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In the previous section we talked about groups
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and how they are formed and maintained by
constant sharing of cultural communication.
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Ideas, values, rules, this can all be part of a
group identity.
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Simply being a member of a group
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doesn't give you any guarantees for future group
membership.
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Since cultural reality is in constant motion,
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we need to keep communicating to keep fitting
in, to reduce our uncertainty of how to behave,
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what values are dominant, which ideas are
accepted et cetera.
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Many theories have been created around this
idea.
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For instance the Uncertainty Reduction Theory
of Berger and Calabrese.
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They believed that people a) live in constant
uncertainty about the world around them,
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their position in it and the cultural rules in place
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and b) that we use communication to reduce our
uncertainty.
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There are according to this theory,
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three main communication strategies to deal
with uncertainty.
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I'll explain with use of an example from my own
experience.
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I visited a wedding reception recently and had
with me an envelope as a gift.
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I wasn't quite sure however what I supposed to
do with the envelop.
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Should I give it to the happy couple? Hand it in
somewhere?
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It was a tightly scripted event and I had just
witnessed
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the master of ceremonies freak out about some
detail
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so I felt some pressure to do the correct thing.
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Basically three options were open. First of all, I
tried to see what other people did.
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So I tried observation. Berger and Calabrese
called this the passive strategy.
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I didn't really see anyone doing anything with
gifts
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but perhaps they had already done so earlier.
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So, observation did not help in my case.
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Secondly, I started asking other wedding
guests, friends I knew,
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what I was supposed to do. This is an active
strategy.
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In my example, this also didn't help because the
people I asked had the same question.
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The third and final strategy is the interactive
strategy,
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asking someone at the source of the
uncertainty.
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In my case I went to the master of ceremonies
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and heard there was a box for envelopes in the
other room,
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I was not supposed to give the envelope to the
wedding couple themselves
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since that would hold up the line.
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I was pretty glad I asked.
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Whenever we find ourselves in a new and
uncertain situation
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we need to culturally adapt with use of
communication.
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This could also apply to a new topic.
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Even amongst a group of people who know each
other longer,
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a new topic can still generate much uncertainty,
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since no-one knows yet what the dominant
group view will be.
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There is a well-researched tendency amongst
people
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to feel pressured by the dominating opinions in a
group.
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This is called group pressure.
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It's sometimes portrayed as explicit, for instance
young kids trying to convince their friends:
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"Don't be dull, come on and come to the dance
on Saturday!".
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But a perhaps more interesting form of group
pressure is implicit:
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the group does not have to explicitly pressure
their members,
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since they will adopt dominant group behavior
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and express dominant group views without being
told to. We call this 'conformity'.
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Famous examples of this are the Asch
experiments, conducted in the fifties.
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In its simplest form: the test subject was asked
to sit in a group.
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He thinks they are all test subjects there but in
reality he is the only one,
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the rest is all in on the experiment.
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A picture of a line is shown and next to that a
picture of three lines.
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The group is asked to say out loud which of the
three line is the same length as the first line.
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The task is simple.
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First everything goes as it should and the test
subject is feeling more and more comfortable.
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But then, the fake test subjects start giving
wrong answers.
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We're curious what the real test subject will do.
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Well, a startling 75% of the test subjects went
along with the group in at least one case.
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So they gave a wrong answer under this implicit
group pressure.
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These results have of course sparked a series of
studies
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that tried to reveal why people fold under group
pressure
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and why people find it so difficult to openly
disagree with public opinion.
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More on this in our next section.