Social Impact Theory Flashcards
Who created Social Action Theory?
Bibb Latane
What is normative pressure?
Normative pressure is the influence of other people that leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted by them.
The likelihood of someone conforming depends on 3 factors: strength, immediacy and number
What is a source?
The source is the influencer. They are influencing the person/group to make behavioural changes.
What is a target?
The person/group being influenced by the source.
What is strength?
How important a group of people is to you. Group pressures are increased when they come from people whose friendship and love we cherish. The strength of a source can also be determined by status, authority and age.
What is immediacy?
How close the group of people is to you in space and time during the request has an impact on our behaviour. Immediacy is determined by proximity and distance between the source and target. Buffers could impact on this.
What is number?
How many people are in the group. The amount of sources and targets in a group can also affect obedience. Around 4-5 sources is the level off.
Explain the multiplicative effect using the light bulb analogy.
Strength - the wattage of the light bulb (how bright it is)
Immediacy - how close you are to the lightbulb
Number - how many light bulbs there are - there is a limit to this. If you have one bulb in a dark room, it will light it up, if you add another it gets better and another and another but eventually it hits a point where it doesn’t matter how many more you add, ther result won’t change.
Explain the law of diminishing returns
The law states that there is a ceiling effect to the number of sources e.g 1 more source added to a group of 3 might make more impact on the targets but one more added to a group of 1000 is barely noticable.
