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Topic 9.Methods of Psychological Influence in Management Systems
1. The basic means of managerial influence
- Contamination
- Imitation
- Persuasion
- Proofs
- Disproofs
References
1. Acoff R. The Art of problem-solving.M., 1982.
2. Agyeev V.S. Psychology of intergroup relations. M., 1999.
3. Bolshakov A.S. Management: The strategy of success. SPb., 2001.
4. Diesel P., McKinley R.U. A person’s behavior within an organization.M., 1998.
5. Mescon M.H., Albert M. The basics of management.M., 1997.
1. The basic means of managerial influence
Usually as the basic means of managerial influence the following are distinguished:
suggestion, contamination, imitation, and persuasion.
Under the term of suggestion is understood the way of psychological influence which is
mainly emotional-and-will in character and is based on an individual’s non-critical perceiving
and adoption of a deliberate flow of information which needs no proofs or logic and contains
ready-made conclusions.
To the main regularities of the process of suggestion are related the following:
- with the age of an individual, and consequently with the increase in social experience
the effectiveness of suggestion decreases while scepsis in regard to this means of influence
grows;
- effectiveness of suggestion depends on psychic and physiological state of individuals:
to a greater extent suggestible are people who are tired, weakened physically, in comparison with
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fit people with high vigor. The action of this regularity probably explains the high
“effectiveness” of séances held by various “healers” and “sorcerers”;
- The decisive condition of suggestion effectiveness is an executive’s authority (either
his personally or that of the social group he represents) which creates a special additional
influence stimulus – the trust the information source. The authority of an executive functions as
the so-called “indirect argumentation”, a sort of compensator of the missing direct
argumentation.
Performing of effective suggestion is enhanced by:
- information vacuum or utmost inconsistence of current information;
- the subject’s strong psychic and physical exhaustion;
- blocking psychic stress (anger, fear, search for way out of a difficult situation, etc.);
- positive expectations and attitudes;
- rigidcategoricity of claims and demands;
- repetitiveness, a certain rhythm of feeding the suggested information;
- a special emotiveness of the message.
As contamination is understood the means of psychological influence based on an
individual’s unconscious, involuntary susceptibility to certain emotional states imparted from
outside.
Physiological basis
of contamination is an individual’s permanent readiness for discharge
(which is often is not even recognized).
Psychological basis
of contamination is a number of
regularities. Firstly, within the mass of people there acts a mechanism of multiple mutual
amplification of emotional impact among communicating people. Many researchers state the
presence of a special “contamination reaction” which is similar in its consequences to a usual
chain reaction.
Secondly, within the mass of people there appears a certain commonality of estimations,
attitudes which prepares an individual for the action of contamination mechanism. For instance,
applause at concerts is a kind of impulse following which begins its action the contamination
mechanism proper.
Susceptibility of individuals to contamination depends on the general level of personality
development, namely, on their self-consciousness level. Potentially, any individual is susceptible
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to the influence of contamination mechanism, the only problem being the constitutional
peculiarities of everyone’s psyche, i.e. on the ratio between the emotional and the rational
spheres of the psyche, on how easily the emotional sphere can gain the upper hand over the
rational one.
To summarize the aforesaid, it is necessary to note that in modern conditions
contamination plays a considerably lesser role than on the initial stages of development. B.V.
Porshnev has discovered the regularity in contamination mechanism’s action: the higher the
society’s development level, the more critical is individuals’ attitude to the forces, which
automatically draws them to the road of emotional experiences, and thus, the weaker the
contamination mechanism’s action is.
The brightest example of contamination’s action is the state of panic. The term itself is
derived from the Greek god’s name of Pan, the patron of shepherds, pastures, and flocks who
caused by his anger insanity of a flock which could throw itself into fire or an abyss for no
obvious reason.
Panic
is a certain destructive emotional state arising within a people’s
community through either lack or excess of information on some important phenomenon.
To
the main condition
of panic’s arising belongs the conveying of an important to an
individual information (and it be either verbal or in the form of visual images). But this is not
enough. For panic to appear it is necessary that:
- there was either lack or excess of information;
- information contained either frightening or unclear data (for example on real or
imaginary danger);
- information was so strong by its impact that it could cause fear followed by shock.
Their dynamic manifestation is unconscious adoption of certain behavior patterns.
Any panic as a social-and-psychological phenomenon evolves in three stages:
the initial stage
: appearance of any information capable of causing fear and later shock;
the main
(or
destructive
)
stage
: panic gains in strength under the influence of the
aforementioned mechanism of multiple mutual reflection and becomes avalanche-like in
character;
the final stage: under the influence of various factors (detecting the falsity of the
information, removal of the cause leading to panic, an example capable of “switching on” the
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rational sphere of psyche, etc.) the rational sphere is switched on with compensatory abilities of
psyche, and the initial emotional state is restored.
A bright example of destructive possibilities of panic is the case which took place in the
USA on the 30
th
of October 1938 after transmitting on the radio the adaptation of H.Wells’ book
“The War of the Worlds”. Masses of broadcast listeners of the most various age and educational
groups (by official estimation more than 1.2 mln) experienced a sate close to mass psychosis,
having believed in Martians’ intrusion on Earth. Despite the fact that many of them certainly
knew that a literary work was being transmitted on the radio (this was voiced by the announcer
three times), about 400 thousand of people testified seeing “Martians’ appearance” “in person”.
What can be opposed to panic as a phenomenon? The most effective is the use of its own
effects. It was already mentioned that in the base of panic’s arising is unconscious adoption of
certain behavioral patterns. So, there must be a person who is capable of offering a behavior
example favoring restoration of normal emotional state.
The message of this example of behavior is the following: everything’s fine, the situation
is under control, or: the situation is difficult, but we will cope with it. Such an example of
behavior can be shown first of all by an executive. It is on his/her actions that it depends whether
the panic will diminish or go on.
Under the term of
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