Social Impact Theory

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Cyber-bullying and anonymous online bashing are an epidemic problem in the 21st century. The use of online communication has integrated into society and counts for a significant portion of human social interactions. According to Pew Research Center, 68% of US adults report using Facebook (Smith and Anderson 2018). A platform such as Facebook incorporates a wide variety of shared ideas and opinions. The societal impacts of online communication are issues worth exploring. Social impact theory is a powerful measure of conformity because it examines group pressure with strength, immediacy, and numbers. As technology advances, online communication expands every day. With higher online traffic in the future, group influence will require more research …show more content…

There are three variables of the theory that aim to anticipate social conforming behavior; the strength of the influencer, immediacy of the of the situation, and the numbers of influencers. These three variables aid in discovering how individuals are pressured. The pressure is distributed throughout the three variables. For example, if the amount of strength the target group is influencing increases, the group's immediacy will decrease. This concept goes both ways. Latané (1981) tested his theory on multiple studies containing stage fright embarrassment, bystander intervention, conformity and imitation, and tipping. These situations reflect group influence on persons and using the three variables are able to infer persuasion and …show more content…

Explicitly testing the strength and immediacy of the theory, results showed assertiveness and exaggeration were statistically significant in responses relating to the strength variable of social impact theory. Total contribution in responses and the word count were correlated with immediacy effectiveness. While keeping the anonymity aspect of online interactions, this study’s use of assertiveness in response to questions measures the strength and their use of word count and response rate to examine immediacy will aid our experiment with its

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