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Social impact theory, developed by Bibb Latane.
What is the reason for Social impact theory?
founded by Bibb Latane, who carried out famous studies into bystander apathy.
The theory is an attempt to produce an underlying law that explains a whole set of studies from the 60s and 70s including Milgram’s.
to explain how people conform to the group they are in, follow leaders and imitate each other.
What is everyone considered as a part of social impact theory?
everyone is either a ‘source’ or ‘target’ of social influence, potentially both at once.
the target is the person being impacted, and the source is the influencer.
What are the three social forces that dictate the power of influence.
strength
number
immediacy
What is strength?
how much power you believer the person influencing you has.
higher rank in an organisation = their orders will have more strength.
What is number?
the more people putting pressure on you to do something, the more social force they will have.
What is immediacy?
how recent the influence is and how close to you.
an order a minute ago from your boss standing right next to you - very immediate.
an email you received last week - not very immediate.
What is the formula that Latane used to explain obedience?
I = f (SIN)
I just stands for obedience levels
f is the social force
strength, immediacy and number should all be high.
What is the multiplicative effect?
the idea that the first source of influence has the most dramatic impact on people.
but the second, third, etc sources generate less and less social force.
e.g. one teacher giving an order generates a lot of social force, but it you resist bringing a second, third etc to repeat the order wont double or triple the social force
bringing the whole school staff wont be all that effective.
What is the divisional effect?
when social force gets spread out between all the people its directed at.
if it is all directed at one person, huge pressure on them to obey.
if it directed at two people they only experience half as much pressure.
known as diffusion of responsibility - the more of you there are, the less personal responsibility each person will feel.
Who was kitty Genovese?
she was murdered
her case supports the divisional effect because there were 38 bystanders who all did nothing to help.
the pressure to help was distributed between all of them leading to the diffusion of responsibility as it wasn’t all down to one person to help.
the more of them the less responsibility as they may have thought someone else would have helped.
Describe Milgram’s study with ‘rebel peers’ variation 13A
experimenter gives instructions and leaves, but doesn’t tell them to increase the voltage.
confederate who seems to be another Pp recording the times suggests to up the voltage by 15v each time.
Milgram uses the 16 rebel Pp from variation 13 and moves to 13A.
as soon as the Pp rebelled, the confederate suggests swapping places and now the confederate gives the shocks, while the Pp watches. Pp is now a bystander
All 16 Pp protested, 5 tried to unplug the shock generator or restrain the confederate.
however 11 (68.75%) allowed the confederate to go to 450V.
What did variation 13A show?
reduced strength and immediacy as authority figure was not present, explains why all 16 protested initially.
diffusion of responsibility, Pp may have felt less personally responsible when the confederate took over.
proves the divisional effect and why 11 of them allowed the confederate to go to the full 450V because they didn’t feel as much personal responsibility.
adds to the credibility of SIT.
How can social impact theory be objected?
reductionist, reduced down to a formula, doesn’t take individual differences into account.
only considers the status of the source not the target.
LOC can influence if a person obeys or not.
High internals achievement orientated, likely to be leaders and disobey as they take accountability for their actions.
High externals blame consequences onto external factors - likely to obey.
SIT doesn’t take this into account.
