Withstanding External Pressure When Making Decisions

Source: NFL.com

Conventional wisdom often asserts that strong familiarity and cohesion within a group leads to a high risk of groupthink.  In other words, a strong sense of social belonging within a team can lead to pressures to conform, which in turn can diminish the quality of decisions that a team makes.  However, might that strong in-group familiarity be helpful when it comes to resisting external pressures?  Amanda Ferguson and her colleagues studied that question in a new paper titled, "Relieving the Pressure: Team Familiarity Attenuates External Conformity Pressure on Team Member Decisions."  

Ferguson and her colleagues conducted an ingenious study of NCAA football officiating crews.  They examined data from 2012-2015 to measure "crew familiarity" - i.e., how often had referees worked together.  Then, they evaluated officiating crews' performance during the 2016 football season.  Ferguson and her co-authors studied whether crews with more experience working together were more or less vulnerable to pressure from the home crowd when making penalty calls.  In short, the home crowd represented what they called "external conformity pressure."  They discovered a meaningful relationship between in-group familiarity and external conformity pressure, particularly when the stakes are very high: 

"Crews with 20 games of experience working together call 0.92 fewer penalties on the visiting team when under high pressure, and crews with 30 games of experience working together call 1.56 fewer penalties on the visiting team under these conditions. Although the magnitudes of changes in penalties may seem small, they represent anywhere from a 15% to 25% difference from the average number of visiting team penalties, which is consistent with effects reported in previous studies on the influence of crowds on referee penalty calls."  

In other words, in-group familiarity and cohesion seems to provide a protective effect, leading teams to not be as susceptible to external conformity pressure, particularly in high-stakes situations.  The scholars conducted a second experimental study examining the same factors.  That study largely corroborated the findings from the NCAA referee research. 

What's the practical implication for business leaders?  We know that many managers feel pressure to conform to industry standards and conventional wisdom.  Companies often tend to exhibit herd behavior in industries, with competitors mimicking the actions of industry market share leaders. Perhaps, more seasoned management teams with a history of working together are less likely to succumb to the pressure to conform to "standard practice" within the industry.  They might be more likely to take risks, be different, and stake out a distinctive competitive position.  Teams with less familiarity may not be able to resist the pressure to conform to conventional wisdom.   

Compelling Others to Lie: The Power of Social Pressure

Two weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article titled, "Would You Lie for Me?"  The article featured the work of scholar Vanessa Bohns and her colleagues.  In a series of studies, Bohn and her co-authors examined whether people could compel others to engage in unethical acts.  Moreover, they looked at whether people thought that they could persuade others to behave unethically.  The results demonstrated that most people underestimated the extent to which they could pressure others to comply with their requests.   Here's an excerpt:

In one study, 25 college students asked 108 unfamiliar students to vandalize a library book. Targets who complied wrote the word “pickle” in pen on one of the pages.  As in the Milgram studies, many of the targets protested. They asked the instigators to take full responsibility for any repercussions. Yet, despite their hesitation, a large portion still complied.  Most important for our research question, more targets complied than participants had anticipated. Our participants predicted that an average of 28.5 percent would go along. In fact, fully half of those who were approached agreed. Moreover, 87 percent of participants underestimated the number they would be able to persuade to vandalize the book.

The scholars replicated this finding in a series of different studies.  What's the implication of these findings?   In my view, leaders need to take stock of their actions.   They need to think about how much their behavior, however subtly, may be affecting others' behaviors.  Leaders may not realize how much they may be influencing their organization members.  We may not think we are placing undue pressure on others, yet in fact, these colleagues are feeling compelled to act in a certain way.  In some cases, we may be pressuring them to behave in ways that are not consistent with their values or the stated organizational values.  We may not even intend to pressure them.   Nevertheless, we are influencing them.  In addition, we may fail to appreciate how difficult it might be for lower level employees to ask questions, push back, or resist engaging in certain conduct.  They may comply without ever questioning a course of action. We may fool ourselves into believing that they would object if they felt strongly.   Bottom line - they may not object because they feel such social pressure to comply. 

Do We Really Like Creative People (or not)?

Jessica Olien has a great article at Slate titled, "Inside the box: People don't actually like creativity. "  In the essay, she stresses the notion that many people and organizations value conformity much more than out-of-the-box thinking.   She quotes University of California-Berkeley Professor Barry Staw, who says, “We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect... As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform."   Staw argues that we often reward the "satisfiers" rather than the bold thinkers.  Olien even argues that the bias against creativity begins in our schools. She writes, "Unfortunately, the place where our first creative ideas go to die is the place that should be most open to them—school. Studies show that teachers overwhelmingly discriminate against creative students, favoring their satisfier classmates who more readily follow directions and do what they’re told."   

For those interested in more reading about the research on this topic,  I suggest taking a look at one of my old blog posts, in which I describe the research of Jennifer Mueller and her colleagues.  It suggests that a "penalty" against creativity individuals exists in many organizations.  

The Asch Experiments

I discovered that YouTube features a good video on the famous Solomon Asch experiments regarding the pressures to conform in groups.  It's worth watching to remind us that the pressure to conform can cause us to make very poor decisions at times. 

How Norms are Set in Groups

The Wall Street Journal has a good article about the latest research regarding how norms are established in groups.  We all know that pressures for conformity exist in groups, and the article examines that tendency in a variety of ways.  I found the point regarding innovation to be the most interesting one.  Here is an excerpt:

Researchers have studied how new ideas and innovations—whether the latest fashion, electronic gadget or slang word—are introduced and spread within a group. Individuals who innovate tend to be somewhat isolated from the rest of the group, researchers say. Being too much a part of a group may constrain one's ability to think outside of convention, says Christian Crandall, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who studies social norms. "There's a freedom to innovate" that comes with isolation, Dr. Crandall says. Though innovators may be isolated, the group often adopts their innovations because these new ideas or objects are an accessible way for members of the group to bond or signal solidarity. It could be a baseball cap worn backwards, or a pocket square. Each conveys a different identity. But before others will take up the new idea, someone central to the group, with more connections than the innovator, has to recognize it.