464 CHAPTER 12
performance. But the presence of others when the task is difficult produces too high a level
of arousal, resulting in impaired performance. to Learning Objective 9.4.
Interestingly, people who are lazy tend not to do as well when other people are
also working on the same task, but they can do quite well when working on their own.
This phenomenon is called social loafing (Karau & Williams, 1993, 1997; Latané et al.,
1979; Suleiman & Watson, 2008). The reason for this is that it is easier for a lazy person
(a “loafer”) to hide laziness when working in a group of people, because it is less likely
that the individual will be evaluated alone. But when the social loafer is working alone,
the focus of evaluation will be on that person only. In that case, the loafer works harder
because there is no one else to whom the work can be shifted.
Social loafing depends heavily on the assumption that personal responsibility for
a task is severely lessened when working with a group of other people. One study sug-
gests that although Americans may readily make that assumption, Chinese people, who
come from a more interdependent cultural viewpoint, tend to assume that each individ-
ual within the group is still nearly as responsible for the group’s outcome as the group at
large (Menon et al., 1999). Chinese people may, therefore, be less likely to exhibit social
loafing than are people in the United States.
DEINDIVIDUATION Finally, when people are gathered in a group, there is often a tendency
for each individual in the group to experience deindividuation, the lessening of their sense
of personal identity and personal responsibility (Diener et al., 1980). This can result in a lack
of self-control when in the group that would not be as likely to occur if the individual were
acting alone. People in a crowd feel a degree of anonymity—being unknown and unidenti-
fied—and are more likely to act impulsively as a result. One only has to think about behavior
of people in a riot or even the actions of groups like the Ku Klux Klan to see examples of
deindividuation. The Stanford prison experiment, discussed later in this chapter, is an excel-
lent study of deindividuation in action (Zimbardo, 1970, 1971; Zimbardo et al., 2000). Players
in online games often play anonymously, and research results suggest that this anonymity
results in greater deindividuation, leading to increased cheating and other deviant behavior
online (Chen & Wu, 2013). It also allows trolling, which is the posting of deliberately inflam-
matory comments in online communities (Buckels et al., 2014). Online trolls would not be
likely to say the things they post if they were not anonymous. In 2014, a harassment campaign
against female gamers, and particularly a few female game developers, was begun using
the Twitter hashtag #Gamergate (Chess & Shaw, 2015; Heron et al., 2014). The harassment
included threats of rape and death threats by people hiding under the cloak of anonymity.Compliance
12.3 Compare and contrast three compliance techniques.
I have a friend who watches all those infomercials on the shopping
channels and buys stuff that isn’t worth the money or that doesn’t work
like it’s supposed to work. Why do people fall for pitches like that?Marketing products is really very much a psychological process. In fact, the whole area
of consumer psychology is devoted to figuring out how to get people to buy things that
someone is selling. to Learning Objective B.7. But infomercials are not the only
means by which people try to get others to do what they want them to do. Compliance
occurs when people change their behavior as a result of another person or group asking
or directing them to change. The person or group asking for the change in behavior typi-
cally doesn’t have any real authority or power to command a change; when that author-
ity does exist and behavior is changed as a result, it is called obedience, which is the topic
of the next major section of this chapter.
A number of techniques that people use to get the compliance of others clearly
show the relationship of compliance to the world of marketing, as they refer to techniquesWhile the other people in this picture appear
to be working, the man in the foreground
seems to be engaged in a game on his
phone. This is called social loafing. How do
you think his colleagues who are working
might feel about his behavior?
social loafing
the tendency for people to put less
effort into a simple task when working
with others on that tasM.
deindividuation
the lessening of personal identity,
self-restraint, and the sense
of Rersonal resRonsiDility that can
occur within a grouR.
consumer psychology
branch of psychology that studies
the habits of consumers in the
marMetRlace.
compliance
changing one’s behavior as a result
of other ReoRle directing or asMing for
the change.