Informational Social Influence

6 Key excerpts on "Informational Social Influence"

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  Social Psychology and Human Nature

  • Roy F. Baumeister; Brad J. Bushman, Roy F. Baumeister, Brad Bushman(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 262 | CHAPTER 8 Social Influence and Persuasion by a real participant, who was in turn replaced by another real participant, and so on. The inflated estimate persisted over five generations of research participants. Thus, people ended up conforming to the (false) norms set by someone who was by this point long gone. The studies conducted by Sherif indicate a second type of social influence called infor-mational influence. Informational influence involves going along with the crowd because you think the crowd knows more than you do (rather than because you want to be liked, as with normative social influence). It fits the “people first” theme we have seen through-out this book: People get valuable information from others, and sometimes they give more weight to what others think than to what their own eyes and ears tell them. Two types of situations increase susceptibility to informational influence: (a) ambigu-ous situations, in which people do not know how to behave, and (b) crisis situations, in which people don’t have time to think for themselves. In these situations, people conform to what others do because they assume that those other people must know what they are doing. Sometimes this assumption is wrong—others really do not know more than we do. In fact, others may assume that we know more than they do! In some cases, nobody knows anything, which is called a state of pluralistic ignorance (also see Chapter 9). In short, there are two different kinds of social influence: normative and informa-tional.

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  Encyclopedia of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations

  • John M Levine, Michael A. Hogg, John M. Levine, Michael Hogg(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  This influence is most powerful when being accurate is more important, when others are perceived as especially knowl-edgeable or expert, and when the situation is par-ticularly ambiguous or uncertain. The more uncertain people are about the correctness of their judgments, the more susceptible they will be to informational influence. However, the more uncer-tain people are about the correctness of the judg-ments of others, the less susceptible they will be to informational influence. Informational influence is not irrational; rather, it is a functional way of defining a position in the face of limited information or ambiguity and uncertainty. Indeed, if others have access to more, different, or more accurate information, it may be sensible to adopt their opinions or to be influ-enced by their opinions. Informational influence is seen as “true” influence, as the individual accepts and internalizes it—that is, conforms because of a genuine belief that others are correct, and it is seen to lead to long-term, private, attitude change. This is contrasted with normative influence, which is seen as leading to public compliance—that is, to conforming to the behavior of others publicly without necessarily believing such behavior is correct. This entry looks at the history of the con-cept of informational influence and discusses related controversies. History and Background It could be argued that one of the first studies to demonstrate informational influence was Muzafer Sherif’s work on the autokinetic effect. The autoki-netic effect refers to the way in which a pinpoint of light appears to move of its own accord when it is viewed in a completely dark room where there are no visible reference points. In Sherif’s studies, people were placed in a darkened room either alone or in groups and asked to state how much the point of light moved.

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  Power and Influence in Organizations

  • Roderick M. Kramer, Margaret A. Neale, Roderick M Kramer, Margaret A. Neale(Authors)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Some of the concern may reflect the assumption that biological enhancement of performance or appearance is counterfeit in that it represents a cheap and bogus means of attaining recognition that should be more costly. Physical attractiveness or fitness is admired when achieved through 189 Ethical Aspects of Social Psychology careful diet, exercise, and denial of excess. They are admired, in part, because they signal virtuous behavior. Finally, we suspect that there is a prevalent belief that although biological interventions are acceptable to prevent death, to cure disease, or to restore normal behavioral or psychological functions, they are wrong to make a person something different from normal, even if that difference is an improvement. These speculations about people's ethical concerns regarding bio-logical forms of social influence are somewhat digressive from the two topics that are the main foci of this chapter, informational influence and the use and misuse of authority. Informational Influence Informational Social Influence works when people accept infor-mation obtained from another as evidence about reality (Deutsch & Gerard, 1958, p. 629). Informational Social Influence works by influenc-ing what people believe about the world. We take informational influ-ence to include the vast terrain that covers issues of truth-telling, honesty, deceit, lying, concealment, and disclosure. These are concerns that deal with a prototypical situation in which truth is known by one or more parties and either is or is not accurately communicated to one or more other parties. The intent of the agent is obviously an important element in any ethical analysis, as is the knowledge that the agent has about what the target knows about the issue. There are a secondary set of issues that we also include in this category. These are issues that arise when truth is not known.

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  Visualizing Psychology

  • Siri Carpenter, Karen Huffman(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Norms are expected behaviors that are adhered to by members of a group (see Applying Psychology ). Most often, norms are quite subtle and implicit. Have you ever asked what others are wearing to a party, or watched your neighbor to be sure you pick up the right fork? Such behavior reflects your desire to conform and the power of normative social influence. • Informational Social Influence Have you ever bought a specific product simply because of a friend’s recommen-dation? You conform not to gain your friend’s approval (normative social influence) but because you assume he or she has more information than you do. Given that participants in Asch’s experiment observed all the other participants give unanimous decisions on the length of the lines, they also may have conformed because they believed the others had more information. • Reference groups The third major factor in conformity is the power of reference groups —people we most admire, like, and want to resemble. Attractive actors and popular sports stars are paid millions of dollars to endorse products because advertisers know that we want to be as cool as LeBron James or as beautiful as Natalie Portman. Of course, we also have more important reference groups in our lives—parents, friends, family members, teachers, religious leaders, and so on. 410 CHAPTER 15 Social Psychology Damian Dovarganes/©AP/Wide World Photos following orders just because they were told to do so by an authority figure. Recognizing and resisting destruc-tive forms of obedience are particularly important to our society—and to social psychology. Let’s start with an ex-amination of a classic series of experiments on obedience by Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974). Imagine that you have responded to a newspaper ad that is seeking volunteers for a study on memory. At the Yale University laboratory, an experimenter explains to you and another participant that he is studying the effects of punishment on learning and memory.

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  Real World Psychology

  • Catherine A. Sanderson, Karen R. Huffman(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  We generally submit to this type of normative social influence out of our need for approval and acceptance by the group. Furthermore, conforming to group norms makes us feel good and it’s often more adaptive to conform (Feeney et al., 2017; Shang et al., 2017). On some occasions, however, conformity can be harmful (see Figure 15.14). (For another real- world example of cultural norms, see the following GCD Gender and Cultural Diversity.) • Informational Social Influence Have you ever bought a specific product simply because of a friend’s recommendation? In this case, you probably conformed not to gain your friend’s approval, an example of normative social influence, but due to your assumption that he or she had more information than you did. This is an example of Informational Social Influence. Given that participants in Asch’s experiment observed all the other par- ticipants giving unanimous decisions on the length of the lines, can you see how they may have conformed given that they believed the others had more information than they did? • Reference groups The third major factor in conformity is the power of reference groups— people we most admire, like, and want to resemble. Attractive actors and popular sports stars are paid millions of dollars to endorse products because advertisers know that we want to be as cool as LeBron James or as beautiful as Emma Stone (Arsena et al., 2014; Schulz, 2015). Of course, we also have more important reference groups in our lives—par- ents, friends, family members, teachers, religious leaders, and classmates—all of whom affect our willingness to conform. Research shows that these people (called social referents) affect overall “simple” conformity, like the participants in the Asch study. But, more importantly, they can also have an outsized influence over others’ attitudes and behaviors.

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  Social Influence

  Direct and Indirect Processes

  • Joseph P. Forgas, Kipling D. Williams(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Thus the basic principles are (1) that people expect to agree with others that they categorize as similar to themselves in relevant respects (as perceivers) when they are judging the same stimulus reality ("If we are the same and are judging the same thing, then we ought to agree."), and expect to disagree with people they categorize as different from themselves in relevant respects (or where judging a different stimulus), (2) that such agreement with similar others or disagreement with different others produces subjective validity (certainty, confidence in the objective correctness of one's judgment), (3) that disagreement with similar others about the same stimulus or agreement with different others produces uncertainty, and (4) that uncertainty (which will vary with strength of self-categorization, relevance and importance of issue to group identity, extent of agreement/disagreement, etc.) motivates efforts to reduce uncertainty by recategorizing the self and others, redefining the stimulus situation, or engaging in mutual influence (in which one seeks to persuade and also is open to persuasion). The traditional distinction between "informational" and "normative" influence (see Turner, 1991) is rejected in this formulation. One's own judgment or behavior is subjectively validated (as correct, appropriate, informative of reality) to the degree that it participates in and exemplifies an ingroup norm. Others' responses exert informational force and embody persuasive, valid arguments, to the degree that they exemplify an ingroup normative stance. It is assumed that ingroup norms induce private acceptance rather than merely public compliance because they provide information about appropriate behavior. They define congruent responses as informationally valid for members, as shared within the ingroup, and hence as reflecting reality rather than personal bias or the incompetence or prejudice of outgroups. Informational influence is influence as a function of the perceived validity of information, and here perceived validity is a function of the degree to which the message (judgment, response, etc.) is consensual (i.e., normative) within the ingroup. Thus for self-categorization theory, informational and (ingroup) normative influence represent the same process. Compliance, on the other hand, going along with social norms as a function of the social power of the source, rather than its capacity for persuasive influence, is seen as specifically a reaction to the norms and power of an outgroup.

  Our argument is that both majority and minority influence are mediated by self-categorization processes. What do we mean by this? We do not mean that majorities and minorities always produce the same outcomes. On the contrary we do not dispute that majorities sometimes produce compliance but not conversion and that minorities sometimes produce conversion but not compliance. Our reading of the literature, however, suggests that there is no exclusive link between majorities and compliance, or minorities and conversion. We think the evidence is clear (see Turner, 1991) that both majorities and minorities can produce a whole variety of outcomes. Sometimes majorities produce compliance without conversion; sometimes they produce both. Minorities can produce conversion without compliance, or both; indeed in one study a minority produced compliance without conversion (see Perez & Mugny, 1987, as discussed by Turner, 1991, p. 109). We do not yet know of a study in which a majority has produced conversion without compliance, but theoretically we think it is perfectly possible. When we say that majority and minority influence are based on the same influence process, we mean that the same general theoretical principles outlined above can be used to make sense of all the varying outcomes by taking into account the specific influence conditions. We do not mean that majorities and minorities do not produce qualitatively different effects under many conditions. Nor do we mean that there is no difference between influence and power or that people will not sometimes accept or reject influence easily, superficially, with little thought, and at other times accept or reject it with much cognitive elaboration and mental effort.

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