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How the media influences the public perception
Strength and weakness of social comparison theory
Strength and weakness of social comparison theory
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According to Cialdini (2010), people evaluate the correctness of their beliefs by comparing their beliefs to others. Cialdini cited Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory, which theorizes people to evaluate their beliefs’ appropriateness based on how those beliefs compare to their peers’ beliefs. Asch (1955) gave examples of early research studies in social psychology where it had been found that participants would change their opinions to be more aligned with the majority based on being given information that a group of their peers or an authority held contradictory opinions.
Study 1. To find a potential relation between the beliefs of a person and the beliefs of that persons’ peers, participants will fill out a political beliefs survey
Higgins, Tory. “Self-Discrepancy Theory: What Patterns of Self-Beliefs Cause People to Suffer?”(1989). Advances in Experimental Social psychology, Vol.22 (1989):93-136. Academic Press Inc.
The most basic concept in social psychology is conformity. Conformity is the idea that behaviour or a belief is changed in order to follow, or conform, to what is considered the “norm.” One of the oldest experiments to support this notion was conducted in 1935 by Muzafer Sherif (Song, Ma, Wu, Li, 2012 p. 1366). There are two different types of
Millions of citizens around the United States, at some point in their lifetime, obtain a political ideology. Typically, their political values are influenced by their parents. Political scientists have identified that around age eleven, children begin to develop political opinion. According to Wilson’s, American Government: Institutions and Policies, 91% of a high school senior class indentified with the same party as their parents (American Government 158). I can attest to this since I in fact have the same party association as my parents. Ever since I was young, I categorized myself as a Democrat due to the fact that my elders were. However, as I have matured I am able to recognize the beliefs and ideologies that followers of certain parties possess. Since I have been more exposed to the political arena I am able analyze the issues more critically and hence I continuously question whether I should classify myself as a Democrat or Republican.
John Chambers of the University of Florida measures the difference between "actual" and "perceived" polarizat...
What I learned about the social construction of difference conceptually means the differences in society that people perceive individuals are morally consist of gender and race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and social class. Theoretically, according to Allan Johnson, social construction of difference, is created between two groups, one groups that has privileges and the ability to pass through society as “normal’. Some humans that are considered to be the oppressed are “non-normal and do not get the same privileges of the domain group. Johnson also uses the example of American woman who has not had any contact with white society. As of what the women knows, she is merely aware that she is an African American woman, not considered to be a black woman, in her state of
Here we can look at Solomon Asch Conformity Experiment. Solomon Asch (1951) conducted an experiment to investigate the extent in which social pressure from a group could affect a person to conform. So basically, Asch grouped persons in a room; each participant was asked to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was obvious. There were a couple of people apart of the group that were in on the experiment and were told to give a misleading answer and then only one participates that was not aware of the experiment. Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view. Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. About one third of the participants went along and conformed to the clearly incorrect majority view. As later questioned why participants conform so readily? When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being thought as strange for seeing something
Much of the research on false consensus has demonstrated that people tend to over project how many members of their in-group are likely to share their attitudes and behaviors. This effect diminishes when comparing to an out-group. It is thought that this occurs because people feel that people who they do not consider to share a group identity with will likely have different basic attitudes and behaviors than they.
Thesis: The study examines third-person effects in a news release, which could be different from other media content already studied. “This study explores the third-person effect in public relations and examines situational variables such as a message topic, message valence, perceived desirability of being affected by the message, and receiver characteristics.”
The social comparison theory has been studied for years and defined as the philosophy that people need to turn to others for assurance of their own opinions and actions. In other words, people base their personal worth on how they compare to peers around them. This theory can support why it is human nature to be envious of others based on what they have. Individuals need to evaluate themselves in almost every aspect of life, including wealth, relationship status, and intelligence. These are some areas where most people their evaluations to determine how successful their life is at the current moment. In “A Theory of Social Processes” by Leon Festinger, he collects data based on this theory and presents certain hypotheses that can be supported through different experiments. Not only has it been shown in experiments, but also in everyday life. In a televised series, “That’s 70s Show” the main character, Eric Forman, has gone through a situation where he displayed the social comparison theory. Lastly, in personal experiences I have a friend that has encountered a cheating problem in his relationship that caused him to rethink about what he will do based on the consensus of his peers.
There are many things that influence our behavior from internal influences to social norms. Social norms are implicit or explicit rules that govern how we behave in society (Maluso, class notes). Social norms influence our behavior more than any of us realize but we all notice when a norm has been broken. Breaking a social norm is not an easy task and often leads us feeling uncomfortable whether we broke the norm ourselves or witnessed someone else breaking it. Sometimes however, you just have to break a norm to see what happens.
Thus, our predictions about others' beliefs or behaviors, based on casual observation, are very likely to err in the direction of our own beliefs or behavior. For example, college students who preferred brown bread estimated that over 50% of all other college students preferred brown bread, while white-bread eaters estimated more accurately that 37% showed brown bread preference (Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). This is known as the false consensus effect (Ross et al., 1977; Mullen, Atkins, Champion, Edwards, Hardy, Story, & Vanderlok, 1985). The false consensus effect provides the basis for the following demonstration, which emphasizes the need for systematic rather than casual observation. You can use the set of six questions, below, to investigate this.
The Social Judgment Theory is “the perception and evaluation of an idea by comparing it with current attitudes” (Griffin,
People tend to compare themselves to others in present modern day. Comparison has no limits; they do not just compare their homes, their cars, their families, but also their intelligence. Sometimes questioning their own analogies and wondering why is it that they must compare and contrast? Truth is a large majority of humans cross-cultural all tend to compare each other. When comparing each other’s social intelligence and cognitive intelligence based on academic achievement professionals may find a distinction between social metric popularity a measure of acceptance and perceived popularity a measure of social dominance (Meijs, Cillessen, Scholte, Segers, & Spijkerman, 2010). The distinction between Sociometric popularity and perceived popularity was in a form of measurement that was generated by a perceived intelligence test. The experimental study had a total of 512 participants in which 56% were girls and 44% were boys between the ages of 14 and 15 years old. Although there was certain limitations to this study for example the possibility of not being able to determine if sociometric popularity and if it is influenced by academic achievement, or the other way round. The intention of the research, which was to compare students from different educational levels, proves that social comparison is common amongst today’s generation. The focus on this current experimental paper is on Social comparison theory based on an intelligence test.
These three political ideology surveys actually were interesting because I never really found a real interest in politics till now. I believe that the results of the three surveys did correlate with each other. I believe that they do correlate because taking the survey three different ways allowed room to see if there would be a difference in the results which it was not. Each of the the questions on these surveys actually circled around the same concept which was equality, and freedom of choice.
Social Judgment Theory (SJT) also known as Social Judgment Involvement are “messages and judgments that occurs at the perception and evaluation of every new idea by comparing it with present point of view and placed on the attitude scale in the mind” (Griffin 2009, p.183). Social Judgment Theory can be evaluated of three criteria: predictive power, explanatory power, and testability. Social Judgment Theory is an elegant conception of the persuasion process. Social Judgment Theory is a believable theory that can be predicted, explanatory, and tested.