Influence

Social influence
• Interpersonal processes that change the
thoughts, feelings, or behaviors of another
person.
• influence flows from the group to the individual
• When the majority of the group’s members
champion a particular view, they may pressure
the few dissenting group members to change
for the sake of the group’s unity.
• Influence also
flows from the
individual to the
group.
• If the group is to
meet new
challenges and
improve over time,
it must recognize
and accept ideas
that conflict with
the status quo.
• Majority influence-Social pressure exerted by
the larger portion of a group on individual
members and smaller factions within the
group.
• Minority influence-Social pressure exerted by
a lone individual or smaller faction of a group
on members of the majority faction.
 MAJORITY INFLUENCE:
THE POWER OF THE MANY
• Conformity-A change in opinion, judgment, or
action to match the opinions, judgments, or
actions of other group members or the
group’s normative standards.
How many people does it take to create maximum
conformity?
Terms to remember in Influence
• Social impact theory-An analysis of social
influence developed by Bibb Latané which
proposes that the impact of any source of
influence depends upon the strength, the
immediacy, and number of people (sources)
present.
• Compliance-Change that occurs when the
targets of social influence publicly accept the
influencer’s position but privately maintain
their original beliefs.
• Conversion-Change that occurs when group
members personally accept the influencer’s
position; also, the movement of all members
of a group to a single, mutually shared
position, as when individuals who initially
offer diverse opinions on a subject eventually
come to share the same position.
• Congruence-Unprompted, natural agreement
between the individual and the group.
• Independence-Expressing opinions, making
judgments, or acting in ways that are consistent
with one’s personal beliefs but inconsistent with
the opinions, judgments, or actions of other group
members or the group’s norms.
• Anticonformity (or counterconformity) -
Deliberately expressing opinions, making
judgments, or acting in ways that are different
from those of the other group members or the
group’s norms in order to challenge the group and
its standards rather than simply for the purpose of
expressing one’s personal preferences.
Personality Characteristics That Are
Reliably Associated
with Conformity and Nonconformity