Social Influence Flashcards
Social influence denfiniton?
As a change in an individuals’ thoughts, feeling, or behaviors caused by other people who may be actually present or whose presence is imagined, expected, or only implied
As an interpersonal process that can cause individuals to change their thoughts, feelings, or behaviors
Persuasion?
A type of social influence (involves attitudes, beliefs, or emotions specifically)
Two types of social influence?
Informational:
Looking to others as valid sources of information
Seeking to be correct
Normative:
Striving to be consistent with social norms, standards, and conventions
Seeking approval
What underlies social
influence?
Six Principles of Influence = how are they often used?
Scarcity
Consistency
Reciprocity
Liking
Authority
Social Proof
These principles often used to achieve compliance:
adhering to a direct
request or giving into
overt social pressure
Scarcity, and why does it work?
Options and items are more valued when they are limited
Why is scarcity influential?
* Self-uniqueness
* Downward social comparison
* Status/Power
* Reactance (We don’t like to have our freedom restricted, unpleasant feeling when loosing opportunity)
Liking/Friendship?
Adherence to a request from a positively evaluated other
Liking can be based on physical attractiveness,
similarity, or familiarity
Commitment/Consistency?
People strive to be consistent with past
behavior and follow through on commitments
3 Tactics using the Commitment/Consistency Principle?
Foot-in-the-door:
People who agree to a small request first are more likely to agree to a larger request later
Low balling:
Making an attractive initial offer to induce a person to accept the offer and then making the terms less favorable
Bait-and-switch:
Enticing someone to psychologically commit to a product and then, suddenly, replacing it with a related product that is more expensive
What are the 3 Tactics using the Commitment/Consistency Principle based upon?
Norm for social commitment:
A belief whereby once we make a public agreement, we tend to stick to it even if circumstances change
Door-in-the-face?
People who are asked for a large favor first
(which they deny) are more likely to
comply with a subsequent smaller request.
Relief in reduced large request, compelled
to respond favorably to a concession (feel obligated to accet since they lowered the demand for their request)
Reciprocity? + norm?
The increased likelihood that an
individual will comply with a request
from a person or an entity who has
previously done a favor for that
individual
Norm for reciprocity
A belief whereby we should return
favors and other acts of kindness
Social Proof/Validation?
A person is more likely to enact a particular behavior to the extent that others are thought to be engaging in that same behavior
Principle underlying conformity
Social norms?
Rules or standards that are typically
unwritten and guides the social
behavior of members of a group
Can be prescriptive (shoulds)
and proscriptive (should-nots)
Conformity? + Appears as…?
Following social norms as a result of unspoken group pressure, real or imagined.
Appears as changes in behaviors or
expressed attitudes or beliefs.
Social norms: Injunctive?
What most people approve or disapprove of
You should read in a library, you should not play music
Social norms: Descriptive?
What people actually do or do not do
You should not speed on the highway.. but people do speed on the highway
Social Proof/Validation? + underlying principle?
A person is more likely to enact a particular behaviour to the extent that others are thought to be engaging in that same behavior
Principle underlying conformity
Social norm formation in groups - Sherif’s autokinetic effect study? + normative or influential, and why?
- How far has the light moved?
*Trials independently
*Trials with the group -> They started to conform to each other’s estimates
*Trials alone (again) -> closer to group norms than previous independent estimates! Anchoring their estimates to the groups
Informational influence, because the situation is ambiguous so I will anchor my response in what other people are saying
Asch’s Line Experiment? 2 ways that reduces normative social influence in groups?
Normative social influence (public behaviour, rather than private acceptance)
Having a partner (ally) also giving the correct response reduces the normative social influence, by puncturing the unanimity of the group.
Privately writing also reduces pressure to conform because it avoids judgement from the group
Zimbardo’s (1971) Stanford Prison Study?
The power of the situation over individual characteristics (when “normal” people do bad things)
How social psychologists are motivated to understand world events, WWII.
Ethical consideration in social psychology
Authority? + underlying principle?
Perceived authority of the source will increase the likelihood that people will do what is requested or suggested.
Principle underlying obedience
Obedience, definition and two types?
An action engaged in to fulfill a direct order or command of another person with authority
Constructive:
Results in some benefit to the obeying individual or the larger society of which they are a part
Destructive:
Results in negative outcomes, such as injury to innocent victims, harm to the community or the loss of confidence in social institutions
The significance of WWII for Social Psychology?
Why are people treating others in this horrible inmoral way?
- Forced to serve as mere instruments
- I was just following orders
Milgram (1963)’s Shock Studies Exemplify…?
How authority figures can influence people to behave in ways they find repulsive
Ethical considerations in social psychology (again)
Certain factors increase or decrease
likelihood of obedience
* Proximity (physical + psychological) (identifying with the cause)
* Responsibility
* Legitimized Authority (Yale University)
* Presence of others who refuse
Dr. Alex Haslam’s Critique of Classical Interpretations of the Milgram Shock and Stanford Prison experiment?
Not blind obedience
Leadership + Engaged Followership
What about People’s Distress?
Tension in identification with experimenter and target of harm
Stanford Prison Experiment? Might be this kind of obedience! Zimbardo’s expectations, playing the role of the guard manager
What about…
- The 25% who didn’t conform in Asch’s Line Experiments?
- The 35% who didn’t administer the dangerous shock?
- The prisoners of the Stanford Prison Study that rebelled?
In Social psychology it is often take about who confrims but not the others? Reaffirming the status quo -> Social Psychology has a “conformity bias”
When does resistance happen?
- Unify around an oppositional identity
- See inequality as illegitimate and insecure, it is bullshit that we are treated this way! And the power dynamic can be overcome
- Believing the group has resources to
challenge to status-quo, internal or external resources
