tests that require participants to determine the emotional state expressed by photos of faces.

The Findings

The study’s findings revealed that individuals with MDD who had a history of childhood maltreatment exhibited poorer emotion decoding abilities compared to those with MDD but no such history.

This suggests that early life experiences, such as childhood maltreatment, can influence an individual’s ability to understand and interpret emotions in others, particularly in the context of facial expressions.

Interestingly, the difficulties in emotion decoding were most pronounced when it came to positive and negative emotions, while no significant differences were observed for neutral emotions.

This suggests that individuals who have experienced childhood maltreatment may struggle more when trying to understand the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear in others.

Important Implications for Clinical Practice

It’s crucial for healthcare professionals to recognize that individuals with MDD and a history of childhood maltreatment may face additional challenges in their treatment journey.

Understanding their difficulties in emotion decoding can guide tailored interventions to improve their social interactions and overall well-being.

Study Limitations

While this study provides valuable insights, it’s essential to acknowledge its limitations.

One limitation is that childhood maltreatment was measured retrospectively through self-report, which may be subject to memory biases.

Future research can delve deeper into the developmental and neurological processes underlying emotion decoding difficulties in individuals with MDD who have a history of childhood maltreatment. Understanding these mechanisms can help refine treatment strategies and provide better support for this subgroup of individuals.

“It remains to be examined whether the identified emotion decoding problems in MDD patients with childhood maltreatment exacerbate their depressive symptoms,” Nilsson said. “This would be a relevant subject for investigation in a longitudinal study that follows these patients over time.”

Face-to-Face Interaction in Preventing Depression

Previous research suggests that there are unsurpassed mental health benefits of regular face-to-face social interactions, particularly among older adults.

Study participants who regularly met in person with family and friends were less likely to report symptoms of depression, compared with participants who emailed or spoke on the phone. The gains people derived from face-to-face socializing endured even years later.

The findings were published online today in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The post Childhood Maltreatment, Depression, and Emotion Recognition first appeared on Humintell.