Social processes that influence human behavior

• Social facilitation — the presence of others improves performance on easy/well-learned tasks but impairs it on hard/novel ones (ties to arousal — Yerkes-Dodson).
• Social loafing — people exert less effort in a group when individual contributions aren't identifiable.
• Deindividuation — loss of self-awareness and restraint in a group (often anonymous), enabling impulsive, atypical behavior (mob behavior).
• Bystander effect — the more bystanders present, the less likely any one helps, via diffusion of responsibility (and pluralistic ignorance).
• Social facilitation vs. loafing depends on whether your effort is evaluated (facilitation) or hidden in the group (loafing).

Asch's line studies showed people conform to a clearly wrong majority. Conformity rises with group size (to a point), unanimity, and status; it runs on normative influence (to be liked/accepted) and informational influence (to be right). Milgram's shock experiments showed ordinary people obey an authority to a shocking degree. Compliance techniques (foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face — cross-ref 7C) get people to agree to requests. Internalization (genuine belief change) vs. identification (to fit a valued group) vs. mere compliance.

Primary socialization (childhood, mostly family) vs. secondary socialization (later, via school/peers/work). Resocialization (e.g., in a total institution like the military or prison) replaces old norms with new ones. Norms (folkways, mores, taboos) and sanctions (rewards/punishments) enforce conformity to culture. Cultural responses to diversity include assimilation (absorbing into the dominant culture), multiculturalism, and amalgamation. (Deeper culture theory — material vs. symbolic, values/beliefs/norms — is in 9A.)