Essay On Social Psychology Concepts And Principles

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Social Psychology Concepts and Principles Nikolitsa Vagenas Azusa Pacific University Social Psychology Concepts and Principles Nikolitsa Vagenas Azusa Pacific University Social Psychology is the study of social behavior such as people’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors in certain social situations (Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. M., & Sommers, S., 2015). There are many concepts and principles in this field, specifically in social influence, which was talked about in chapter 8. Social influence is a part of everyday life and in one way or form everyone takes part in it. The literal definition of social influence is the result of words, mere presence, or actions that other people can …show more content…

These three åinfluences are very important to fully understand and grasp. Conformity has always been an interest of mine because it fascinates me why and how people conform to society and other figures. The literal definition of conformity is the change in one 's behavior to match a behavior modeled by another. There was a study done by Asch which modeled social influence this line study was done to see if the non confederate would model the behavior of the confederates. It turns out that this study did prove conformity about 75% of the participants conformed (Aronson, 2016). Some major contributions to conformity are; group size, status, and social validation. They are essential because as we saw in the elevator clip in class people have a highest tendency of conforming to a group size of 5 or more. People also conform to status, for example, people are more likely to listen to a man in a suit and tie, than a homeless man. This is all based on physical appearance. Which leads us to social validation, people often use other people 's actions/reactions to determine if theirs is correct and matches the model. This is often used in the business world because modeling is the most efficient way of reaching their customers. Equally important, obedience is the change in person 's expected behavior to an authority figure (Aronson, 2016). Milgram’s study supports and reflects this form of social influence. Furthermore, Milgram’s study brought interesting data in reference to obedience about 65 percent of participants carried out the orders of shock of the confederate. These results are shocking and expected, this is yet another study showing the evidence of social influence and authority figures have on an individual (Aronson, 2016). Authority being the third and final category of social influence is probably one of the most underestimated contributors of social influence. In particular,

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