Lecture 5 - Social influence, conformity, and persuasion Flashcards
(18 cards)
Social influence
Social influence:
- how others affect our beliefs, attitudes, values or beliefs
Social learning:
- capacity to learn from observing others
- mirror neurones -> activated both when one does an action oneself and when one simply observed another person perform that action
Social learning theory:
- observational leanring (Albert Bandura)
- we are encouraged or discourages to engage in new behaviours in after viewing someone else engaging in these behaviours
- likelihood of replicating behaviours depends on consequences
- Bodo doll experiment
The chameleon effect
- tendency to mimic nonverbal mannerisms of someone else
- we also shift attitudes toward what we thinking another person’s opinions might be, especially when we like that person
Social learning in generally adaptive
Some downsides
- media portrayals of celebrity suicides are associated with increases in suicides and car accidents among general public
Film can also inspire unformatted examples of social learning
- The Deer Hunt (Russian roulette)
- The Program (lying down in traffic)
Social Priming
Others influence us by priming ideas, norms and values
Injunctive norm:
-what behaviours are generally appropriate in one’s culture
Descriptive norm:
- a belief about what most people typically do
Social contagion
The phenomenon whereby ideas, feelings, and behaviours seek to spread across people like wildfire
Many behaviours are socially contagious
- yawns
- laughter
- applause
- moods
Study shown that when confederate rubs face or shakes foot in study, ppts are much more likely to do the same
Conformity
Sherif
Individual alters their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviours to bring them in accordance with those of a majority
Asch conformity study
Public compliance -> conforming to fit in it a group, without changing beliefs
Private acceptance -> comforting by altering private beliefs and public behaviour
Informational influence -> other used as a source of information about the world
Why do people conform?
Two types of conformation
Informational influence:
1. uncertain of own opinion
2. difficult task
3. little information
-> informational influence -> change in public and private attitudes (conversion)
Normative influence:
1. certain of own opinion
2. says task
3. detailed information
-> normative influence -> change in public attitudes only (compliance)
25% of Asch’s ppts never conformed to the group opinion in at least one experimental trial
- gender differences
- size of group exerting
- group member unanimity
- familiarity with topic/task
Number of confederates compared to % of ppts conforming to the unanimous answer:
- control -> 0
- 1 -> 3
- 2 -> 13
- 3 -> 33
- 4 -> 40
- 8 -> 32
- 16 -> 31
Personality and conformity
Those who are less likely to conform tend to have
- a high need to achieve
- a propensity to be leaders
- greater self-awareness
- high self-esteem
Obedience to authority
Obedience;
- actions to fulfil the direct order or command of another person
- pressure to obey is direct and explicit
Sometimes essential to societal health and functioning, e.g. social distancing and Covid-19
Milgram’s obedience studies
Distance and legitimacy influence obedience:
- separating from “leaner’ increases obedience
- removing experimenter from room reduced obedience
- legitimacy of authority of experimenter increases obedience
Other factors:
- closeness to the authority figure
- closeness to the victim
- witnessing defiance
Women show the same obedience as men
People from different cultures show similar obedience
Few individual differences in who obeys
- submissive personality, eduction
Ethical concerns regarding replication, but some variations suggests similar obedience today as in Milgram’s time
Why do we obey?
Innate predisposition to obey authority
We are socialised to obey authority
Gradual increases in obediences
Difficulty in defying a legitimate authority
Persuasion
Intentional efforts to change other people’s attitudes to change their behaviour
Attitudes:
- evolution of a stimulus, can range from positive to negative
- main target if persuasion techniques
Elaboration likelihood model:
- persuasive messages influence attitudes by 2 different routes
Central routes:
- direct, logic and evidence based
- use of irrelevant, peripheral cues
Peripheral routes:
- indirect, emotional based
- use of irrelevant, peripheral cues
Elaboration likelihood model
Persuasive message -> is the audience motivated and able to elaborate on the message?
- Yes (central) route -
Processing: effortful, comapring arguments with prior general knowledge, generating thoughts -> persuaded by strong arguments -> response “She made good points. I agree with her” - No (peripheral) route -
Processing: automatic and effortless, use of peripheral cues and heuristics -> persuaded by presence of peripheral cues -> response “she is popular around here. I’ll agree with her”
The role of motivation
Relevancy to goals and interests contributes to the level of effort we devote to thinking deeply (elaborating)
Relevance to goals determine which persuasion route is taken
Strong motivation:
- we take central routes to persuasion
- rely on argument strength, not peripheral cues
Peripheral (emotional) routes may be effective in preventing maladaptive health behaviours form forming
- tobacco packaging
But implementation of plain packaging did not stop everyone from smoking
- peripheral routes not effective in changing persistent behaviours
If we are motivated to continue smoking, we will discount routes of persuasion
The role of ability
We may be be distracted and unable to elaborate
Attitudes formed through the central routes are:
- stronger
- more durable, longlasting
- resistant to contrary information
- more likely to affect behaviour
Requires deep thinking, elaborating on arguments
Source credibility
- appearance
- perceived expertise
Appearance of trustworthiness
- overheard conversations boost confidence in source
- argument of position opposes your self-interests
- display of authenticity and uniqueness
Source credibility study, procedure:
We informed participants that the psychology department was gathering students’ reactions to various campus issues and that, in this session, the topic would be the calendar put out by Motion, Michigan State University’s female pom-pom squad. At the time of the study, the calendar was a controversial issue because it pictured various members of the pom-pom squad scantily dressed (e.g. in bathing suits) and posing with prominent male members of the campus community (e.g. the university president)
We told ppts that before their reactions were solicited, we would ask them to listen to the tape-recorded opinions of campus community members. Thos randomly assigned to the expert condition belied that the message came from Dr. Lenard Charles, a nationally known, well-published research psychologist specialising in the effects of the print media attitudes and beliefs
DeBono and Harnish (1988)
Strong argument = low elaboration
- calendar promotes sexist attitudes
- reinforced gender stereotypes
- tarnished university image with presence of male staff
Weak argument = high elaboration
- message same from psychologist “Dr Leonard Charles”
- nationally renowned with expertise on print media and attitudes
Control source = high elaboration
- message from student “Leonard Charles”
- active in student government and conveys consensus of students
Elaboration likelihood model
Sleep effect:
- we remember a message but forget where it came from
- source credibility has a diminishing effect on attitudes over time
The role of self-perception
- modding vs shaking head can modify your agreement with persuasive messages
Primacy effect:
- initially encountered information primarily influences attitudes
Recency effect:
- recently encountered information primarily influences attitudes
Likelihood of each depends on timing
Peripheral routes of persuasion
Classical conditioning
- often associate pre-existing emotions with targeted stimuli
- transference of positive emotions to stimuli
Mere exposure
- reparation and familiarity
- e.g. product placement
Compliance
Self-perception theory
- once we freely engage in a behaviour
Foot-in-the-door effect:
- people are more likely to comply with a moderate request after having initially complied with a smaller request
Norm for social commitment:
- once people make a public agreement, they tend to stick it, even if circumstances change
Lowballing:
- after agreeing to an offer, people find it hard to break that commitment, even if extra cost is later added to the deal
Norm of reciprocity:
- often used to induce compliance
- often play a role in negotiations
Door-in-the-face effect:
- we are more likely to comply with moderate request after first presented with and refused to agree to larger request
Face of conformity
Robert Cialdini
- socia psychologist
- rose to popularity
- “The Psychology of Persuasion” 1984
- has published several books since this too
- worked on campaigns for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
- he is the closest thing to a modern celebrity in psychology
