Social Influence

• Define social influence

  Process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours, includes conformity, obedience, and minority influence.
• Define conformity

  Is the change in behaviour and/or beliefs in response to the influence of others, pressure to conform can be real or imagined.
• Define obedience

  A change in a person’s behaviour due to a direct order, this is usually from a figure of authority.
• Variables affecting conformity

  Unanimity, group size, task difficulty.
• Define social roles

  The expected behaviour of individuals, determined by their position in a group, these expectations will arise from an individuals’s schema.
• Types of conformity

  Compliance, identification, internalisation.
• Define compliance

  Only behaviour changes publically, private beliefs stay the same, change is temporary while individual is with the group, behaviour stops as soon as group pressure ceases.
• Define identification

  Behaviour and beliefs both change, change is temporary while individual belongs to the group, this occurs as individuals value the group and want to be a part of it.
• Define internalisation

  Behaviour and beliefs both change, change is permanent, persists when individual is away from group as attitudes have become incorporated into how the person thinks.
• Explanations of conformity

  Why people conform- NSI and ISI.
• Situational variables affecting obedience

  Focus on external factors that affect likelihood that someone will obey orders, including location, uniform and proximity.
• Explanations of obedience

  Agentic state, legitimacy of authority (situational), authoritarian personality (dispositional).