SOCIAL INFLUENCE

2008PSY—Social Psychology
Mt Gravatt Campus, Griffith University
Week 8, Semester 2, 2015
Conformity and social influence
• At the heart of social psychology we find
conformity and social influence
• To return to material covered starting from Week
1, the influence of groups and social networks is
necessary and probably a reason for our
species’s success
• but the impact of our “looking outside ourselves” is
powerful in ways that are both subtle and obvious.
• You (and I) may have less resistance to social
influence than you may be comfortable with!
• This is not necessarily explained by cultural norms/values
Aims and outline
• The aim of this lecture is to draw together the
various threads of social psychology that are
related to social influence processes.
• In addition, we will be examining normative vs.
informational social influence
• I assume thorough knowledge of Milgram and
Asch from first year and from your chapter
reading. I won’t be covering it in great depth but
you need to know it…
Is social influence a necessary aspect of
being human?
• In individualist cultures, laypeople seem to view the idea
of social influence negatively
• But what would happen if there were no social influence?
• How would our, social, occupational and political lives be different?
E.g.,…
• everyday activities like driving, dressing ourselves, dining?
• healthcare and health behaviours generally?
• environmental issues?
• When people engage in very vivid and often antisocial
acts, why do people who knew them seem to always say:
They seemed so normal, they never gave any
indication…?
• the public face may well be different to the private one
• this is the other side of work on persuasion
The many faces of conformity
• Individual behaviour as shaped/guided/influenced by
others
• real or imagined (there’s Allport's definition again)
• there is a continuum of social desirability here
• behaviour change may not always be radical
• Social Comparison (Festinger) addresses similar domain

• Strong cultural influences

• e.g., Cozzarelli and Karafa (1998)
• Cultural estrangement: atypical vs misfit
Informational social influence
• Trust (affective) and belief (cognitive) in others’
understanding of an ambiguous or novel situation
• again, note social comparison influence
• persuasion theories…
• Leads to private acceptance
• enduring attitude change…
• vs (public) compliance, as in Asch etc.
• Classic studies: Sherif’s autokinetic expts.
Informational social influence
• Contemporary programs (Robert Cialdini)
• paradoxical effect of importance on influence
1. Ambiguous situation
• social comparison
2. Crisis situation
• arousal → cognitive workspace
3. Expertise of others
• source expertise effects in persuasion
Normative social influence
• The main game!!
• consider planking…
• in a more sinister way, consider glassing, king
hits/coward punches etc…
• but do people really just perform terrible antisocial acts just
because they see others doing them? What's going on?
• Normative = related to social norms
• naturally, Asch’s studies are the seminal ones
• also, consider Darley & Latané
• how do the underlying comparison processes relate, if at all?
• Berns’s fMRI work shows intriguing relationship to
negative arousal reduction processes
• Treatment of deviance is similarly negative…
Normative social influence
• Group norms have strongest effect when:
1. There is high identification/group is important
2. The immediate group size reaches 3-4
1. but further increases make little difference
3. When one is the lone dissenter
1. also linked to Point 2 above
4. In a collectivistic group
• n.b., it could be argued that this in itself is a group norm
• a collectivistic culture, not nec. = group…
Minority influence
• A very intriguing aspect of the working of social
influence
• contradiction/anecdote to the idea that influence = the
steamrollering of the person by the group
• To be influential, minority must be cohesive and
maintain message…
• … then the workings of informational influence go in
their favour
• In accordance with minority vs majority group
perception work of Maas and Clark (1984)
• people may yield to the majority in public but accept
minority position in private
Using normative influence
• Pragmatic governments (and parents) can make use of
normative pressure to enhance prosocial and limit
antisocial behaviour
• Key contrast between:
• descriptive norms
• what we perceive “actually” to happen
• e.g., no one smokes here anymore campaign
• injunctive norms
• what we perceive that society believes ought to be
• Injunctive norms more likely to override the situation
• whereas descriptive norms or more likely to interact with situation
and can be positive or can backfire
• e.g., water usage on utility bills: yours vs other households your size