Introduction to Communication Science week 5: 5.7 How To Fit In?

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Transcript of all Week 5 videos: https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/commscience/transcripts%2FTranscript_Week_5%20Coursera.pdf

This lecture in .webm: http://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/commscience/recoded_videos%2F5.7.6b1d847af4c36827960abd8dea4871f0.webm

2. In the Coursera site, but apparently unaffected by the login block, for this lecture:

Subtitle text: https://class.coursera.org/commscience-001/lecture/subtitles?q=87_en&format=txt
Video mp4: https://class.coursera.org/commscience-001/lecture/download.mp4?lecture_id=87
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Week 5 description:
Communication as a social and cultural force
In the fifth week we cover theoretical approaches that understand communication processes as social and cultural forces, as building blocks of reality, and a binding element of power in society.

In the previous section we talked about groups

and how they are formed and maintained by
constant sharing of cultural communication.

Ideas, values, rules, this can all be part of a
group identity.

Simply being a member of a group

doesn't give you any guarantees for future group
membership.

Since cultural reality is in constant motion,

we need to keep communicating to keep fitting
in, to reduce our uncertainty of how to behave,

what values are dominant, which ideas are
accepted et cetera.

Many theories have been created around this
idea.

For instance the Uncertainty Reduction Theory
of Berger and Calabrese.

They believed that people a) live in constant
uncertainty about the world around them,

their position in it and the cultural rules in place

and b) that we use communication to reduce our
uncertainty.

There are according to this theory,

three main communication strategies to deal
with uncertainty.

I'll explain with use of an example from my own
experience.

I visited a wedding reception recently and had
with me an envelope as a gift.

I wasn't quite sure however what I supposed to
do with the envelop.

Should I give it to the happy couple? Hand it in
somewhere?

It was a tightly scripted event and I had just
witnessed

the master of ceremonies freak out about some
detail

so I felt some pressure to do the correct thing.

Basically three options were open. First of all, I
tried to see what other people did.

So I tried observation. Berger and Calabrese
called this the passive strategy.

I didn't really see anyone doing anything with
gifts

but perhaps they had already done so earlier.

So, observation did not help in my case.

Secondly, I started asking other wedding
guests, friends I knew,

what I was supposed to do. This is an active
strategy.

In my example, this also didn't help because the
people I asked had the same question.

The third and final strategy is the interactive
strategy,

asking someone at the source of the
uncertainty.

In my case I went to the master of ceremonies

and heard there was a box for envelopes in the
other room,

I was not supposed to give the envelope to the
wedding couple themselves

since that would hold up the line.

I was pretty glad I asked.

Whenever we find ourselves in a new and
uncertain situation

we need to culturally adapt with use of
communication.

This could also apply to a new topic.

Even amongst a group of people who know each
other longer,

a new topic can still generate much uncertainty,

since no-one knows yet what the dominant
group view will be.

There is a well-researched tendency amongst
people

to feel pressured by the dominating opinions in a
group.

This is called group pressure.

It's sometimes portrayed as explicit, for instance
young kids trying to convince their friends:

"Don't be dull, come on and come to the dance
on Saturday!".

But a perhaps more interesting form of group
pressure is implicit:

the group does not have to explicitly pressure
their members,

since they will adopt dominant group behavior

and express dominant group views without being
told to. We call this 'conformity'.

Famous examples of this are the Asch
experiments, conducted in the fifties.

In its simplest form: the test subject was asked
to sit in a group.

He thinks they are all test subjects there but in
reality he is the only one,

the rest is all in on the experiment.

A picture of a line is shown and next to that a
picture of three lines.

The group is asked to say out loud which of the
three line is the same length as the first line.

The task is simple.

First everything goes as it should and the test
subject is feeling more and more comfortable.

But then, the fake test subjects start giving
wrong answers.

We're curious what the real test subject will do.

Well, a startling 75% of the test subjects went
along with the group in at least one case.

So they gave a wrong answer under this implicit
group pressure.

These results have of course sparked a series of
studies

that tried to reveal why people fold under group
pressure

and why people find it so difficult to openly
disagree with public opinion.

More on this in our next section.