Social Influence

• Conformity


  The tendency to change our behavior or beliefs to match those of others due to real or imagined group pressure
• Solomon Asch (1951)


  • Conducted famous conformity experiments involving line judgment tasks
• Types of conformity (Kelman, 1958)


  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• Normative social influence


  Conforming to gain social approval or avoid social disapproval
• Informational social influence


  Conforming because we believe others' interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more accurate than ours
• Compliance


  A type of conformity where one outwardly agrees with the group but privately disagrees
• Identification


  A type of conformity where one conforms to the expectations of a social role or the behavior of a group they value
• Internalization


  A deep type of conformity where one accepts the group norms both publicly and privately
• Philip Zimbardo (1971)


  • Conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment
• People readily conform to social roles, especially if the roles are strongly stereotyped (main finding of the Stanford Prison Experiment)
• Stanley Milgram (1963)


  • Conducted the obedience experiments with electric shocks
• A high proportion of participants were willing to obey authority figures even when the actions conflicted with their personal conscience (main finding of Milgram's obedience study)
• Agentic state


  A mental state where one sees themselves as an agent for carrying out another person's wishes, thereby not feeling responsible for their actions
• Authoritarian personality


  A personality type characterized by strict adherence to conventional values and a belief in absolute obedience to authority, identified by Adorno et al. (1950)
• Legitimacy of authority


  The perception that certain individuals have the right to prescribe behavior for others
• Social roles


  The parts individuals play as members of a social group, which meet the expectations of that situation
• Minority influence


  A form of social influence where a minority persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors, leading to internalization or conversion
• Moscovici et al. (1969)


  • Studied the role of minority influence through the color perception experiment
• Factors that can enhance minority influence

  • Consistency
  • Commitment
  • Flexibility
• Social change


  The process by which society changes beliefs, attitudes, and behavior to create new social norms
• Snowball effect (in the context of social influence)


  A process that starts from an initial small influence that gains momentum over time, leading to a significant change
• Social cryptomnesia


  When people remember that change has occurred but forget the processes and people that led to the change
• The role of social influence in social change includes drawing attention to an issue, creating cognitive conflict, consistency of position, the augmentation principle, and the snowball effect
• Augmentation principle


  The idea that if a minority is willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as more committed and thus are taken more seriously
• Deindividuation


  A psychological state where individuals have lowered self-evaluation and decreased concerns about evaluation by others, often leading to behavior that is out of character