Social Psych: Social Influence

Conformity

changes you make due to the social process of fitting into a group

Compliance

doing what someone asks you to do

Obedience

doing what someone (in authority) tells you to do

Pennebaker (1980): Perceptual and environmental determinants of coughing

• “Coughograms”

  • people are more likely to cough if they hear others cough (even during sleep)

  • the closer the person is to a cougher, the more likely they will also cough

  • larger groups = more coughs

2 types of conformity

information and normative

Information social influence

• individuals conform to the actions or beliefs of others because they believe the group possesses more accurate information, especially in ambiguous situations

• Sherif’s conformity experiment

  • people estimated how much a light moved

  • people use others’ stated estimates as information and adjust their own estimates accordingly, people’s estimates converged over time

Normative social influence

• the tendency to conform to group norms, behaviors, and expectations to fit in, be liked, or avoid social rejection

  • Asch’s conformity experiment

    • participants changed their correct private judgement of the line to align with the group—motivated to avoid social consequences

Gelfand & Colleagues (2011): culture and conformity

• Nations with tight cultures (clearly defined social norms, low tolerance for deviant behavior) are more likely to:

  • have autocratic or dictatorial government

  • punish dissent

  • control media

  • more monitoring regarding obedience laws

  • more punishment for disobedience

Foot-in-the-door Technique

get someone to agree to a large request by having them agree to a smaller, more modest one first

Freedman & Fraser (1966): Compliance without pressure

• Invitation to place a large sign in the yard

• high compliance to put up large sign if they agreed to small request of put up a small sticker

• low compliance to put up large sign if there hadn’t been a prior request

Snyder & Cunningham (1975): testing the self-perception explanation of the FID phenomenon

• asked people to complete a 30-question phone survey after either an 8-item or 50-item request

  • high compliance to 30 items request those who had a small request prior and accepted (8 items)

  • low compliance to 30 item request of those who had a large request and rejected (50 item)

    • driven by individuals shifting their self-perception to match their previous actions

Cialdini, Cacioppo, Basset, and Miller (1978): Low-ball procedure for producing compliance

• People would get called to participate in a study and be told it’s at 7am

  • higher compliance when you present the information in a different way

    • Experiment and then 7am mention: 56% compliance

    • 7am and then experiment mention: 24% compliance

Door-in-the-Face Technique

• individual makes a large unreasonable request that is likely rejected, after the respondent has refused, the requester follows up with a second more moderate request which was the goal all along

  • reciprocal concession: persuasion technique where one makes a concession (typically larger request), creating social pressure to compel the party to concede in return

Pluralistic ignorance

individuals privately reject a norm but incorrectly assume most others accept it, leading them to publicly conform to the false consensus

Descriptive norms

what most people seem to be doing

Prescriptive norms

what you are supposed to do

Cialdini, 2003: descriptive vs. injunctive norms

• 3 types of flyers

  • “reduce energy use to save the earth”

  • “reduce energy use to save money”

  • “Your neighbors are reducing their energy use”

    • this was the only one that had a significant effect;

Online influence: political messaging on Facebook

• Bond et al., 2012

  • FB users randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions

    • social message, informational message, or control (no msg)

    • Social message: showing which friends voted

      • people more significantly like to vote if they got this message, all these people went and voted today made people more likely to vote

Paluck, Shepherd & Aronow (2025): changing school climate around conflict

• middle school students— ½ control and ½ received intervention

• Randomly selected student “seeds,” 15% of school population; half of these received anti-conflict intervention, half did not

  • seed students encouraged to influence conflict behaviors like hashtag, slogans, posters, associated with these students’ identities (names/faces)

  • schools in treatment condition showed a 30% decrease in disciplinary conflict

  • Stronger effect when “seeds” included more social referents

  • students’ perceptions of norms around conflict were affected by the communications of high-connected seed students