Stephen G Harkins
Biographic Data
| ID | 5448795 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen G Harkins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen G |
| FAMILY NAME | Harkins |
| SIGNATURE | HARKINS S G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northeastern University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 317 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 17 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Introduction and Overview
The study of social influence has been central to social psychology since its inception. In fact, research on social influence began in the 1880s, predating the coining of the term social psychology. However, by the mid-1980s, interest in this area had waned. Now the pendulum is swinging back, as seen in growing interest in non-cognitive, motivational accounts. Our hope is that the publication of this volume will aid this movement. The chapters, …
The Expanding, Lop-Sided Universe of Social Influence and Law Research
This chapter explores “social influence and the law,” which we conceptualize as consisting of three parts: (1) social influence in the legal system, (2) the legal regulation of social influence in our everyday lives, and (3) law as an instrument of social influence. Within each part, we identify the primary topics that psychologists have studied empirically and review the existing research. The chapter thus highlights the many and varied contribu…
Social Influence and Personality
The study of social influence has been dominated by experimental methods that are not well suited to examine relationships between personality and social influence. Nevertheless, the existing research provided a basis for some tentative conclusions. In terms of susceptibility to influence, it appears that people who depend more on others for guidance are more susceptible to influence than those who depend less on others. Two specific manifestatio…
Deindividuation
Deindividuation is among the classic phenomena researched by the early pioneers of social psychology. Building on the theorizing of LeBon (1895/1985), deindividuation provided an explanation for aggression in the crowd, a concern as relevant today as it was in the previous two centuries. The theory predicts that behavior becomes more antinormative and aggressive under conditions of anonymity, associated with group immersion, and that this occurs …
Compliance
This chapter reviews the literature on compliance, a type of social influence that occurs when a person changes their behavior in response to a direct request. Specifically, I review research on compliance organized by the six classic principles of social influence (Cialdini, 2009)—reciprocity, commitment and consistency, authority, social validation or social proof, and liking and similarity, and examine how they are used to change peoples’ beha…
The Future of Social Influence in Social Psychology
With notable exceptions, social influence has not played a major role in social psychology since the mid-1980s. The chapters in this volume, along with other developments, set the stage for a return of social influence to its once preeminent position. The chapters contribute to the renaissance of interest in social influence in a variety of ways. Some chapters show us that it is time to re-examine classic topics in the context of what has been le…
Social Identity and Social Influence
Sitting at the heart of social influence is the relationship of the influencer to the target of influence. Whereas influence can and does occur on an interpersonal level, it often flows from other group members. Social categorizations both within and between groups are paramount in this process, and the dissemination of group norms is the mechanism through which influence occurs in groups. This chapter examines social influence within and between…
Minority Influence
The aim of the present chapter is to explain the processes through which minority points of view may, or may not, diffuse in society at large. The first section presents the rise in the 1970s of a new stream of research, that of minority influence, and summarizes early conceptions and the initial experimental works that allowed differentiating minority from majority influence. The second part reviews the subsequent criticism to early minority inf…
Self-Presentation and Social Influence
Self-presentation is a social influence tactic in which people engage in communicative efforts to influence the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others as related to the self-presenter. Despite theoretical arguments that such efforts comprise an automatic component, the majority of research continues to characterize self-presentation as primarily involving controlled and strategic efforts. This focus is theoretically challenging and empirical…
Ethical Issues in Social Influence Research
Social influence researchers encounter a variety of ethical issues in the conduct of their investigations, including those involving deception, privacy, and confidentiality. Facing a growing array of ethical guidelines, governmental regulations, and institutional review, researchers are faced with decisions that often pit the search for scientific knowledge against human welfare. Ethical decisions pertaining to social influence research methodolo…
Social Influence and Gender
This chapter reviews current research on gender and social influence. Overall, men exert greater influence than women do. Women’s disadvantage derives from gender stereotypes that characterize men as more competent and agentic than women and that require women to be more selfless and communal than men. Both agentic and communal behaviors predict influence. As a result, women are subjected to a double bind. They may lack influence because of doubt…
Obedience
Most obedience research is concerned with the kind of destructive obedience demonstrated in Milgram’s famous studies. A large number of participants in those investigations followed an experimenter’s instructions to administer what they believe to be excruciating if not dangerous electric shocks to another individual. Ethical concerns about Milgram’s procedures have forced researchers to develop new methods to study obedience, such as virtual rea…
The Social Psychology of Leadership
Leadership is the process of influencing others in a manner that enhances their contribution to the realization of group goals. We demonstrate how social influence emerges from psychological in-group members, particularly highly in-group prototypical ones. Through leader fairness, respect, and other rhetorical behaviors, leaders become entrepreneurs of identity, creating a shared sense of “us.” Personality research reveals contextual variability …
Conformity and Divergence in Interactions, Groups, and Culture
Humans have a natural affinity for conformity and coordination that is essential to culture, to groups, and to dialogical relationships. It is equally true that the dynamics of relationships, groups, and culture depend on tendencies to diverge, to differentiate, and to dissent. Evidence from anthropology, as well as social, developmental, and cognitive psychology, reveals remarkably convergent accounts of the complex interplay of divergence and c…
Stereotype threat, mental arithmetic, and the mere effort account
Stability and Change Within Groups
This chapter examines the psychological tensions between protecting the status quo within groups and engaging in intragroup change. In the first section we review two research traditions that imply self-reinforcing cycles of stability and preservation of the status quo: (a) research on conformity and the punishment of deviance and (b) research examining biases toward shared knowledge in small decision-making groups. In the second section we provi…
Emotions as Agents of Social Influence
Emotion is part and parcel of social influence. The emotions people feel shape the ways in which they respond to persuasion attempts, and the emotions people express influence other individuals who observe those expressions. This chapter is concerned with the latter type of emotional influence. Such interpersonal effects of emotional expressions are quite different from the traditionally studied intrapersonal effects of emotional experience. This…
The Oxford Handbook of Social Influence
The study of social influence has been central to social psychology since its inception. In fact, research on social influence began in the 1880s, predating the coining of the term social psychology. The area's influence continued through the 1960s, when it made seminal contributions at the beginning of social psychology's golden age, but by the mid-1980s, interest in this area had waned. Now the pendulum is swinging back, as seen in growing inte…
Distinguishing between the effects of stereotype priming and stereotype threat on math performance
Stereotype threat and stereotype priming have both been shown to impair test performance. Although research suggests threat-based concerns distinguish the experience of threat from priming (Marx & Stapel, 2006), it is not clear whether these psychological phenomena impact performance via similar or distinct mechanisms. The current work demonstrates that priming and threat produce distinctive patterns of performance via different mechanisms. Motiv…
Testing the mere effort account of the evaluation-performance relationship
Research traditions in psychology in which the evaluation-performance relationship was examined do not show agreement on the mediating process, nor is there any compelling evidence that favors one account over the others. On the basis of a molecular analysis of performance on the Remote Associates Test (RAT), Harkins (2006) argued that the potential for evaluation motivates participants to perform well, which potentiates prepotent responses. If t…
Mere effort and stereotype threat performance effects
Although the fact that stereotype threat impacts performance is well established, the underlying process(es) is(are) not clear. Recently, T. Schmader and M. Johns (2003) argued for a working memory interference account, which proposes that performance suffers because cognitive resources are expended on processing information associated with negative stereotypes. The antisaccade task provides a vehicle to test this account because optimal performa…
Mere effort as the mediator of the evaluation-performance relationship
The research traditions that have examined the evaluation-performance relationship do not agree on the mediating process(es), nor is there any compelling evidence that favors one account over the others. In the current research, a molecular analysis of performance on the Remote Associates Test was undertaken in an effort to identify the mediating process(es). This analysis suggests that the potential for evaluation leads participants to put great…
The Contribution of the Potential for Evaluation to Coaction Effects
Previous research on social facilitation (e.g. Harkins, 1987) has made it clear that the potential for evaluation plays a role in producing coaction effects, but has left unclear the source of these effects. Subsequent research (e.g. Szymanski & Harkins, 1987, 1993) has shown that the potential for self-evaluation and experimenter evaluation each produce performance greater than that found in a `no evaluation' control group. However, the combinat…
Population and political participation: A social impact analysis of voter responsibility
Testing the contribution of self-evaluation to goal-setting effects
The social loafing paradigm was used to test the contribution ofself-evaluation to goal-setting effects. If, as E. Locke and G. Latham ( 1990 ) argued, goals lead to improved performance because they serve as standards for self-evaluation, eliminating the opportunity for experimenter evaluation should not reduce performance. Results suggest that when the goal is seen as informative, the prospect ofself-evaluation may contribute to goal-setting ef…
Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing
Two experiments found that when asked to perform the physically exerting tasks of clapping and shouting, people exhibit a sizable decrease in individual effort when performing in groups as compared to when they perform alone. This decrease, which we call social loafing, is in addition to losses due to faulty coordination of group efforts. Social loafing is discussed in terms of its experimental generality and theoretical importance. The widesprea…
Identifiability as a deterrant to social loafing: Two cheering experiments
Effects of task difficulty and task uniqueness on social loafing
The effects of group diffusion of cognitive effort on attitudes: An information-processing view
Social loafing and social facilitation
Race of source effects in the Elaboration Likelihood Model
In a series of experiments, we investigated the effect of race of source on persuasive communications in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (R.E. Petty & J.T. Cacioppo, 1981, 1986). In Experiment 1, we found no evidence that White participants responded to a Black source as a simple negative cue. Experiment 2 suggested the possibility that exposure to a Black source led to low-involvement message processing. In Experiments 3 and 4, a distraction pa…
Mere effort and stereotype threat performance effects
Although the fact that stereotype threat impacts performance is well established, the underlying process(es) is(are) not clear. Recently, T. Schmader and M. Johns (2003) argued for a working memory interference account, which proposes that performance suffers because cognitive resources are expended on processing information associated with negative stereotypes. The antisaccade task provides a vehicle to test this account because optimal performa…
Effects of source magnification of cognitive effort on attitudes: An information-processing view
Effects of personal involvement: Thought-provoking implications for social loafing
In 1979, Latane, Williams, and Harkins observed that individuals working together put out less effort than when they work alone, an effect these researchers termed social loafing. Subsequent research (Williams, Harkins, & Latane, 1981) has suggested that this effect arises, at least in part, because when participants work with others on these tasks their individual outputs are lost in the crowd, and, thus, they can receive neither credit nor blam…
Prejudice and criteria for identification of ethnic photographs
Mere effort as the mediator of the evaluation-performance relationship
The research traditions that have examined the evaluation-performance relationship do not agree on the mediating process(es), nor is there any compelling evidence that favors one account over the others. In the current research, a molecular analysis of performance on the Remote Associates Test was undertaken in an effort to identify the mediating process(es). This analysis suggests that the potential for evaluation leads participants to put great…
Social loafing: Allocating effort or taking it easy
Social loafing and self-evaluation with an objective standard
The Effect of Experimenter Evaluation on Self-Evaluation within the Social Loafing Paradigm
Stereotype threat, mental arithmetic, and the mere effort account
Testing the contribution of self-evaluation to goal-setting effects
The social loafing paradigm was used to test the contribution ofself-evaluation to goal-setting effects. If, as E. Locke and G. Latham ( 1990 ) argued, goals lead to improved performance because they serve as standards for self-evaluation, eliminating the opportunity for experimenter evaluation should not reduce performance. Results suggest that when the goal is seen as informative, the prospect ofself-evaluation may contribute to goal-setting ef…
Social loafing and self-evaluation with a social standard
Social loafing has been described as the phenomenon in which participants who together generate less effort than do participants who alone (e.g., Latane, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). Subsequent research (Harkins & Jackson, 1985; Williams, Harkins, & Latane, 1981) has shown that a particular aspect of this paradigm leads to the loafing effect. When participants work together, their outputs are pooled (combined) so that evaluation of individual outp…
A psychological perspective interpretation of the attitude-behavior relationship
Testing the mere effort account of the evaluation-performance relationship
Research traditions in psychology in which the evaluation-performance relationship was examined do not show agreement on the mediating process, nor is there any compelling evidence that favors one account over the others. On the basis of a molecular analysis of performance on the Remote Associates Test (RAT), Harkins (2006) argued that the potential for evaluation motivates participants to perform well, which potentiates prepotent responses. If t…
Information utility and the multiple source effect
In a series of studies, Harkins and Petty (198 la) identified a multiple source eifect whereby information presented by multiple sources received greater scrutiny than did the same information presented by a single source. One implication of this was that when multiple sources presented strong arguments, the arguments elicited more favorable issue-relevant thoughts and more agreement than when the same strong information was presented by a single…
Anticipated Discussion of Interpretation Eliminates Actor-Observer Differences in the Attribution of Causality
An experiment was conducted to test whether actor-observer differences in attribution of causality for a particular behavior would be eliminated when each expected to share an interpretation with another person who also had witnessed the behavior. Traditional actorobserver differences were obtained under conditions of no anticipated discussion. However, anticipation of discussing an interpretation eliminated actor-observer differences, and this w…
Population and political participation: A social impact analysis of voter responsibility
Prejudice and criteria for identification of ethnic photographs
Cognitive tuning and the attribution of causality
Anticipated Discussion of Interpretation Eliminates Actor-Observer Differences in the Attribution of Causality
An experiment was conducted to test whether actor-observer differences in attribution of causality for a particular behavior would be eliminated when each expected to share an interpretation with another person who also had witnessed the behavior. Traditional actorobserver differences were obtained under conditions of no anticipated discussion. However, anticipation of discussing an interpretation eliminated actor-observer differences, and this w…
A psychological perspective interpretation of the attitude-behavior relationship
Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing
Two experiments found that when asked to perform the physically exerting tasks of clapping and shouting, people exhibit a sizable decrease in individual effort when performing in groups as compared to when they perform alone. This decrease, which we call social loafing, is in addition to losses due to faulty coordination of group efforts. Social loafing is discussed in terms of its experimental generality and theoretical importance. The widesprea…
Social loafing: Allocating effort or taking it easy
The effects of group diffusion of cognitive effort on attitudes: An information-processing view
Effects of source magnification of cognitive effort on attitudes: An information-processing view
Identifiability as a deterrant to social loafing: Two cheering experiments
Effects of task difficulty and task uniqueness on social loafing
Equity in effort: An explanation of the social loafing effect
Effects of personal involvement: Thought-provoking implications for social loafing
In 1979, Latane, Williams, and Harkins observed that individuals working together put out less effort than when they work alone, an effect these researchers termed social loafing. Subsequent research (Williams, Harkins, & Latane, 1981) has suggested that this effect arises, at least in part, because when participants work with others on these tasks their individual outputs are lost in the crowd, and, thus, they can receive neither credit nor blam…
Information utility and the multiple source effect
In a series of studies, Harkins and Petty (198 la) identified a multiple source eifect whereby information presented by multiple sources received greater scrutiny than did the same information presented by a single source. One implication of this was that when multiple sources presented strong arguments, the arguments elicited more favorable issue-relevant thoughts and more agreement than when the same strong information was presented by a single…
Social loafing and social facilitation
Social loafing and self-evaluation with a social standard
Social loafing has been described as the phenomenon in which participants who together generate less effort than do participants who alone (e.g., Latane, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). Subsequent research (Harkins & Jackson, 1985; Williams, Harkins, & Latane, 1981) has shown that a particular aspect of this paradigm leads to the loafing effect. When participants work together, their outputs are pooled (combined) so that evaluation of individual outp…
Social loafing and self-evaluation with an objective standard
Social loafing and group evaluation
Recent work (e.g., Harkins, 1987; Szymanski & Harkins, 1987) has suggested that social loafing occurs because participants' outputs cannot be evaluated by the experimenter, by the coactors, or by the participants themselves. This analysis has focused on the output of the individual, but in loafing research, participants work together to produce a product. However, in this prior work participants have been unable to make anything of this product, …
The Effect of Experimenter Evaluation on Self-Evaluation within the Social Loafing Paradigm
Race of source effects in the Elaboration Likelihood Model
In a series of experiments, we investigated the effect of race of source on persuasive communications in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (R.E. Petty & J.T. Cacioppo, 1981, 1986). In Experiment 1, we found no evidence that White participants responded to a Black source as a simple negative cue. Experiment 2 suggested the possibility that exposure to a Black source led to low-involvement message processing. In Experiments 3 and 4, a distraction pa…
Testing the contribution of self-evaluation to goal-setting effects
The social loafing paradigm was used to test the contribution ofself-evaluation to goal-setting effects. If, as E. Locke and G. Latham ( 1990 ) argued, goals lead to improved performance because they serve as standards for self-evaluation, eliminating the opportunity for experimenter evaluation should not reduce performance. Results suggest that when the goal is seen as informative, the prospect ofself-evaluation may contribute to goal-setting ef…
Population and political participation: A social impact analysis of voter responsibility
The Contribution of the Potential for Evaluation to Coaction Effects
Previous research on social facilitation (e.g. Harkins, 1987) has made it clear that the potential for evaluation plays a role in producing coaction effects, but has left unclear the source of these effects. Subsequent research (e.g. Szymanski & Harkins, 1987, 1993) has shown that the potential for self-evaluation and experimenter evaluation each produce performance greater than that found in a `no evaluation' control group. However, the combinat…
Mere effort as the mediator of the evaluation-performance relationship
The research traditions that have examined the evaluation-performance relationship do not agree on the mediating process(es), nor is there any compelling evidence that favors one account over the others. In the current research, a molecular analysis of performance on the Remote Associates Test was undertaken in an effort to identify the mediating process(es). This analysis suggests that the potential for evaluation leads participants to put great…
Mere effort and stereotype threat performance effects
Although the fact that stereotype threat impacts performance is well established, the underlying process(es) is(are) not clear. Recently, T. Schmader and M. Johns (2003) argued for a working memory interference account, which proposes that performance suffers because cognitive resources are expended on processing information associated with negative stereotypes. The antisaccade task provides a vehicle to test this account because optimal performa…
Testing the mere effort account of the evaluation-performance relationship
Research traditions in psychology in which the evaluation-performance relationship was examined do not show agreement on the mediating process, nor is there any compelling evidence that favors one account over the others. On the basis of a molecular analysis of performance on the Remote Associates Test (RAT), Harkins (2006) argued that the potential for evaluation motivates participants to perform well, which potentiates prepotent responses. If t…
Psychology (43 works) · Social Psychology (41 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (27 works) · Social Psychology (20 works) · Cognitive psychology (17 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Social loafing (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Team Dynamics and Performance (11 works)