Lecture
Это окончание невероятной информации про теории психологического влияния.
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influenced in their behaviour by it.
It arose in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the USA. The main representatives of cognitivism are: D. Broadbent, S. Sternberg, U. Neisser, J. Bruner, R. Atkinson, G. Sperling, J. Kelly, H. Kelley, F. Heider, T. Newcomb, L. Festinger, C. Osgood, P. Tannenbaum, and others.
The main areas of research in cognitive psychology are: perception, pattern recognition, attention, memory, imagination, language functions, developmental psychology, thinking, human intelligence, the psychology of motivation, personality psychology, and the psychology of communication and social interaction.
For understanding the psychological laws of interpersonal influence, the ideas of the following theories developed in cognitive psychology are most important: K. Lewin's field theory, F. Heider's structural balance theory, T. Newcomb's theory of communicative acts, and L. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance.
Kurt Lewin's field theory, along with other concepts of Gestalt psychology, are theoretical sources of cognitivism. Field theory explained human behaviour on the basis not only of cognitive structures but also of motivation.
One of the components of K. Lewin's concept is motivation theory. The driving force of human behaviour isneeds. A need – is a dynamic state (activity) that arises in a person in the course of carrying out some intention or action. Needs are of two kinds:
genuine(basic) needs – needs for labour, self-assertion, and the like;
quasi-needs(quasi – “as if,” “supposedly”) – temporary needs that arise in a person at a given moment, in a given situation, when the person decides for themselves that a given action needs to be carried out. A quasi-need is a charged system whose energy tends toward discharge. Discharge occurs when the action has been carried out and the quasi-need has been satisfied.
A quasi-need arises and is realised in life space.Life space – is the totality of existing and interrelated factors that determine an individual's behaviour at a given time. The personality and its psychological surroundings within life space form apsychological field. K. Lewin explains the problems of interpersonal influence and social behaviour in physical terms.The personality – is a system of numerous non-intersecting regions. Each region corresponds to a need or a quasi-need. A quasi-need determines behaviour until the goal is achieved.The environment – is the objects surrounding the personality (material objects, ideas, other people, situations) that possess positive or negative valence, that is, the capacity to attract or repel. The personality interacts with its environment and experiences its influence. The interaction of personality and environment forms aforce field. This interaction can be either harmonious or conflictual. The simultaneous impact on the personality of two or more objects of equal force gives rise tointernal conflict.Conflictsare of three kinds:
Approach – approach, when a person is simultaneously affected with equal force by two objects possessing positive valence (for example, a young man wants at one and the same time to go both to the football match and to the disco);
Avoidance – avoidance, when a person is simultaneously affected with equal force by two objects possessing negative valence (for example, a schoolchild does not want to do their homework, but is afraid to go to school with unlearned lessons and get a failing grade);
Approach – avoidance – the impact of “+” and “–” valence, emanating simultaneously from one and the same object and equal in force (for example, a girl wants to go to a party and at the same time does not want to, since she will meet there a person she finds unpleasant).
The success of a personality's interaction with its environment depends on its ability to resist the influence of the field. K. Lewin distinguished between volitional andfield behaviour.Volitional behaviour – behaviour determined by the person's own goals.Field behaviour– behaviour dependent on situationally significant objects of the perceived environment (for example, a person who can easily be provoked into rudeness or conflict in a public place, since they fall under the influence of the bad mood of someone around them).
A theory explaining a person's behaviour by their striving for balance and by their need to search for causes to explain another's behaviour and their own actions at a subjective level. The author of the theory is Fritz Heider. His main works are: “The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations,” “Attitudes and Cognitive Organization,” “Social Perception and Phenomenal Causality.”
The content of the theory comes down to the following. A person from the outset strives for an orderly and coherent understanding of their relations with the surrounding world. They fix this trait of their behaviour by creating a naive or everyday psychology, which is expressed in language, attitudes, opinions, judgements, and so on. From a person's outward behaviour one can determine these attitudes and the motives that guide them. F. Heider believed that it was necessary to study the “naive psychology” of the “man in the street,” who is guided by common sense in explaining the behaviour of other people.
In his theory, F. Heider made use of two ideas:
the idea of balance (a situation in which the perceived units exist without stress, without contradiction, that is, there is no pressure to change the cognitive organisation and emotional manifestations);
the idea of cognitive attribution– the process of searching for a sufficient cause to explain the behaviour of another person or one's own actions.
The idea of balanceconsists in the fact that every person strives to establish correspondence in the interaction within a triad: the subject, the perceived other subject, and the perceived object. Balance exists in a person's cognitive structure when they perceive the whole system as a harmony (for example, a person who views the surrounding world with optimism finds confirmation of this image in the opinions of others whom they tend to trust: relatives, friends, the mass media). Imbalance arises, for example, when the opinions of two people who feel positively toward each other diverge with respect to some event, phenomenon, or third person. Imbalance produces tension and forces that lead to the restoration of balance.
The idea of cognitive attributionproceeds from the following premises:
People, observing another person's behaviour, strive to work out for themselves the causes of that behaviour;
The limited amount of information available prompts people to formulate probable causes for another person's behaviour;
The causes of another person's behaviour that people determine for themselves influence their attitude toward that person.
Applying the ideas of structural balance theory to the psychology of influence, influence can be characterised as the process and result of a person establishing harmony in their relations with the external and internal world.
This theory, proposed by the American scientist Leon Festinger, regards cognitive dissonance as one of the main factors governing human behaviour and interpersonal relations. The main tenets of this theory are set out in his work “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance” (1957). Before the theory of cognitive dissonance, L. Festinger was developing ideas about social comparison. The essence of these ideas is that a person has a tendency to constantly compare themselves with others, and the more discrepancies they notice in abilities and opinions between themselves and others, the less able they are to evaluate themselves objectively. A person's internal state in this case is assessed as:
consonance– consistency within their cognitive structure;
dissonance– the experience of contradiction between knowledge and behaviour, between items of knowledge (cognitions).
Cognitive dissonance – a contradiction within a person's system of knowledge that gives rise to unpleasant experiences in them and prompts them toward actions aimed at eliminating this contradiction. The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, gives rise to a desire to reduce it or to prevent its growth. The manifestation of this desire includesa change in behaviour; a change in knowledge about the object; ignoring the situation.
The sources of dissonance can be:
logical inconsistency, that is, the logical contradictoriness of two judgements (for example, “people are mortal, but I will live forever”);
a mismatch between cognitive elements and cultural patterns and norms (for example, when a teacher shouts at pupils, dissonance arises with ideas about what a teacher's image should be);
a mismatch between a given cognitive element and a broader, more general system of ideas (a neighbour always leaves for work early in the morning, but this time left in the evening);
a mismatch between new information and past experience.
The consequences of dissonance:
the existence of dissonance motivates the individual to reduce it and achieve consonance;
the individual avoids information that would increase the dissonance;
rationalisation of one's decision or behaviour for the sake of justification.
The ways of reducing dissonance are:
changing the behavioural elements of the cognitive structure, when, from among opposing, ambivalent opinions, the most suitable one is chosen or an integrative judgement is produced;
changing the cognitive elements relating to the environment (the opinions and beliefs of other people, which must be changed since they act as a dissonant factor);
adding new elements to the cognitive structure (this phenomenon of a person's selective gathering of special information that helps reduce dissonance is called, in psychology, “information selection”).
Thus, according to L. Festinger's theory, influence acts as a way for a person to affect themselves and others with the aim of eliminating dissonant relations within the system of knowledge.
List the main theoretical schools in which aspects of influence have been studied.
Which ideas of psychoanalytic researchers can be considered important for understanding the nature of influence?
How does E. Berne formulate the main laws of interpersonal influence?
Which ideas of behaviourism contributed to the development of the psychology of influence?
Which lines of research in interactionism describe the laws of influence?
Which ideas of cognitivism are applicable to explaining psychological influence?
What unites and what distinguishes the concepts of B. Skinner and A. Bandura on the problem of influence?
What is the difference between the views of G. Tarde and C. Cooley on the mechanisms of influence?
How, from the standpoint of reference-group theory, can one explain the indifference of some pupils to the condemnation of their behaviour by a teacher and classmates?
Describe a conflict between a teacher and a student that you took part in or witnessed. In which ego states (according to E. Berne) were those in conflict? How might the conflict have been prevented? Which influence strategy was most effective in resolving this situation?
Which position (P–C, A–A, A–C, C–C) of a teacher toward students do you consider the most constructive? Comment on your answer.
Which roles do you play in your social behaviour, in interacting with other people? Which of these roles determine the meaning of your life activity to the greatest extent?
By which symbols can you determine a person's desire to take a dominant position in communicating with you? In terms of which theory would you answer this question?
Часть 1 Psychological Theories Explaining the Nature of Psychological Influence
Часть 2 K. Lewin's field theory - Psychological Theories Explaining the Nature
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