Social Influence

7 Key excerpts on "Social Influence"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Social Beings

  Core Motives in Social Psychology

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

    (Publisher)

  What Is Social Influence? Conceptual Definitions Social Influence broadly encompasses any changes in beliefs, attitudes, or behavior that result from interpersonal interaction. More narrowly, Social Influence focuses on changes mainly in behavior resulting directly from interpersonal interaction. Social Influence typically refers to these interpersonal processes that change other people’s behavior (Chaiken, Wood, & Eagly, 1996; Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004; Turner, 1995). As such, Social Influence processes focus on norms and roles in rich, interactive settings. Social Influence is so basic that many social species display it, for example in the socially transmitted local feeding norms of wild vervet monkeys (van de Waal, Borgeaud, & Whiten, 2013) and humpback whales (Allen, Weinrich, Hoppitt, & Rendell, 2013). In contrast to human attitude change via persuasion, the influence agent may or may not intend to influence the other. Notice also the emphasis on behavior and on direct interaction, which sets Social Influence apart from attitude change. This type of influence focuses more on behavior than on private thoughts and feelings. In contrast, persuasion theories of attitude change (Chapter 6) focus on deliberate advocacy to change opinions, focusing on intentional messages. Some key concepts aid our analysis of Social Influence. First is norms, which we’ve encoun- tered in many previous chapters, as the unwritten rules for behavior. Second, the sections of this chapter separately address conformity, the influence of the majority on individual behavior; obedience, the influence of authority demands on subordinates; and compliance, the influence of a peer’s request. Operational Definitions Conformity In studying conformity, social psychologists build on work by Muzafer Sherif (1936) on the autokinetic effect and Solomon Asch (1955) on line judgments.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  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)

  M uch of social psychology, historically, has focused on the under-standing of Social Influence. One of the fundamental facts of social life is that people influence each other, for better or worse. Education is about influence. Communication is about influence. Or-ganization, child rearing, coercion, and advertising are all about influ-ence. As social psychologists study variables that affect behavior, they are studying variables that influence or have a causal connection to behavior, and in this uninteresting sense one can claim that all of social psychology is about influence. The more interesting sense is the explicit emphasis on social influ-ence. Social impact theory (Latané, 1981), theories of persuasion and attitude change (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993), social power (French & Raven, 1959), social conformity (Crutchfield, 1955), and the explicit analysis of the strategies that people use to influence each other (Cialdini, 1993) all focus on the processes that are involved when people change the beliefs or behavior of others or both. 181 8 Some Ethical Aspects of the Social Psychology of Social Influence DAVID M.MESSICK RAFAL . OHME 182 POWER AND INFLUENCE IN ORGANIZATIONS Intentional influence represents the subfield of social psychology that we focus on in this chapter. The prototypical situation that we have in mind contains a minimum of two elements: an agent of influence, the influencer, and a target of influence, the influenced. As Latané (1981) noted in his social impact theory, the agent or the target or both can be either single or multiple persons. What further characterizes this prototypical situation is that the agent wishes, prefers, or desires some outcome that the target can bring about. The influence episode(s) consists of the efforts made by the agent to achieve a desired outcome by having the target perform some action or actions.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Blind Alleys in Social Psychology

  A Search for Ways Out

  • A. Eskola, A. Kihlström, D. Kivinen, K. Weckroth, O.-H. Ylijoki(Authors)
  • 1988(Publication Date)
  • North Holland

    (Publisher)

  There is however one methodological feature that this research tradition apparently cannot escape. When socizl influence is regarded as the object of social psychology, attention is focused on the individual, whose feelings, behaviour or opinions are influenced by the mere presence of other people or by their action. Social psychology is seen as research into the in- dividual, not as a science of structures, communities and processes with a genuinely social or societal nature. As research into Social Influence, social psychology is taken to be a sub- field of psychology. If a textbook defines social psychology as the study of Social Influence, it most probably also claims that this science is a “sub- discipline of psychology” (Jones and Gerard 1967, 11, “a branch of general psychology” (Wrightsman 1973, 5), or “a branch of modem psychology” (Baron, Byrne and GrEitt 1974, 3). It differs from other branches of psychology in that the ‘stimuli’ influencing the behaviour of the individual are social: othei people. This idea is clearly brought out in Zajonc’s attempt to define the most important subfields of psychology. Let us assume that we are studying whether a rat turns left or right in a T-maze. If the rat is rewarded every time it turns left and our purpose is to determine the effect of rewarding, our study would be classified under psychology of learning. If the factor explaining which way the animal chooses to turn is its level of hunger, or some other internal state, research would fall under psychology of motivation. If the left arm of the maze is physically different from the right one, and we are examining the influence of this fact upon turning, our study would be dealing with psychology of perception. But if the objective is to find out how the presence of another animal of the same species in either arm influences the animal in choosing its way, we become social psychologists, Zajonc reasons.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Science of Social Influence

  Advances and Future Progress

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

    (Publisher)

  1 An Invitation to Social Influence Research ANTHONY R. PRATKANIS D o you ever wonder why people do things? For example, why, all of a sudden, is everyone wearing the same purple shirt or the same hairstyle or using the same cool, groovy, or is it spot-on jargon to describe what they like and agree with? How can a group of people watch someone else commit acts of violence on another human being and not intervene? How can a person be urged on to commit such acts of violence in the first place? Why does a seemingly normal person give his or her money to a con criminal? What happens to get us to purchase things on the used car lot or the cosmetic counter or the infomercial, among other places? How can a leader of a nation move us to accomplish great things? What social forces cause groups and leaders to make brilliant decisions one minute, and bad choices with disastrous consequences the next? How does a small group (and sometimes just one person) come to change the behavior and folkways of an entire community, nation, or world? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we resist unwanted and undesirable Social Influence attempts? If you find yourself pondering such things, then you have come to the right place. You wonder about the same things as the authors of the chapters of this book. The purpose of this book is to introduce you to the science of social influ- ence – a science that addresses the issue of how and why people change the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of other people through such processes as con- formity, persuasion and attitude change, compliance, and yielding to social forces. Our goal is to have you join us in this science of Social Influence and conduct your own research into the question of why and how we humans do what we do. In this book, you will find chapters designed to introduce you to the literature of Social Influence.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  No longer available |Learn more

  Psychology Applied to Modern Life

  Adjustment in the 21st Century

  • Wayne Weiten, Dana Dunn, Elizabeth Hammer(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Social Influences vary in the degree of pressure they bring to bear on the indi- vidual. People may conform to group norms or maintain their independence, comply with requests or be asser- tive; and obey or defy the demands of authority. Source: Adapted from Kassin, S. M., Fein, S., & Markus, H. (2011). Social psychology (8th ed.), Figure 7.1 on page 252. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/ Cengage. Adapted with permission. Conformity is far more common than most people appreciate. We all conform to social expectations in an endless variety of ways. There is nothing inherently good or bad about con- forming to social pressures; it all depends on the situation. However, it is prudent to be aware of how social expectations can sometimes have a profound influence on our behavior. Masterfile Copyright 2013 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. SOCIAL THINKING AND Social Influence 221 The accomplices give accurate responses on the first two trials. On the third trial, line 2 is clearly the correct response, but the first five participants all say that line 3 matches the standard line. The genuine subject can’t be- lieve his ears. Over the course of the experiment, the ac- complices all give the same incorrect response on 12 out of 18 trials. Asch wanted to see how the subject would re- spond in these situations. The line judgments are easy and unambiguous. Without group pressure, people make matching errors less than 1% of the time. So, if the subject consistently agrees with the accomplices, he isn’t making honest mistakes—he is conforming.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  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)

  609 MODULE 71 the more people were swayed to join in staring at the win-dow (Milgram, Bickman, & Berkowitz, 1969). Are there different kinds of Social Influence? Social influ-ence ranges from milder to stronger. The gentlest form of so-cial influence is mere presence (changing behavior just because other people are nearby). We conform when we spontaneous-ly change our behavior to bring it into agreement with oth-ers. Compliance is a more directed form of Social Influence. Learning Outcome 71.1 Define Social Influence, and dis-cuss five forms it can take, from weakest to strongest No topic lies nearer the heart of social psychology than Social Influence —changes in behavior induced by the ac-tions of others. When people interact, they almost always affect one another’s behavior (Baer, Cialdini, & Lueth, 2012; Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2021). For example, in a classic ex-periment, various numbers of people stood on a busy New York City street. On cue, they all looked at a sixth-floor win-dow across the street. A camera recorded how many pass-ersby also stopped to stare. The larger the influencing group, Social Influence—Follow the Leader After reading this module you should be able to: 71.1 Define Social Influence, and discuss five forms it can take, from weakest to strongest 71.2 Distinguish between assertive, aggressive, and non-assertive behavior ~LEARNING OUTCOMES~ Explaining people’s behavior often comes down to understanding various forms of Social Influence. It is one thing to notice, for example, the similarities in the clothes worn by this group of friends. It is another thing entirely to understand why they are all dressed the same way.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Social Psychology

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

    (Publisher)

  OBEDIENCE Finally, rates of obedience also differ as a function of culture. In one study, participants from the United States, Russia, and Japan read surveys that described different acts of obedient behaviour in the workplace (Hamilton & Sanders, 1995). These acts included things such as obeying orders to dump fertilizer that will lead to a toxic waste spill, and obeying orders to not carry out adequate tests of a new drug due to time pressure. Participants then rated how responsible the person was for engaging in the behaviour. As predicted, participants from collectivistic cultures ( Japan and Russia) were more likely to excuse the person for engaging in the behaviour than North Americans. These findings are in line with those you’ve learned about earlier in this book, such as the greater emphasis placed on the role of the situation in collectivistic cultures compared to the greater emphasis placed on the role of the individual in individualistic cultures. WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED This chapter has examined four key principles of Social Influence, including social norms, conformity, compliance, and obedience, as well as the impact of culture on each of these types of Social Influence. 1. How do social norms influence behaviour? This section examined how social norms influence behaviour in multiple ways. You learned about the power of social norms, the pressure people feel to conform to norms, and the errors people make in perceiving norms. You also learned why it’s probably a good idea to ask a professor a question when you don’t understand the course material. 2. What factors lead to conformity? This section described factors that influence conformity. You learned about the two types of influence: informational influence and normative influence. Next, you learned about different influences on conformity, including group size, standing alone, demographic variables, and motivation. Finally, you learned about minority influence and the benefits of conformity.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book