Social Influence


Persuasion - any deliberate attempt to change attitudes through communication.

  • way to affect others

    • doesn’t have to be verbal—js some kind of social interaction

  • ex: advertisments, public service announcement


S P A C E C A T to craft a persuasive message

Availability heuristic = the more available it is, the easier it is to recall and move our behavior


Yale Attitude Change Approach:

Source - who is doing the messagind/advertisement

  • credibility, reliability of messanger

  • what demographic/audience they would appeal to


Message - what is being communicated

  • tone of commerical/message—sad, happy, ect.

    • the scene they set (literally the theme of the stage where the advertisement takes place)

  • what it’s communicating

  • how it’s doing it:

    • ex: guilt-tripping


Audience - who the consumer of the message is

  • how much attention are we going to pay to the advertisment

  • What you care about informs what messages/advertisements you are more succeptible to

  • how the viusal/autitory aspects appeals to the audience




Elaboration Liklihood Model: people don’t all process persuasive messages in the same way:


the amount of thinking/elaboration we do about the message will determine how persuasive the message is to us:


Central route: careful logical, serious, effortful thinking about the message + the motivation to process it. Must be cognitively able to process the message/must be able to understand the message. Stringer, more resistant, attitudes; Not as likely to be swayed.

  • ethos; logos


Peripheral route: shallow, emotional thihnking; low motivation to understand it; produces more temporary attitudes/attitudes more suseptible to change. More likely to be persuaded. Low cognitive effort/not able to dissect it cognitively/does NOT have the ability to understand the message.

  • emotion based/pathos



Conformity - changing one’s attitude or behavior to align with real (or imagined) group pressure.

  • doesn’t have to be a targeted ad to be persuaded, might be more of a general more subtle social pressure that surrounds us.


Ex: the way you present yourself via gender, following the rules (requested conformity = obediance), what to wear based on what other people are wearing


Conformity is a result fo the pressures of social norms.



The Autokinetic Effect: the small dot of light in a dark room appears like its moving bc your eye is the one moving; its random/hard to tell how far it’s moving.

  • at first everyone’s answers were varied.

  • when put in groups everyone had similar answers:

    • even after time had passed their answers remained the group majority



Matching Lines Study: matching a card with one line to a line on a card with three lines.

  • individually they all gave the correct answer

  • when put in a room with confederates goving the wrong answer; accuracy rates dropped trememdously


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Social Norms: unwritten rules that govern our attitudes and behaviors.

  • tell us whats expected, and whats rewarded in a social context/situation