Normative Social Influence

11 Key excerpts on "Normative Social Influence"

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  Social Beings

  Core Motives in Social Psychology

  • Susan T. Fiske(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Summary of Definitions and Motives Social influence could be all of social psychology (as we defined it: how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of oth- ers). More often, it is changes in behavior that result from social interaction. Operationally, the research tends to fall into methods for studying conformity with peers, obedience to authorities, and compliance with direct requests. All the core social motives are relevant to social influence, as we will see. Conformity: Belonging and Understanding by Doing What Others Do Conformity, going along with others, reflects adhering to group norms for behavior. We start with the classic studies, some already described, address more recent research on the processes involved, and end the section by taking seriously the role of group belonging in social influ- ence. We also discuss contemporary myths and legends, in the context of conformity to shared understanding of group norms. Classic Studies: Sherif and Asch Participants sat in a darkened room, along with others, voicing their judgments about an appar- ently moving point of light. Sherif (1935) wanted to demonstrate the impact of norms on individ- ual judgment, so he used an ambiguous task in which all answers (other than zero) were arbitrary and wrong. In later research, other participants reacted to statements such as the one about social classes and property, noted earlier, or this one about rebellion, attributed to Lenin or Jefferson: “I hold that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical.” Asch (1948) found that readers changed the meaning of “rebellion” to “agitation” when the author was Jefferson and “rebellion” to “revolution” when the alleged author was Lenin. They then rated their agreement with the statement accordingly.

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  The SAGE Handbook of Social Psychology

  Concise Student Edition

  • Michael A Hogg, Joel Cooper, Michael A Hogg, Joel Cooper(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  The study of social influence is one of the most fundamental areas of social-psychological inquiry. Social influence refers to the ways in which the opinions and attitudes of one person affect the opinions and attitudes of another person. Although influence can occur between individuals, it is widely seen to operate in the context of social groups, where group members are continually influencing each other through the dynamic formation and change of group norms. Two forms of social influence can be identified within groups, which serve the function of either maintaining group norms (social control) or changing group norms (social change). The dominant form of social control is con-formity, that is, the processes through which an individual accepts (or complies with) the group’s view. Since this line of research examines how a majority can cause an individual to conform to its view, it is often referred to as majority influence . Another process of social control is obedience , whereby individuals obey (often against their free will) an authority figure. However, in order for group norms to change, there must be processes of social change, which often create conflict and are resisted by group members. Processes of social change typically originate from a small subsection of members of the group, and, therefore, the process is often referred to as minority influence . Without active minorities, group opinions would never be challenged, fashions would not change, political campaigns would never succeed, and innovations would be thwarted. Social-influence research has a long tradition in social psychology and the amount of contemporary research, in terms of both pub-lished articles and active scholars, appears to be increasing, reflecting a continued interest in the area. The aim of this chapter is to review research relevant to these areas with particular attention to contemporary emphases and developments.

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  An Introduction to Social Psychology

  • Miles Hewstone, Wolfgang Stroebe, Miles Hewstone, Wolfgang Stroebe(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • BPS Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Coordination of goals and activities among group members is necessary for the group to move, as a group, effectively and efficiently in the direction it wants or needs to go. Consider conformity, going along with the group (which we introduced in Chapter 1 and will return to in more detail below). Even though it tends to have negative connotations in Western, individual societies (Markus & Kitayama, 1994), conformity can help us to achieve group goals quickly and easily (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). Think for a few seconds how chaotic society would be in the complete absence of conformity. Festinger suggested that opinion discrepancies within groups elicit pressures towards uniformity, which produces communication between members of the group. Uniformity is achieved by group members convincing others to move towards their position, by themselves shifting towards the position held by others, or by redefining the group by rejecting those members who disagree (see Levine, 1989; Turner, 1991). normative influence influence based on conforming to the positive expectations of others: people avoid behaving in ways that will lead to social punishment or disapproval. Deutsch and Gerard (1955) proposed a simple but highly significant analysis of motives for social influence. They argued that people agree with others for normative or informational reasons. Normative influence presumes a need for social approval or harmony with others, and occurs when people conform to the positive expectations of others – they avoid behaving in ways that will lead to social punishment or disapproval. The main goal, then, is to build and maintain satisfactory relationships with others, and accuracy becomes correspondingly less important (Prislin & Wood, 2005). Informational influence presumes a need to reduce uncertainty, and involves accepting the information obtained from others as evidence about reality

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  Psychology for Nurses and Health Professionals

  • Richard Gross, Nancy Kinnison(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  171 Conformity and group influence 8 Introduction and overview It is impossible to live among other people and not be influenced by them in some way. According to Allport (1968), social psychology as a discipline can be defined as ‘an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feel-ings and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others’. Sometimes, other people’s attempts to change our thoughts or behaviour are very obvious, as when, for example, a ward manager tells a student nurse to attend to a particular patient. If we do as we are told, we are demonstrat-ing obedience , which implies that one person (in this example, the ward man-ager, an authority figure) has more social power than others (student nurses). Obedience is discussed in Chapter 9. In common with obedience, other forms of active social influence involve deliberate attempts by one person to change another’s thoughts or behaviour. However, on other occasions, social influence is less direct and deliber-ate and may not involve any explicit requests or demands at all. For example, sometimes the mere presence of other people can influence our behaviour, either inhibiting or enhancing it. Another form of indirect or passive social influence occurs when, for instance, your taste in music is affected by what your friends listen to. This is conformity . Your peers (equals) exert pressure on you to behave (and think) in particular ways, a case of the majority influencing the individual ( major-ity influence ). But majorities can also be influenced by minorities ( minority influence ).

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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 Psychology

  • Saba Safdar, Catherine A. Sanderson(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How social norms influence behaviour The factors that lead to conformity The factors that lead to compliance The factors that lead to obedience How culture affects social influence Think about the clothes you’re wearing, the music you listen to, the way you wear your hair, and the laptop you’re using. All of these choices are influenced by social norms, meaning unspoken but shared rules of conduct within a particular formal or informal group. Although these examples describe relatively minor ways in which the social world influences our attitudes and behaviour, in some cases, the social world exerts a powerful and direct impact on our behaviour. For example, teenagers may feel pressure from others in their social groups to drink alcohol or smoke. This type of conformity, meaning changing our opinions or behaviours to meet perceived group norms, can occur because people fear the consequences of deviating from the norms. In some cases, the social world can even lead us to obey orders that may harm or kill people—or ourselves. This type of social influence describes compliance, behaviour that is elicited by direct requests, and obedience, behav- iour that is produced by the commands of authority figures. This chapter examines how these dif- ferent types of social influence impact our attitudes and behaviour. HOW DO SOCIAL NORMS INFLUENCE BEHAVIOUR? Think about a time when you did not participate in something because you assumed your friends would think of it as uncool. Sometimes, we misperceive other people’s assessments, and we use our misperception as a guide to our behaviour. A study conducted in Japan by Takeru Miyajima and Hiroyuki Yamaguchi (2017) examined male employees’ reasons for not taking parental leave. In a series of studies, they found that the male participants overestimated other men’s negative attitudes toward taking parental leave.

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  Psychology

  Modules for Active Learning

  • Dennis Coon, John Mitterer, Tanya Martini, , Dennis Coon, John Mitterer, Tanya Martini, (Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Copyright 2022 Cengage Learning. 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. 611 MODULE 71 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: SOCIAL INFLUENCE create group pressure (Asch, 1956). Real students con-formed to the group on about one-third of the critical trials. Of those tested, 75 percent yielded at least once. People who were tested alone erred in less than 1 percent of their judg-ments. Clearly, those who yielded to group pressures were denying what their eyes told them. Are some people more susceptible to group pressures than others? People with high needs for structure or certainty are more likely to conform. So are people who are anxious, low in self-confidence, or concerned with the approval of others. People who live in cultures that emphasize group coopera-tion (such as many Asian cultures) also are more likely to conform (Bond & Smith, 1996; Fu et al., 2007). Group Factors in Conformity How do groups enforce norms? In most groups, we have been rewarded with accep-tance and approval for conformity and threatened with rejec-tion or ridicule for nonconformity. These reactions are called group sanctions. Negative sanctions range from laughter, star-ing, or social disapproval to complete rejection or formal exclu-sion. If you’ve ever felt the sudden chill of disapproval by others, you understand the power of group sanctions—just as Harry and Sally did. The more important group membership is to a person, the more he or she will be influenced by other group mem-bers (Stein, 2017). The risk of being rejected can be a threat to our sense of personal identity (Baer, Cialdini, & Lueth, 2012).

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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)

  Information provided by members of our own groups will be seen as more credible, trustworthy, and valid than information provided by members of other groups. Reference group norms establish the validity of information; thus, consensual validation (of social reality) is really normative validation. In referent informational influence, the theory of social influ-ence associated with the social identity approach, the focus is not on distinguishing between norma-tive and informational influence, but rather, on a single influence process in which the normative position of people categorized as similar to the self tends to be accepted as valid information. Social influence researchers have traditionally assumed that informational and normative influ-ence produces change through different mecha-nisms and are associated with different outcomes. Specifically, the desire for an informed and correct position prompts people to process persuasive con-tent systematically and produces enduring private change in judgments. In contrast, the desire to meet normative expectations prompts a more superficial analysis of the persuasive content and produces public, context-dependent, transitory change. However, this analysis has been chal-lenged by dual-process models of attitude change, which have demonstrated that informational motives, such as the desire for accurate and informed decisions, can lead to either extensive or superficial processing. Thus, the different motives associated with informational and normative influ-ence are not preferentially related to the mecha-nisms or outcomes of social influence. Joanne R. Smith See also Asch, Solomon; Conformity; Deutsch, Morton; Normative Influence; Referent Informational Influence Theory; Sherif, Muzafer Further Readings Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70, 1–70.

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  21st Century Psychology: A Reference Handbook

  • Stephen F. Davis, William Buskist, Stephen F. Davis, William F. Buskist(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  123 65 S OCIAL I NFLUENCE R OBERT B. C IALDINI AND C HAD M ORTENSEN Arizona State University A fundamental requirement for successful naviga-tion of the social world is the ability to generate behavioral change in others and to properly adjust one’s own behaviors in response to others. It is through the process of social influence that this successful navigation is fully achieved. Attempts at influence vary greatly in effectiveness, working successfully, unsuccessfully, or even contrary to our goals. As such, it is important to understand the social influence process to move others successfully and to resist undue influence directed toward us. To this end, a large body of work exists within the social sciences aimed toward a better understanding of when and why social influence is effective. In this chapter, we will explore the influence process primarily from the perspective of the influence target: What qualities of a person or situation are likely to lead us to exhibit behavioral change, and what motivates us to do so? Social psychologists typically categorize this behavioral change into three classes of social influence: obedience , when behavioral change results from a directive from an authority figure; conformity , when behavioral change results from following the behaviors of others; and compli-ance , when behavioral change results from a direct request. In this chapter, we shall explore each of these in turn. OBEDIENCE Throughout history, horrific atrocities have resulted from the immoral and appalling orders of legitimate authorities, those whose authority is rooted in superior rank or posi-tion. From systematic abuses to ritualistic suicides and even genocide, the commands of legitimate authorities have led to immeasurable harm throughout human history. Following these shocking events, people often believe those who committed these atrocities were just a few bad apples, individuals with unusually obedient tendencies.

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  The Science of Social Influence

  Advances and Future Progress

  • Anthony R. Pratkanis(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  7 Using Social Norms as a Lever of Social Influence NOAH J. GOLDSTEIN and ROBERT B. CIALDINI A fter years of seemingly inconsistent findings, and after much debate regard- ing their explanatory and predictive value (e.g., Berkowitz, 1972; Darley & Latané, 1970; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Sherif, 1936), it is now evident that social norms not only prompt, but also guide people’s actions (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003; Kerr, 1995; Schultz, 1999; Terry & Hogg, 2000; Turner, 1991). Having reached something of a consensus on what norms are capable of doing, a second generation of research has begun to investigate issues such as when their causal impact might be greatest and how different kinds of social norms might influence human behavior through different mediating processes. Several perspectives have emerged to address these questions, including deviance regulation theory (Blanton & Christie, 2003), social identity and self-categorization theories (e.g., Abrams & Hogg, 1990), and the focus theory of normative conduct (Cialdini, Kallgren, & Reno, 1991). Although our coverage of the normative literature in this chapter concentrates on focus theory, we first provide a brief overview of each of the other two perspectives. In reviewing the three perspectives, we discuss their theoretical underpinnings, describe research findings relevant to each conceptual framework, and identity future directions for study. DEVIANCE REGULATION THEORY Imagine that you’re Doc, a well-respected medical practitioner and the unofficial leader of a group of seven close friends. Suppose that someone in your circle of friends never covers his nose or mouth when he sneezes. Also suppose that another friend within your circle has an aversion to germs that makes Howard Hughes seem like Pig-Pen from the comic strip Peanuts, but is too Bashful to confront the sneezer directly with his concerns.

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  Empirical Research and Normative Theory

  Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Two Methodical Traditions Between Separation and Interdependence

  • Alexander Max Bauer, Malte Meyerhuber, Alexander Max Bauer, Malte Meyerhuber(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  This is a passion that we are forbidden to sell, and for which nothing could repay us (Joubert 1899, p. 99). In light of the basic thoughts introduced so far, I will now establish and discuss some of the normative theories influencing me on a daily basis in my profession as a social psychologist at the university. ⁹ This section will provide examples of where the normative theories of influence in the profession as a researcher in psychology come from, and in which respect they may influence research prac-tices.¹ ⁰ 2.1 Humanistic Psychology First of all, the paradigm in psychology which influences me most as an “ inner compass ” is that of humanistic psychology. The humanistic conception of man states that all human beings have an inherent drive of self-actualisation , a wish to realise and to express their capabilities and talents. Over the course of their lifetime people aim to become whole, so to say. It is a holistic view on the exis-tence of man, taking all the impulses a person harbours seriously, asking how these can be positively and consciously integrated into the personality as an im-portant part of one ’ s life journey. Therefore, humanistic psychology encourages self-exploration and tries to integrate the different needs of a human being con-structively. Applied to therapy, the approach leads to a counselling style in sup-port of letting clients make their own choices. Important pioneers in this field are Carl Rogers (self-actualisation, non-directive talk, client-centred therapy) or for working with groups Ruth Cohn (Theme-Centered Interaction, dynamic balance of I, we, it, and globe). Humanistic psychology encourages a non-pathologising view of man, strengthening the awareness of the healthy and resourceful sides of  The author holds a permanent academic position at the University of Bremen (Germany), at the artec Sustainability Research Centre.  Here unfold in light of research, the principles of course influence counselling and lecturing as well.

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