social impact theory

• Social impact theory - Ao1

  • strength
  • perceived power/ authority of the source and the messages that they convey.
  • Strength can be affected by socio-economic status, age and the nature of any past or future relationships with the target
• Social impact theory Ao1

  • immediacy
  • reflects closeness of the source and the target in terms of space and time.
  • Physical or psychological barriers to communication will affect immediacy
• Social impact theory Ao1

  • number - relates to how many sources are present during the interaction, which determines the level of social impact
• Social impact theory Ao1

  • multiplicative effect
  • explains how increasing strength, immediacy and/or number of sources can significantly increase the social impact.
  • light bulb analogy explains this: brightness is affected by strength of bulb, how far the light is and number of bulbs
• Social impact theory Ao1

  • divisional effect
  • explains the idea that social impact is reduced if there are more targets than there are sources
  • the impact is divided by the number of targets
  • the impact on each person is thus reduced
• Social impact theory Ao1

  • law of diminishing returns
  • once the source group is bigger than three, each additional person has less influencing effect.
  • thus, adding one extra person to a group of 52 people would have less of a social impact than an extra person added to a group of two
• Social impact theory - supporting evidence

  • sedikides and jackson - field experiment at new york zoo
  • visitors asked not to lean on a ralling
  • strength manipulated via clothing - uniformed = 58% obedience, casual clothing = 35% obedience
  • obedience also decline when the visitors were further away from authority figure.
  • obedience was greater in a smaller group of visitors
  • demonstrates the importance of strength, immediacy and number in social impact
• Social impact theory - conflicting evidence

  • Sedikides and jackson = field experiment
  • researchers were not able to manipulate the number of people in each group - a threat to internal validity
  • eg, people who choose to go around in larger groups may have less obedient personalities - meaning it may not be group size alone that determined level of obedience
• Social impact theory - conflicting evidence

  • role of immediacy may not be a key ingredient in social impact
  • scam call to mcdonalds - caller pretended to be a police worker asking for the manager to strip search a random female employee
  • manager went through with the strip search despite the 'police officer' not being in the room
  • challenges social impact theory because the source being absent should have reduced the effect but it didn't
• Social impact theory - usefulness

  • can be easily applied to understand how people enhance their social influence
  • eg, political leaders may increase their influence by adopting a strong and persuasive style of communication, reach voters by talking face-to-face rather than through media, addressing smaller groups rather than larger crowds
  • showed how psychological knowledge can be applied to society and how people's behaviour could be influenced through strategic campaigns