What are the unseen social forces that push and pull us to behave or think in a certain way? Why do we behave and interact with others in the way that we do? Research on social influence helps shed light on these invisible forces in our world that influence us. When we see how these forces operate in our everyday lives, we can better understand why people feel and act as they do. The first factor of social influence, human nature and cultural diversity, is important in many ways because we are more alike than different. However, at times when we are confronted by those with dissimilar attitudes or attributes, we react negatively. Evolution has prepared us to live creatively in this changing world, and our increasingly culturally diverse surroundings. In addition, gender and genes as well as culture powerfully affect our attitudes and behavior. Men and women’s social connections and cultural perspectives differ from one another for a variety of reasons. Can these societal expectations known as gender roles be attributed to culture, or is there a genetic difference responsible? Culture is the traditions, beliefs, and attitudes shared by a large group and transmitted across generations; there are a multitude of cultures and subcultures globally. These cultures have a shaping effect on the ideas about how men and women should behave. The factors of persuasion are everywhere as well, and we seek to understand what leads to effective, long lasting attitude change. The two ways to arrive at long lasting change are: the central route to persuasion and the peripheral route to persuasion. The final concept of social influence discussed is power to the person. The module teaches a great truth: the power of the situation as well as the power ...
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...to be heavily influence by the social environment in which they are in, be it the office or out eating dinner. We take cues from our environment as to what appropriate behavior is, how we should respond to certain actions, and how we should interact with those around us. The use of social influence in the work place can have encouraging results such that individuals and groups work in the best interests of their workplace with higher levels of job satisfaction. In every situation that people encounter, they rely on trigger features to help them efficiently assess the environment. These triggers act as mental shortcuts to guide their attitudes and behavior. Furthermore, these shortcuts and mental associations enable them to react immediately to the situation at hand. However, these reactions are not always positive or appropriate to the situation at hand.
Persuasion of any sort can be quite a difficult task. Persuasion to change people’s habits on how they view things, can be even harder. To a certain extent, Stephanie Hanes did argue her point effectively. Her goal of persuading others to see the negative effects society has on females of any age, was weakened by her reliance heavily on the device of Logos. Her piece had more than enough potential to be stronger than it is, but she did not take the chances to do so.
We live in a society where each individual has their own set of thoughts and beliefs. Occasionally one will modify their beliefs and behavior to coincide with a group. This is an example of social influence. Social influence has three main components; conformity, compliance and obedience. The concept of compliance is similar to conformity, however there is a slight difference. Compliance only requires a person to perform a task. The person does not have to agree or disagree with the assignment, just simply complete it. Conformity requires the person being influenced to change their attitudes and or beliefs. An example of this aspect of social psychology is the holocaust in World War II. Adolph Eichmann was a Nazi officer responsible for filling up death camps in Germany. After the war he went on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. On May 31, 1962, he was sentenced to death for the horrible crimes he committed. His defense was "Why me? Why not the local policemen, thousands of them? They would have been shot if they had refused to round up the Jews for the death camps. Why not hang them for not wanting to be shot? Why me? Everybody killed the Jews". A few months after the start of Eichmann’s trial, Stanley Milgram instituted an experiment testing ones obedience to authority. He wanted to find out if good people could do atrocious things if they were just obeying authority. Was Eichmann and millions of others in Nazi Germany decent people who were just following orders? Some other famous experiments that have taken place to test the waters of social psychology are Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments, all ...
In society, it's difficult to go against the norm. Individuals are compelled to act a specific way, or look a specific way in order to be accepted. For instance, teenagers may encounter pressure from their peers to partake in specific exercises that may not be moral, since they feel the need to fit in. This weight of conformity isn't just present in reality; it can be found in literature as well. The story "St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell depicts that in order to conform to society, individuals abandon their selflessness and compassion and become selfish and apathetic.
In “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” Deborah Blum states that “gender roles of our culture reflect an underlying biology” (Blum 679). Maasik and Solomon argue that gender codes and behavior “are not the result of some sort of natural or biological destiny, but are instead politically motivated cultural constructions,” (620) raising the question whether gender behavior begins in culture or genetics. Although one may argue that gender roles begin in either nature or nurture, many believe that both culture and biology have an influence on the behavior.
Social Influence Research - Do the Ends Justify the Means? To what extent does the importance of social influence research, justify the methods used in its investigation? The debate about ethics in psychology focuses on two areas: protection of participants and benefiting society. This is a double obligation dilemma as if some psychologists are not allowed to do certain experiments because of ethical restraints; this can cause problems with validity.
The Findings from Social Influence Research Forty male volunteers from a self selected sample took part in a controlled observational study, which they were deceived into thinking was a test of learning. The naïve participant was always assigned the role of 'teacher' and a confederate played the role of 'learner'. A word association test was the learning task, and the naïve participant was instructed to deliver an electric shock to the learner for each incorrect answer. The teacher and the learner were in separate rooms with no voice contact. The learner sitting in another room gave mainly wrong answers and received his fake shocks in silence until they reached 300 volts.
In, Body Work by Sara Paretsky, the Guaman family’s homophobia damages their family by causing both Allie’s rape and death, and the covering up of them. Homophobia manages to cause all of this damage because it is a powerful social control mechanism, meaning it leads individuals towards conformity, and shames and or ostracizes those who don’t conform to the societal norm. In this case, the societal norm is heterosexuality, and homosexuals are shamed and ostracized for deviating from that norm. Allie is ashamed of being a lesbian and decides to serve in Iraq in the hope that she can repent for her “sins,” and her family is so ashamed of her homosexuality that they must deny it, which allows Tintrey to cover up the truth behind Allie’s death.
Society is ever changing and the people are just the same. Throughout history, it is shown that people change and mold to their surroundings. But when a deeper look is taken it is revealed that there is a minority that is unwilling or unable to fit these standards as most people do. These people tend to be forced into seclusion or made to fend for themselves. This is shown through the colonization of America and up into more recent times. The Native Americans are the first to make a life on this land, and when the English set up a new society, the Natives are forced onto smaller and smaller plots of land until forced to conform or to live on a reservation. The idea of this societal conformity is shown in “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie, a short story author. Society's pressure to improve an individual living differently is hurting more than it is helping.
Wood, W. (2000). Attitude change: Persuasion and social influence.. Annual Review of Psychology, 51(1), 539.
This chapter focuses on how the immediate social context shapes popular culture. This includes artists, animators, television writers/actors, and musicians (to name a few) who actually create popular culture and how the context of their work doesn’t always govern what they produce. Within popular culture, there are three realities to consider: the technological constraints, the organizational apparatus, and the legal system. With technological constraints, it deals with the production and manufacturing of popular culture. The organizational apparatus consists of the structure of which popular culture is promoted and sold. The legal system relates to how the whole process is regulated. Examples of the legal system can be seen with copyright laws and how they impact the content of music albums, which is why albums nowadays don’t have free samples of other songs. With the organizational apparatus, what the people receive is mostly a
Social institutions, like educational and religious groups, enhance rule obedience and contribute to the formation of identity and sense of belonging to certain groups. People possess a set of beliefs that condition their everyday behavior, like one can think that education is the most important four our future, while other people might believe that staying at home and raising their children is their reality. However, our beliefs are influenced by the groups that we interact. For instance, if we join a feminist movement, we might start reflecting a positive attitude towards gender equality. This illustrates how our social interaction can influence or beliefs related to race, and gender. Similarly, religious institutions and
One psychological process underlying majority influence is through direct public compliance. The dual-process dependency model which was postulated by Deutsch and Gerard, (1955 in Hogg and Vaughan 2007) proposes two important motives for conformity: normative social influence and informational social influence. Normative social influence refers to the need to be accepted and approved by society. This involves individuals to modify their behaviours and to adopt new/current ones that are associated with the particular social group so that they are not rejected (in Hogg & Vaughan 2007). An example of this situation can be reflected in Asch’s (1956 in Baron et al. 2008) study of conformity in which participants conformed to the majority group but at the same time maintained their own private opinions and disagreed. This process is known as compliance (in Bailey, J.et al. 2008).
According to the text , Social Psychology, “social psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another”(pg. 4) this is viewed in a variety of social topics incorporating group behaviors, attitudes, conformity, obedience to authority, stereotypes and peer pressure. Outside factors can have a positive or negative affect our view of ourselves and each other. These outside factors are used to persuade and influence group behavior. Persuasion is defined as “the process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors” (Myers, 2010, pg. 230). The principles of this process of persuasion according to researchers, Robert Cialdini and Thomas Davidson, are attractiveness and likeability, reciprocity, social proof, consistency, authority, and scarcity (Davidson, 2008)(Myers, 2010, pg. 237). These principles of persuasion impact our self-perception, our attitudes and behaviors, and our culture.
Influences impact how we communicate our messages and how we receive them. The influence theories are designed to explain the power of persuasion, through social interaction and through cognitions. The influences within communities can be powerful messages to individuals that are receptive, we see in 2nd Corinthians, Chapter 5, that we must spread the message of Christ and be accepted of him because we must be judged by him one day, therefore, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade, men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your conscience” (2 Corinthians 5:11) The Social Judgement Theory and The Cognitive Dissonance Theory examine how influences impact decisions, discussions, perceptions and evaluations. Even though these theories analyze the same types of behaviors in some similar ways they are different theory and need to be treated as separate.
Human beings undergo different stages of development. During the development, people experience various constraints and detriments depending on their gender, race, social status, among other factors. The society plays an incredible role in human development. Everyone deals with eth society in different ways; through education, work, communication, or socializing. Therefore, social influence is inevitable. Scholars go as far as singling out social status being a lifelong limiting factor of human development (Bartholomae, & Petrosky, 2003).