Our evaluations of objects (issues, other persons, events, organizations, etc.), definitions of situations, and even our memories are susceptible to interpersonal influence.

Making Monsters: False memories, psychotherapy and sexual hysteria. (1994). Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters.

A particular event

Did not occur Did occur

Your recollection is correct

Your recollection is correct

Your recollection is false

Your recollection is false

Recovered memory therapy: uncovering repressed memories A Symptom Belief in a Cause Patient Therapist and other interpersonal influences, e.g., embedding the patient in a survivor-group “family” The social construction of a narrative.

Interpersonal influence may affect our beliefs, judgments, decisions , and even our memories! Now what do we do with that understanding?

A Dialectic

Interpersonal Influences: Good, Bad, or Both?

The Good: reducing uncertainty and conflict; producing

agreements

The Bad: ending up in a regrettable place; outcomes via

manipulation (e.g., see Cialdini, Asch, Milgram, Ofshe, Beck).

Groupthink: “The mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action” (Janis 1971) Key Conditions of Groupthink:

Homogeneous initial positions on an issue Highly directive leadership High level of group cohesion

Count % TETRADS: Consensus on a boundary initial position 31 12.4 Consensus on an internal initial position 73 29.2 Consensus on a new internal position 106 42.4 Disagreement in the range of initial positions 39 15.6 Consensus outside the range of initial positions 0 0.0 Disagreement outside the range of initial positions 1 0.4 TOTAL TETRADS 250 100%

The Normal Box An initial consensus will be maintained (Barnlund 1959; Thorndike 1938). Barnlund reported that, in small groups assembled to solve problems of logic, an initial consensus was not questioned (the group moved on to the next problem) regardless of whether the consensus was correct or incorrect. Similarly, Thorndike (1938: 351) found that an initial consensus was rarely modified regardless of whether the consensus was correct or incorrect: an initial consensus was modified in only 3 of 725 group problem-solving trials in which the group’s judgment was correct, and in 1 of 263 trials in which the group’s judgment was incorrect. Consensus is either assumed to be correct or satisficing (Simon 1945); in either case, it is deemed conclusive. Groups appear incapable of generating a correct position on problems with an ascertainable correct position if no member of the group has advocated that position (Laughlin 1999). On quantifiable issues of judgment, on with there may no correct position, I have encountered only two cases of a breach of the initial range of positions in hundreds of experimental trials among triads and tetrads assembled to consider acceptable risk and suitable monetary awards.

Count % DYADS: Consensus on a boundary initial position 23 22.1 Consensus on an internal initial position --- --- Consensus on a new internal position 28 26.9 Disagreement in the range of initial positions 35 33.7 Consensus outside the range of initial positions 10 9.6 Disagreement outside the range of initial positions 8 7.7 TOTAL DYADS 104 100%

The Dyad

Key Conditions of Groupthink:

Homogeneous initial positions on an issue Highly directive leadership High level of group cohesion

Architecture of Group Deliberation Imagine that you are a supervisor and that you are concerned about the quality of the advice that you have been getting from your group immediate subordinates/advisors, with whom you meet on a regular basis. With the same personnel, how might you alter the deliberative process to improve the quality of the advice that you are getting? Explain your social engineering ideas. Key Conditions of Groupthink: Homogeneous initial positions on an issue

Highly directive leadership High level of group cohesion

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Persons as Objects of Attitudes and Evaluations

Some Dimensions of Self:

Self-esteem: a person’s overall evaluation of his or her own self-worth Self-efficacy: a person’s evaluation of his or her own competence and effectiveness Locus of control: a person’s evaluation of his or her circumstances as modifiable via self-action or not.

Learned helplessness: a passive hopelessness and resignation that is acquired when a person perceives no control over repeated bad events. Learned fearlessness: an active pursuit of well-being that is acquired when a person perceives that the attainment of well-being is a realistic future state, even in the midst of repeated bad events, that depends on self-action.

Self-Other Balance: the relative allocation of weight to others versus self in the evaluation of attitudinal objects (persons, events, behaviors, issues, etc.)

Reflected Appraisals A person’s locations on dimensions of Self are subject to interpersonal influences, e.g.,

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