Social Influence

Anna

Social Psychology

Social Psychology is the scientific study of
how people think about, influence and how people think about, influence and relate to one another relate to one another.

Basic Research

Reflects the quest for knowledge purley for its own sake.

Applied Research

Designed to solve specific, practical problems.

Social Influence 1

Any change in an individual’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors caused by other people, who may be actually present or whose presence is imagined, expected, or implied.

Social Influence 2

Interpersonal process that can cause individuals to change their thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.

Requirement for influence

A person must have a means to influence such as an influence agent or social group.

Benefits of social influence

Allocation of resources and provides evolutionary advantage.

Social Influence Tactics

Feel Dissonance, Fear, Context and Social roles, Empathy with others, scarcity, and Reciprocity.

Three main means of Persuasion

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos

Logos

Appeal to sense of reason or logic

Ethos

Call to ethics or moral character

Pathos

Appeal to the emotion

Obedience

A form of social influence, acting in accord with a direct order, behavior change produced by the commands of authority.

Obedience Experiment

Milgram’s Experiment

Agentic State

people as agents transfer personal responsibility to the person giving the orders,

Engaged follower concept

It is not simply the experimenter who constitutes authority, but the wider system that the person inhabits and which the person is a part.

Conformity

Change in thinking, feeling, or acting following pressure, real or imaginary, exercised by the group.

Compliance

if majority has control over the means, and an individual is under the control of the means, the individual will conform to obtain a favorable response from the group or avoid social sanctions.

Identification

if an individual likes, admires, or identifies with the group, the individual will change public behavior, private belief may not change.

Internalization

If majority belief, individual changes belief publicly and privately as fits with owns values.

Conformity Experiment

Asch’s study of independence and conformity.

independence of strength

answers independently but didn’t mind being different.

Independence without confidence

voiced strong doubts but remained independent.

Compliance to request

Superficial, public, and transitory change in behaviour and expressed attitudes in response to a request; requests can be explicit or implicit

Power relations

everyone positioned at different levels; in different contexts individuals can take power.

Social power

can refer to the ability to control or influence another’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors in meaningful ways.

Legitimate power

involves code or standard, accepted by the individual by virtue of which the external agent can exert power.

Reward power

Ability to award positive desired outcomes, (promotions, raises, vacations).

Expert Power

extent of knowledge or perception (Strength varies)

Referent power

identification, feeling of oneness or desire for such an identity.

coercive power

Threat of force to gain compliance: economic, social, political, or physical.

Techniques for gaining compliance

Scarcity, Social validation, authority, friendship/ liking, commitment/ consistency, reciprocity.

Scarcity

The process of creating desirability through popularity, time restriction, and limited supply; can trigger loss aversion

Social Validation/ proof

When uncertain-observe others around them to help decide; in-group members are more powerful.

Authority

Defer to agent perceived to be an expert or trustworthy.

Reciprocity

Comply more with those who have provided. give and take

Friendship / liking

More inclined to comply with friends or people we like than strangers

Commitment and consistency

If perceived as reliable or trustworthy, there is more inclination to commit to rule of “stick to commitment”

Foot in the door technique

presentation of a small request to later ask for a bigger request.

Door in the face technique

Request something big so that a smaller request seems more accepting

Low Balling technique

Pitching an attractive offer and then increasing the price.