Describe How Groups Can Influence People in Positive or Negative Ways
ESSAY PLAN[pic]
Task 1
Drawing on appropriate evidence from Chapter 5, describe how groups can influence people in positive and negative ways.
Chapter five, it describes a range of social influences on people’s behaviour. In this essay I will look at how groups influence people both in the positive and negative sense. I will describe how group pressure and the ‘in groups’ and ‘out groups’, and conformity influence people in their daily lives.
Group pressure is the demand by group members that individuals in the group conform to the group behaviours or standards. It is caused by people being highly attracted by the security offered by a membership of a group, where friends are seemingly all around you and make one feel safe and cared for. Spoors et al 2007 gave an example of ‘Heaven’s Gate’; this was the Californian doomsday cult which combined Christianity with belief in the existence of UFO’s. In March 1997, thirty-nine members of the group committed suicide in the belief that their souls would be turned into a spaceship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet.
Cult groups /bonds often create emotional attachment to the group and fear of powerful leaders making group members feel dependent on the group. Which may explain why, members of the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ had severed all contact with their families and sold all their worldly belongings.
There are two groups, namely the ‘in group’ and the ‘out group’. The first group is people who belong to the group with which we consider to belong to and the second group is people who do not belong to same group as the first. Group identity helps promote a sense of identity and belonging, these identities raise self esteem and sense of status. They also help us to define who we are and others to define us. Group identity also enhances comparison between the two groups such as ‘us’ and ‘them’, which does tend to create conflicts.
An example of the ‘in/out groups is the
Task 1
Drawing on appropriate evidence from Chapter 5, describe how groups can influence people in positive and negative ways.
Chapter five, it describes a range of social influences on people’s behaviour. In this essay I will look at how groups influence people both in the positive and negative sense. I will describe how group pressure and the ‘in groups’ and ‘out groups’, and conformity influence people in their daily lives.
Group pressure is the demand by group members that individuals in the group conform to the group behaviours or standards. It is caused by people being highly attracted by the security offered by a membership of a group, where friends are seemingly all around you and make one feel safe and cared for. Spoors et al 2007 gave an example of ‘Heaven’s Gate’; this was the Californian doomsday cult which combined Christianity with belief in the existence of UFO’s. In March 1997, thirty-nine members of the group committed suicide in the belief that their souls would be turned into a spaceship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet.
Cult groups /bonds often create emotional attachment to the group and fear of powerful leaders making group members feel dependent on the group. Which may explain why, members of the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ had severed all contact with their families and sold all their worldly belongings.
There are two groups, namely the ‘in group’ and the ‘out group’. The first group is people who belong to the group with which we consider to belong to and the second group is people who do not belong to same group as the first. Group identity helps promote a sense of identity and belonging, these identities raise self esteem and sense of status. They also help us to define who we are and others to define us. Group identity also enhances comparison between the two groups such as ‘us’ and ‘them’, which does tend to create conflicts.
An example of the ‘in/out groups is the