Group Cohesion
In this research, the topic that I choose in the social psychology is that one of social influence. This is the considerable alteration in the individual thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior that results from relations with another individual or groups.
Group cohesion is a concept that is used to determine the extend to which a group holds tightly together on a number of aspects. When there is strong or deep cohesion within a group, members tend to remain strong, and they stick even closer and stable. When cohesion is weak, members would once again fall apart or the group my disintegrate. Group cohesion and group influences are two main topics of interest in social psychology and understanding the basic premises would rather be easy in mobilizing and pulling people together in a given environment (Ralph, 2003).
There is a distinction of social influence from conformity, power and authority. Conformity is expressed when an individual shows a particular opinion or behavior with an aim of fitting in a given situation and in order to meet the expectations of another, though he does not necessarily have in possession of that opinion or does not believe that the opinion is appropriate. On the other hand power is that ability to force a particular way through the control of the outcomes. And finally authority is that power that is believed to be rather legitimate by those that are subject to it (Fiona, 2002).
Social influence is also termed as the process that individuals make real changes to the feelings and behavior as a result of interactions with others that are perceived to be similar and desirable. According to the psychological principles, people regulate their beliefs with respect to others to whom they usually feel similar to attain an expected balance. The individuals also are said to be influenced by the majority, that is when an individuals social group that is large enough holds a particular attitude, it is likely to affect the individual in a way that he adopts it as well. Additionally, an individual can change his mid according to an opinion that is due to an influence of another person believed to be an expert on the matters that are being handled (Remocker Sherwood, 1999)..The French and Raven (1959) provide a premature concept of the social influence on the basis of social power. They viewed social psychology as the result of the application of social influence from the five bases that is reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, expert power, or referent power. Therefore, conformity was considered an example of social power whether or not it represents a clear private change.
Work setting is a major area that has been a prominent topic for the social study, the research of the French and Raven was concerned about the situations in which the supervisor has got much influence on hisher workers at work place. This is closely related to a wide variety of other social interactions that include families, classrooms, political figures, and dating couples.
Social influence is distinguished from the public acceptance and from the changes that are based on the reward or coercive power (Kreeger, 1994). Therefore, social influence tends to fall in five main areas namely minority influence in a group settings, research on persuasion, dynamic social impact theory, a structural approach on social influence, and social influence on the expectations of the theory.
Minority influence occurs when a minority subgroup tries to modify the minority. For example the teachers may try to change their students beliefs and also the politicians and the religious trying to influence their followers. There is a belief that every member of a group is in a position to influence the other party at least to some extent, this occurs when the minority group is consistent to what it presents to the majority (Victor Pines, 1994).
On top of that, the availability of the minority group in between the larger groups often leads to more creative thinking and better overall solutions on the group responsibilities. This was achieved through a research taken by Nemeth and Kwan (1987) that showed that, in a study that was of four persons groups working on a creative task the individuals were given that there was to be a majority of 3 of 3 and a minority of 1 of 3. Of the group members were to come up with a novel response to the task at hand. Those that produced a more accurate result were those of the minority.
In the case of current research and persuasion, the changes on the attitudes and beliefs is basically based on the information that is received from others and that focus on the written or spoken messages received from the recipient. In carrying this research, the assumption made is that messages from the individual are processed by him carefully whenever motivated and able to do so. There are two theories that are mostly applied in the current research i.e. the elaboration likelihood model, and the heuristic-systemic models.
In the elaboration likelihood model has been mostly applied in the therapeutic and the counseling settings (Lise Joseph, 2005). Basically its major assumption is that, the amount and nature of thinking a person does about a message will affect the kind of persuasion that the message is likely to produce. There are some aspects of situation that happen in the persuasion model of which are of much benefit, these are the source, the message, the recipient, the effect, the channel, and the context.
On the other hand, the heuristic-systemic model proposes that the strength of an argument will be more effective in the persuasion of an individual when he is motivated and able to attend to the message. It basically reveals that if an individual is motivated and that he is unable to attend carefully, the persuasion is able to take through the heuristic route i.e. through more direct means such as the nonverbal or source credibility (Yalom, 1995).
Apart from the persuasion, there is the social impact theory. This means that any number of changes that might occurs in an individuals psychological, cognitive, emotional, or behavioral aspects due to the actions of others that might either be real, imagined or implied. This theory proposes that the impact of a source of information is a function of the number of the others that make up the source, their closeness, and their strengths. The impact might also be satisfied by the actions of any of the three factors.
The dynamic impact theory uses the idea of the social impact to describe the distribution of the beliefs through the social, systems. Here the social structure is as a result of the individuals influencing each other in a dynamic an iterative way. This process is in a position of leading to the diffusion of the beliefs and attitudes more randomly to become huddled or correlated. Therefore the theory looks the society as a self-organizing complex system that individuals interact and impact each others beliefs and attitudes (Yalom, 1995)
The dynamic structural approach is another theory that is responsible in the close examination of the interpersonal influence that occurs within a larger extent that is based on many influences. There are a multiple of reflections of attitudes and opinions in this set up of a large network, attitudes and opinions of individuals. The social influence is seen as a way in which a group of individuals will evaluate and then integrate the opinions of others in a circumstance of social structural restriction. The structure is to determine the first positions of group members and the network and finally the interpersonal influences within the group (Goldstein, 2002).
The social influence on the network theory involves a two-stage weighted averaging of the significant opinions. First the individuals will start with their own initial opinions on some specific matters. Then, at each stage the actors form a norm opinion that is basically an average weighted on their initial opinion and the network norm. Here, the theory uses the mathematical models and quantifications to measure the process o social influence.
Social psychology is therefore a strand in psychology which engages itself in the study and analysis of human behavior especially patterns of interactions in social groupings and affiliations. It seeks to analyze the patterns of interaction, the influences and forces which maintain and sustain cohesion (Lise Joseph, 2005). However, it is a scope in psychology which makes use of scientific methods in order to understand the nature of group behaviors by explaining and describing how thoughts, behavior and feelings of individuals are influenced by implied and imagined presence of other beings within a social environment and interaction.
Thus, social psychology is a broad scope in psychology which looks into various pertinent issues such as aggression, conformity, group behavior, nonverbal behavior, leadership, prejudice and aggression. Plato was among the very first scholars to coin in the concept of group influence, cohesion and team work when he presented his very first idea about crowd mind and other concepts such as social facilitation and social loafing back in the 1800s. It is from this departure when the concept of social psychology begun to receive honors as group of researchers engaged themselves in the study of social influence obedience and conformity.
With time as the field continued to flourish the U.S government began to apply the principles of social psychology on its citizen. Basically social psychology is intrinsically confused with aspects such as folk wisdom, sociology and personality (Park Sanna, 1999). It is a distinctive field which makes wise use of empirical studies and scientific methods in order to understand and analyze human behavior.
Unlike personality which puts much emphasis in analyzing human behavior, in terms of thought characteristics and individual traits, social psychology puts major focus on analyzing the situation in which these patterns of behavior occur. Thus, the major goal of social psychology is founded on understanding the environment where these interactions occur the behaviors and attitudes prevailing Social psychologist therefore major their attention in addressing the forces of interaction between elements in an institutions (Scheibe, 1995). For instance, social psychologies t would aim at understanding the principles of social influence and group cohesion. What defines a group What sustains a group How do you enhance group cohesion and the role of social influence in social psychology
Finally, there is the theory of expectation. This theory provides a different official handling of the social influence. The theory stated that even if the individuals were equal on the status at the beginning of the session, some members would up being more influential than others in the same group. Based on the behavior of the members they are likely to create a hierarchy between themselves. According to this theory, the group members will develop expectations about the future task performance of the whole groups performance and including themselves. Then, the expectations are meant to provide guidance to the group interactions (Tyler John, 1999). Therefore, those members that are ranked with the highest expectations will be most likely to be the most influential in the group interactions.
Through all these areas in the social psychology, the conclusion that might be brought across is that tradition has influenced and developed into a rapidly increasing area within the sociological social psychology.
This discipline of the social psychology can be related to a number of other disciplines accordingly. Under this research the area under my professional interest chosen is economics.
In this research the major discipline to be compared is in the health sciences. Health science is a large discipline that actively combines the bio-medical, psycho-social, organizational and societal aspects of health, disease and health care. On top of that, it focuses on the design and evaluation, of the medical-technological, behavioral and organizational discoveries of the knowledge to improve health and patient centered health care (Fiona, 2002).
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of a disease or an infirmity. There are many ways that social psychology helps to contribute towards the improvements of health care and social care, these may include appreciating how peoples understandings and needs vary and try to ensure that the care we offer to the individual is that one which is optimal and appropriate then we should gain a good understanding of the communication process to help in identifying the ways in which we can improve the therapeutic relationship and look forward in making it effective for the interpersonal and inter-agency contexts identify factors that affect how people cope with situations such as, acute and chronic illness, pain and loss, and the demands of everyday life, and finally how to cope better and reduce the risks and stresses we should e informed about the factors that influence the peoples lifestyle and what motivates some specific health related behaviors and finally applying the evidence-based interventions to enhance health care and wellbeing and also in changing and modifying their lifestyles (Parks Sanna, 1999).
Various health and social care professions have also developed each with its own assumptions and theoretical perspectives. These include medicine, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, midwifery and social work, while nursing has been subdivided into adult, child, mental health and learning disability (Hyatt Ruddy, 1997) . These disciplines seek to explain human responses, predict what human needs andor treat human problems.
Psychologists working in these different fields usually come to a common agreement that people tend to respond to in predictable ways to certain clearly defined situations. Therefore, people working in the health or social care came up with some approaches and then provided some principles that can enable us to understand the assumptions underlying them.
The first one is the cognitive science. It is concerned with thought processes. Initially it was based on the experimental studies of the memory, perception, and the information processing. Using the cognitive science the theories are based on the assumptions about how information is stored in the brain (Goldstein, 2002). As a result of this, cognitive psychology has been incorporated into the cognitive science which is presently a dominant field of academic psychology and closely linked to the biomedical sciences.
The psychologists that are working in the field of psychoneuroimmunology are at a better position to make links between the psychological processes, immune function, and health and illness. Therefore, the social cognition refers to the study of the beliefs and attitudes in a social background and dominates the psychology of stress and coping (Mathis Tanner, 1999). In addition to that, the discipline called cognitive behavioral theory deals currently with helping people to change their ways of responding to problems.
Another field in accordance with social psychology is the behavioral psychology. This refers to the study of the behavioral change. It is based in the assumptions that the behavioral change signifies that learning process has taken place. The behaviorists did not concern themselves with the mental processes since this was not to be directly observed ( Parks Sanna, 1999). The behaviors were predicted with a direct relationship between the behavior and its consequences in different situations.
Psychoanalysis psychology is another field that is basically based on the theory of the mind, and a mode of treatment for the complex psychological problems. Freud was one of the medical doctors that studied the neurological problems he enhanced the treatment of a physical illness that was believed to be the signs of the psychological problems. He proposed that certain experiences during childhood are too uncomfortable to remember and are unconsciously reserved. These thoughts are commonly those of sexual nature that ultimately give rise to a state of anxiety or depression that may be articulated in terms of the physical signs.
Therefore, psychodynamic psychotherapy evolved from the psychoanalysis. This is because it retains the idea that many emotional problems are caused by the unsolved difficulties in the attachment relationships since childhood (Greiff Ephrois, 2005). This is one of the major popular approaches that are used in the treatment of anxiety and depression.
Humanistic psychology is concerned with individual perceptions and interpretations, which are basically prejudiced by the social and cultural meanings and the past experiences. Therefore, the individual perceptions may change over time and may vary in different social cultural settings. The main focus on this discipline is that of the individuals sense of self.
Maslow had an observation on the human needs in different settings and came up with a construction of the hierarchy on needs (Ralph, 2003). He predicted that in all people lower needs must be satisfied before higher needs that can be fulfilled. The peak of the achievement is that of self-actualization that means accepting self and others for what is they are the ability to tolerate uncertainty creativity the use of problem-centered rather than the self approaches that deal with the issues and strong moral and ethical standard (Chazan, 2001).
The social psychology is another discipline that lies in between the psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The discipline tries to explain how the behavior of human beings is in certain social contexts and finally predict the social influences on the human thoughts and behavior. Social psychologists also use the participant information to study peoples responses in the naturalistic set-up (Vincent Judd, 2003). This is because people tend to change their behavior if they think that they are being observed.
Finally, there is the narrative psychology. Personal stories have a link that connects our past with our present and contains a route towards a desired goal. Some research methods and therapeutic interventions that are based on elicit personal accounts or stories have since been developed. These narrative therapists provide psychological ways of achieving closure, which is bringing an emotional conclusion to traumatic or difficult life events.
There are a lot of connections between the social psychology discipline and the health science discipline. First is about the connection between the cognitive functioning and the chronic illness in people. Apart from fatigue and other systems, people with the chronic fatigue syndrome often complain about the cognitive problems such as difficulties in learning and remembering new material, keeping appointments and sustaining the concentration (Mathis Tanner). Furthermore, those people with this problem are faced with problems such as they are more likely to be unemployed and to have limited social interactions than those without this difficulty.
Further on this research people with this chronic illness, especially those with the symptoms that involve embarrassing body symptoms, feel usually stigmatized by the others surrounding them. However, the others that surround them usually contribute to their problems by holding some negative attitudes for these people with the chronic illness these may even include the members of the medical profession.
Social psychology is the major issue concerning the health of a human being. Here, the psychological constructs of the rebelliousness and the conformity are explored in the relation to a number of health related phenomena and the indices of the social pathology (Remocker Sherwood, 1999). These issues include the resistance to health promotion messages, openness to experience and creativity, deliquescence, occupational absence and turnover, truancy, academic achievements and subjective well being.
A number of key individual differences are simultaneously tested to assess their role in stress perception and stress responsivity. Whereas the neuroticism and trait anxiety are found to be associated with self-reported stress, type A behavior pattern and locus control are associated with cardiovascular and neuroendocrine indices. It is clear that less obstetric involvement and analgesia are associated with higher social support among the primigravid mothers whereas the higher levels of abnormal fetal heart rate and lower birth weight were associated with lower social support (Hyatt Ruddy, 1997).
The role of identity in the health behavior has been examined in the study of the Irish immigrants a group of the immigrants were reported to suffer from poorer health than either equivalent host nations or the non-immigrant Irish nationals. Identity has been seen as a potential explanatory factor in much of the research. It is found that the more positive ones ethnic identity is the more likely one has to engage in healthy behaviors. A further study sought to validate the identity among the black people in London and their relationship to health (Witte Davis, 1996).
Using this methodology, the research seeks to give information-processing accounts of a variety of health-related behaviors based on the cognitive biases on attention, interpretation and memory. In a study that was carried on some patients, those who were reported being sexually abused showed some intention towards the words that connoting sexual maturation compared to their counterparts who were not sexually abused (Chazan, 2001). This is an area that really relates the two disciplines in a manner that they both interact.
Self-blame has been viewed as functional for the victims adjustments to the negative life events. This perspective has been based primarily on the findings on patients. It is evident that patients dont differentiate among the concepts of responsibility, fault, and blame for the cause of the accident. Attributes of the responsibility for the cause of the events compared with the responsibility of the treatment did not differentiate the effective from the ineffective copers (Ralph, 2003). The research shows that there is a relationship between the patients attributions of self-blame and the nurses ratings of patients coping, but the other blame was associated with poorer coping.
Social influence also helps us to understand the investigation about the relationship between pain and discomfort and the quality of life. It is found out that pain and discomfort make a significant perception on the general quality of life and the health. The presence of pain affects the perceptions of life and its relation to health that are related to the five of the six domains of life, spirituality, religion, and the personal the personal beliefs (Yalom, 1995). In assessing the quality of life, the negative feelings are closely associated with the reports of pain and discomfort than any other component.
Furthermore, the quality of life that surrounds pain and discomfort is more fully analyzed by the inclusion of other additional facets namely mobility, activity of all day long, availability of social care, positive mood, and sleep and independence on medication. All these facets bring about the criteria upon which the evaluation of pain treatments is done. Therefore, a prolonged duration of pain is associated with a poorer quality of life and this is detrimental to the quality of life.
The component of social influence has got an influence in the physiotherapy. The physiotherapists have opportunities to build an understanding with a patient and therefore affect both the behavior and their attitudes. For instance encouraging individuals to take control of their problem and take up a graded return to their activities (Fiona, 2003). There is another aspect on the same issue called self-efficacy. This is an important aspect of health care that needs to be emphasized by the therapist. Therefore, care has to be emphasized on the individual to avoid the ever-increasing pain behavior by focusing on the patients pain objection and strengthening it through its frequent evaluation.
Social influence has found its way through its applications in occupational therapy. In a study about 60 subjects experiences in their occupation were evaluated with their personal wellbeing measures especially those that relate significantly to the affective aspect. Therefore, active participation had an important effect on the persons wellbeing but on the other hand its effect on the daily occupation affective experience was not remarkable.
In addition to that, present study on the relationship between the social influence on the occupancy and its effects on the health of an individual (Kreeger, 1994). The results of a study are that was about comparing the triple role of women i.e. those who are married had children and were in the work force, single and double role occupants in the 19945 were more likely to have poor self-related health conditions and had the chronic health conditions, this research was carried out in Canada.
There is also a close relationship within this discipline and midwifery. In this perspective the role of the apparent ability on the clinical behavior and the decision making of the mid-wives has received little research attention.
Social influence has some relationship with the effects in accounting for pain in women and men in a randomized experiment with patients. These patients were randomly assigned to perform a cold presser task either alone or in the presence of a same sex friend. The overall social support was measured and analyzed (Greiff Ephrois, 2005). The presence of the same sex friend significantly increased pain in the reports of women. In addition to that the persons that reported high levels of support also showed high levels of pain. Therefore, the finding is that a friend can increase pain in the stimulus in the women. This is applicable in the models of social reinforcement in the chronic pain syndromes.
There is an increasing concern that is relating the prevalence of obesity in the most industrialized countries. This trend is more apparent in the poor countries more than the rich. In this study the relationship between the area measure of a social status and the density of the fast-food outlets was examined as one possible explanation of this phenomenon (Parks Sanna, 1999). Therefore, the research was found that there was a dose-response between the socio-economic states and the density of fast-food outlets, with the people that are living in the areas from the poorest socio-economic status. Those that were in the rich socio-economic states were seen to have more cases of obesity that their counterparts in the poor socio-economic status.
There is a relative influence of social influence and the sexually transmitted infections and HIV behavior. This was experimented among the female workers in Philippines. The major cause of their behavior was a combined manager peer influence. The control group membership predicted a greater perceived risk, less condom use, less HIVAIDS knowledge, and more negative condom attitudes. Therefore this increases the large number of STIs cases, lower condom attitude sand use, less knowledge and higher perceived task than peer-participants.
Therefore, the HIV prevention is focused on the cognitive-behavioral individually oriented approaches that encourage the helpful changes in the individual attitude, knowledge, and behaviors concerning HIV. Small attention is one of the important structural environmental factors that in one way or another affect the individual behavior (Victor Pines, 1994). This is basically important to the retarding health of these individuals.
The social control framework assesses the parents physical activity level between the parents use of the social influences and their childrens physical activity level. There is a negative relationship between the parental telling and the children activity for activity levels. This is because the control warrants future attention in helping to understand how the social relationship influence health promoting behaviors such as the physical activity within the childhood times.
Social influence recognized that the influence from the closest personalities is the major role in the start and the early stages of the drug abuse. This social influence may come from the media, peers, and the family. This social influence is an alternative to other approaches such as the information dissemination and the effective education (Hyatt Ruddy, 1997). Therefore this influence makes one to misuse drugs that may lead to a number of associated diseases and complication that are hazardous to the human health.
Therefore, social influence as a major component of social psychology has a considerable number of applications and contributions to the field of health sciences. This is because most of the issues that bring about some complication in the health of a human being are far much better solved by the look at social influence on the individual. Finally, we can say that social influence is intermarried with social psychology.
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