Running Head: COLLABORATIVE ANALYSIS III

Collaborative Analysis

Running Head: COLLABORATIVE ANALYSIS III

Collaborative Analysis III: Social Influences

Hope Cross, Courtney Laukitis, Jessica Regalski, Jessie Zahner

ClarionUniversity of Pennsylvania

Bill Mulholland, Erin Rosenthal, Lori Spellman

West ChesterUniversity of Pennsylvania

Abstract

This assignment has served as a guide to help our group continue to work collaboratively and to solve problems that may arise within the team. Feedback from Collaborative Analysis one and two has helped us realize that there are still a few changes that need to be made within the team. Solutions to problems dealing with the server and miscommunication between team members are just two problems our team has been working on. Various factors relating to social influences have impacted our group throughout the semester. Certain team members are constantly influencing other members, which is wrong since not everyone gets a chance to express ideas and feelings. By shying away from this idea and letting everyone be heard, as well as solving other problems, we will allow our team progress immensely. This doesn't sound like an abstract, I don't think you should be explaining things rather I think you should be summing up whats in the paper. For example that you will have looked at the following things etc. Also you haven't specified which weeks this paper will be talking about.

Collaborative Analysis III: Social Influences

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment was for our team to continue to work collaboratively while also overcoming previous problems. Purpose is to assess team processes. In the last Collaborative Analysis it was apparent that our team began to work more collaboratively. Team one has found that by working collaboratively, we were able to communicate more effectively. Through better communication and all members adding suggestions to each part of the paper, we were able to get our recent papers done more thoroughly and with better quality. Better quality or increased quality. We now find assignments getting done quicker than usual because of increased communication even with CORAL being down. Our team now uses previous assignments as guidelines that we learn from and to alleviate problems that may arise on future assignments. Sounds like you are moving from storming to norming.

Social Psychology

Social influence is used to change our attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and behaviors (Baron, Byrne, & Johnson, 1998). This occurs through radio, television commercials, magazines, newspaper ads, and billboards, friends, relatives, co-workers, salespeople, politicians, celebrities, and even total strangers influence our attitudes and behaviors everyday. There are three specific types of social influences, which are conformity, compliance, and obedience.

Conformity is pressure to go along with the crowd, to behave in the same manner as other persons in one’s group or society (Baron, Byrne, & Johnson, 1998). This involves going along with expectations about how one should behave in various situations. There are several factors that affect whether or not one will conform. Cohesiveness, group size, the need to be accurate, and the degree to which a person values individuality influence whether someone will conform to the group. Cohesiveness is targeting a person’s degree of attraction to the group exerting influence. The group size is the number of persons exerting social influence (Baron, Byrne, & Johnson, 1998).

One way conformity occurs in our group is seen through peer pressure. Bill and Jess Regalski talk about how this can positively influence team members. Bill mentions that he often feels pressure to go along with the groups deadlines, because missing a deadline or submitting inaccurate work could produce negative affects on the entire team. They both agree that this has influenced Bill to become motivated and step up in class because of peer pressure. Good example.

Hope believes another way our team is influenced by conformity is seen through influences on Bill. She feels that the team consisting of five psychology majors has influenced the non-psychology major, Bill, to change aspects of the methods section of our paper. By letting Bill know that the five girls women! on the team have a background in writing these types of papers influenced him to change his attitudes about the paper. For example, Bill did not agree with the idea the group came up with for the methods section. Erin was able to influence him because of a previous experience she had. During her schooling, Erin was involved in an eyewitness testimony study where she witnessed an event and had to recall what had happened. Because of this, she was able to successfully change Bill’s ideas about the methods section for the better. From her experience she was able to help us find accurate ways to test our hypothesis. So the other teammates are authority figures, but this sounds more like compliance than conformity. Conformity occurs when there are unspoken norms.

Another form of social influence is compliance, which is the effort to get others to say “yes” to direct requests (Baron, Byrne, & Johnson, 1998). According to Cialdini (1994), we are more willing to comply with requests from friends and from people we like, rather than requests from strangers or people we do not like. Once we have committed ourselves to a position or action, we are more willing to comply with requests for behaviors that are consistent with that position. We generally want to behave in a consistent manner, so once we are committed to a position or view we try to say or do things that fulfill this view. In general, we value and try to secure opportunities that are scarce or decreasing. As a result, we are more likely to comply with requests that focus on “disappearing opportunities” than on ones that make no reference to such changes (Baron, Byrne, & Johnson, 1998).

Courtney mentions that the most obvious social influence seen in the group is the influence we have over other team members through compliance. The team has come to a point where we think of each other as friends, so we want to comply with the requests of our fellow teammates. Hope agrees with this idea; mentioning that because she is so close to Jessie, Jess, and Court she finds herself agreeing with their ideas because they are friends. Courtney also mentions that Jess Regalski has been seen by the team members as a leader, which greatly impacts decisions that the team makes. I’m not sure thisis a good thing. Discuss distributed leadership. Discuss distributed leadership – does the team know what it is?? Jessie Zahner has mentioned that she feels as though she needs to get Jess Regalski’s approval about assignments when making a decision. What about the rest of your team?

Also through compliance, Courtney has greatly impacted the group by explaining and giving examples of techniques that would help to make the team work more collaboratively. She has given several suggestions to the team to help the group progress and come together with little difficulty; this success has given her credibility, which allows her to influence the team when making decisions.

We are generally more willing to comply with a request from someone who has previously provided a favor or concession to us than to someone who has not. Called reciprocity. In other words, we feel obligated to pay people back in some way for what they have done for us.Generally we are more willing to comply with a request for some action if this action is consistent with what we believe persons similar to ourselves are doing (or thinking). We want to be correct, and one way to do so is to act and think like others. We value authority, so we are usually more willing to comply with requests from someone who is a legitimate authority-or simply looks like one (Baron, Byrne, & Johnson, 1998).

Does your team do either of the following? Probably not because they are manipulative but need to note that.

The two most common types of compliance are used based on commitment or consistency, which are seen in the foot-in-the-door technique and the lowball procedure. According to Cialdini (1994), salespersons, advertisers, and fundraisers often start their campaigns for gaining compliance with a trivial request, commonly used is the foot-in-the-door technique. Through this technique, one begins with a large request, and then after this is rejected, shifts to a smaller request. An example of this is having a salesperson ask potential customers to accept a free sample or to answer a few questions about a product they use. Only after these small requests are granted do the experts move on to the requests they really want, ones that can prove quite costly to the target persons (Baron, Byrne, & Johnson, 1998).

The lowball procedure is often used by automobile salespersons. This technique is usually first seen as a great deal that is offered to a customer. After the customer accepts, however, something happens that makes it necessary for the salesperson to change the deal and make it less advantageous for the customer. For example, an “error” in price calculations is found, or the sales manager rejects the deal (Baron, Byrne, & Johnson, 1998). Where is the example from your team?

The third type of social influence is obedience, which is when one person simply orders one or more people to do what they want. Often when people are seen as authority figures, one is more willing to comply with these requests.

Jess Regalski, Jessie Zahner, Erin, and Hope, all believe that one way obedience is seen through our team is through peer pressure. No - this is conformity or compliance. Do you order anyone? They believe that at times individuals like Jessie Zahner, Jess Reglaski and Courtney, have too much power and say on what goes on. Jess Regalski and Lori also mention that not all members necessarily agree with what is going on but end up going with the flow to be accepted then, which can lead to resentment later. They think that this happens because at times our team goes with the “majority rules” mentality. Jessie Zahner believes that these three individuals, who dominate, at times, Could be a problem. do not give the West Chester side an equal chance to state their opinions and ideas. What can you do to change this to give everyone an equal opportunity to make decisions? Erin believes that by having people back each other up on ideas can be appealing because it shows that others agree with what you are saying. She also thinks that this could be a problem because at times these social influences have the ability to split us into two separate halves.

Problems Encountered

Inconsistencies with the functioning of CORAL has been a continuing problem for team one. After the week-long computer failure at West ChesterUniversity, we had begun to post messages on webboard. CORAL went down again soon after and the team was unable to get the information provided in the posts. As a result of the problems caused by CORAL, the team began to make back ups of all messages, e-mailing information they needed to send to the so that, should problems with CORAL persist, the information needed would not be lost. Not clear.

Another problem with CORAL going down was that there was no centralized site from which whom-to-whom data could be gathered. Since a weekly whom-to-whom report was still required, team one had to record the emails they sent out to each other in place of the posts. Team one recorded the e-mails they sent out so that Erin could still submit a chart until the webboard was once again accessible. Good!

Some team members have problems with taking on larger workloads than others. On the last paper Courtney had taken too big of a workload. Though she struggled to complete the amount of work she had, she did not ask for help until the last second. As a result of this, the group now makes an effort to assure that the work load is evenly distributed throughout. What do you think it will take for you to focus on working for the team rather than how much work you are doing individually?Erin was upset about what she felt was the lack of acknowledgement of her individual efforts. The pie chart section of the previous Collaborative Analysis had stated that she only contributes 11 percent to the group effort, which was next to last in the group. We all think this – it’s called the self-serving bias.Erin, upset by that, voiced her objection to the pie chart calculation. She felt that she contributed more to the group effort; however the team claimed that though Erin is punctual and a leader, the parts she completes for assignments are smaller than those of most other members.

Three months into this class and our team is still having a problem with communication. We are, however, becoming more adept at dealing with these problems and finding solutions to work through them.One problem that our team had recently was being honest with each other. In some capacities we are all able to be honest. For example, if we think someone is slacking off we tell them. Although we have gotten better at sharing how we feel there are still some problems. For example, when one of our teammates was having personal problems she did not feel comfortable enough to share that with us. Lori recently had a death in her family and did not tell anyone why she was upset. Jess Regalski and Jessie Zahner made assumptions that she was upset about something relating to this class. As a result, we all began arguing with each other because we did not know what the real problem was. It was all sorted out about an hour later when Lori posted a message to the team telling them about the recent upsetting events in her life. We all were able to take a step back and calm down and work through the problems that had arisen. To handle future problems relating to this, we are all making an effort to be more open and to have trust in our teammates. We also go out of our way to help each other when problems do come up.

This leads to the second communication problem that our team dealt with, CORAL being down. Redundant –keep these discussions together. This argument was a direct result of CORAL being down because we were unable to have video conferences and work these issues out in person. We were forced to have the majority of our communication via chat and e-mail. We dealt with online misunderstandings previously and were able to work through them; however it took twice as much time. It was frustrating to the team to have no way to meet face-to-face. The face-to-face meetings are important because it really reinforces to everyone that there are seven members of the team, not just the three or four that you see every day. Also in face-to-face meetings it is easier to read the person, and understand their tone of voice and body language to know what they are saying. Very good observation about the video conference. I think it would be very benificial for your team to continue to take advantage of the time you have on video conference getting the most work done on there. – instead of just using VC for time management.

Our team has also returned to feeling that there are two teams at times instead of one. Called ingroups and outgroups. Clarion outnumbers West Chester and seems at times that Clarion makes many of the decisions. Because West Chester is outnumbered they feel defeated before even trying to explain their side. While this is not the case, that is the way that it feels to both sides sporadically. For example when trying to decide on an experiment for the method section of our research proposal the Clarion members came up with ideas for stressors for the children, and the West Chester members felt they did not have a chance to get their idea across. We ended up using an idea that Erin came up with after we all talked about it in the chat. It is difficult when you see half of your team every day and the other half only twice a week. That’s why the webboards are so impt .Once CORAL was not working we were unable to see half of our team for several weeks. While we may be good at communicating online, most of our team communicates much better in person. During class meetings we all communicate in person with the students at our site, and then try to communicate the same ideas online to the other half of our team. This almost reinforced the idea that there are two teams, and that is something our team has been struggling to overcome since the beginning. We had reached a point where that was no longer an issue for us, but losing our video conference made us as a team regress back to that state for a short period of time. Give an eg. Have you overcome this? IF so how?