Social impact theory

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.

• supports 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.