PSYCH 1X03 Lecture Notes - Sex Doll, Muzafer Sherif, Murder Of Kitty Genovese
17 Oct 2013
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Document Summary
As a social being, your thoughts and behaviours are influenced by those of the people around you. You look to others for cues to determine how you should feel and act in a given situation. The influence of others has broad implication a topics ranging from cultural norms to advertising. Research in social psychology is particularly interesting because what may initially seem obvious, is not necessarily so. He asked a child to perform a simple task of winding a string as fast as he could either alone or in groups. He noticed that children wind the fishing rod faster when others are present. In some cases having the presence of an audience can hinder performance on tasks such as learning nonsense syllable, completing a difficult maze or solving complex problems. Robert zajonc suggested that the important factor to consider is that presence of others increases your arousal: how people heightened arousal depends on the specific task to be performed.
