Social Influence

Jannat Mehboob
Lecturer (Psychology)
Department of
Humanities
CUI, Lahore Campus
 Introduction
• Why do people conform in groups?
• Why do we obey authority figures?
• How does your role in society affect
your behavior?
• And how can the pressure to conform
sometimes lead people to commit
atrocities in the name of ‘obeying
orders’?
 Definition
• Social influence refers to the way in which individuals change their ideas and
actions to meet the demands of a social group, perceived authority, social role or a
minority within a group wielding influence over the majority.
• Most of us encounter social influence in its many forms on a regular basis. For
example, a student may alter his or her behavior to match that of other students in
a class. The majority-held opinions of a group of friends are likely to inform the
views of new members to that social group. Furthermore, we are influenced by the
requests of people who are seen as holding positions of authority. For instance, an
employee will follow the orders of his supervisors in order to please them.
 • There are a number of reasons why people
Why people accept allow social influences to affect their
social influence thoughts and behavior.
• One reason is that we often conform to the
norms of a group to gain acceptance of its
members.
• Supporters of a football team voluntarily
wear shirts of their teams to feel a part of
the group. Friends may also wear similar
clothing to their peers to experience a sense
of belonging.
• Group conformity can also encourage
cooperation when attempting to achieve a
shared goal. When an individual is able to
exhibit a minority influence over a wider
group, he or she can persuade that group to
work collectively.
• For example, charity organizers recruiting new
volunteers advocate improving their
community (e.g. litter picking).
• However, cooperation can lead to a conformity
of views, resulting in a phenomenon known as
groupthink. When this occurs, team members
adopt agreed views.
• Additionally, group conformity enables a sense of cohesion within a
society. However, such laws depend on people conforming to the norms of
the wider group by acting as law-abiding citizens.
 Majority Influence: Conforming to the
Group
• Although conformity occurs whenever group members change their opinions
or behaviors as a result of their perceptions of others, we can divide such
influence into two types.
• Majority influence occurs when the beliefs held by the larger number of
individuals in the current social group prevail.
• In contrast, minority influence occurs when the beliefs held by the smaller
number of individuals in the current social group prevail. Not surprisingly,
majority influence is more common.
• In a series of important studies on conformity,
Muzafer Sherif (1936) used a perceptual
phenomenon known as the autokinetic effect
to study the outcomes of conformity on the
development of group norms.
• The autokinetic effect is caused by the rapid,
small movements of our eyes that occur as we
view objects and that allow us to focus on
stimuli in our environment.
• However, when individuals are placed in a dark room that contains only a single
small, stationary pinpoint of light, these eye movements produce an unusual
effect for the perceiver. The point of light appear to move.
• Sherif also found that when individuals who initially had made very different
estimates were then placed in groups along with one or two other individuals,
and in which all the group members gave their responses on each trial aloud
(each time in a different random order), the initial differences in judgments
among the participants began to disappear, such that the group members
eventually made very similar judgments.
• Asch conducted studies in which, in complete contrast
to the autokinetic effect experiments of Sherif, the
correct answers to the judgments were entirely
obvious.
• In these studies, the research participants were male
college students. The men were seated in a small
semicircle in front of a board that displayed the visual
stimuli that they were going to judge.
• The men were told that there would be 18 trials
during the experiment, and on each trial they would
see two cards.
• The standard card had a single line that was to be
judged. And the test card had three lines that varied in
length between about 2 and 10 inches.
• The men’s task was simply to indicate which line on the test card was the same length as the line on the
standard card.
• On each trial, each person answered out loud, beginning with one end of the semicircle and moving to
the other end.
• Although the participant did not know it, the other group members were not true participants but
experimental confederates who gave predetermined answers on each trial.
• Although on the first two trials the confederates each gave the correct answer, on the third trial, and on 11
of the subsequent trials, they all had been instructed to give the same incorrect answer.
• For instance, even though the correct answer was Line 1, they would all say it was Line 2. Thus when it
became the participant’s turn to answer, he could either give the clearly correct answer or conform to the
incorrect responses of the confederates.
Minority Influence:
Resisting Group
Pressure • We do not always blindly conform to the
beliefs of the majority.
• Although more unusual, there are
nevertheless cases in which a smaller
number of individuals are able to influence
the opinions or behaviors of the group this
is minority influence.
• The French social psychologist Serge Moscovici was particularly interested in the
situations under which minority influence might occur.
• To test whether minority group members could indeed produce influence, he and
his colleagues (Moscovici, Lage, & Naffrechoux, 1969) created the opposite of
Asch’s line perception study, such that there was now a minority of confederates in
the group (two) and a majority of experimental participants (four).
• All six individuals viewed a series of slides depicting colors, supposedly as a study
of color perception, each voiced out loud an opinion about the color of the slide.
• Although the color of the slides varied in brightness, they were all clearly blue.
• Participants who were asked to make their judgments alone called the slides a
different color than blue less than 1% of the time. (When it happened, they
called the slides green.)
• In the experiment, the two confederates had been instructed to give one of two
patterns of answers that were different from the normal responses.
• In the consistent-minority condition, the two confederates gave the unusual
response (green)
 Informational Social • Influence also sometimes occurs because
Influence: Conforming to we believe that other people have valid
Be Accurate knowledge about an opinion or issue, and
we use that information to help us make
good decisions.
• For example, if you take a flight and land at
an unfamiliar airport you may follow the
flow of other passengers who disembarked
before you.
• In this case your assumption might be that
they know where they are going and that
following them will likely lead you to the
baggage carousel.
• Informational social influence is the change in opinions or behavior that
occurs when we conform to people who we believe have accurate information.
• We base our beliefs on those presented to us by reporters, scientists, doctors,
and lawyers because we believe they have more expertise in certain fields than
we have.
• But we also use our friends and colleagues for information; when we choose
a jacket on the basis of our friends’ advice about what looks good on us, we
are using informational conformity we believe that our friends have good
judgment about the things that matter to us.
Normative Social Influence:
Conforming to Be Liked and • In other cases we conform not because we
to Avoid Rejection want to have valid knowledge but rather to
meet the goal of belonging to and being
accepted by a group that we care about
(Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).
• When we start smoking cigarettes or buy
shoes that we cannot really afford in order to
impress others.
• We do these things not because we think
they are the right things to do, but rather
because we want to be liked.
• We fall prey to normative social influence when we express opinions or
behave in ways that help us to be accepted or that keep us from being
isolated or rejected by others.
• When we engage in conformity due to normative social influence we conform
to social norms, socially accepted beliefs about what we do or should do in
particular social contexts (Cialdini, 1993; Sherif, 1936; Sumner, 1906).
 Social influence and conformity
• Social influence takes a number of forms. One type of such influence is
conformity, when a person adopts the opinions or behaviors of others.
This often occurs in groups, when an individual conforms to the social
norms respected by a majority of the group’s members.
• An individual may conform to the opinions and values of a group. They
express support for views accepted by the group and will withhold criticism
of group norms. Behavioral conformity can also influence a group member’s
actions: a person will behave in a way that is similar to others in the group.
Public-versus-private When conforming to the social norms of a group, a person
may disagree with the opinions that they express or the
conformity actions that they take, but nonetheless, they adopt the
behavior that is expected of them.
• Public conformity involves matching one’s behavior
meet the expectations of others, while privately holding
a different view. For example, a student may express a
liking for a rock band because all of his friends listen to
it. Privately, however, he may dislike their music, but
conforms in front of his friends to gain their acceptance.
• Private conformity occurs when a person internalizes
the views of a group, and adopts a majority opinion as
his or her own. For instance, the student listens to the
music of a rock band that his friends like. Over time, he
realizes that he too enjoys this type of music. As his
private opinion has changed, private conformity has
occurred.
Types of conformity
• There are many different situations
where people conform and
psychologists have categorized main
types of conformity, including:
1) Compliance
2) identification
3) Internalization
4) Obedience
 • One form of conformity is achieved through
Compliance compliance. This involves a request that an
individual or group complies with the
instructions of another.
• Compliance frequently occurs when a person
is asked by an authority figure to meet a
particular set of demands.
• For example, drivers comply with the
directions given by traffic wardens, and
students comply with the requests of their
teacher, who they view as holding a position
of authority.
 Factors Influencing Compliance

•Group strength: The more important the group is to an individual, the more likely
the individual is to comply with social influence. For instance, an individual is more
likely to comply with the requests of her close friends than her classmates.
•Immediacy: The proximity of the group makes an individual more likely to
comply with group pressures. Pressure to comply is strongest when the group is
closer to the individual and made of up people the individual cares about. For
example, compliance with parents’ wishes is more likely if they live in the same city
than it is if they live in another state or country.
•Number: Compliance increases as the number of people in a group increases.
Importantly, the influence of adding people starts to decrease as the group gets
larger. For example, adding one person to a large group (from 60 to 61) is less
influential than adding one person to a small group (from three to four).
•Similarity: Perceived shared characteristics cause an individual to be more likely to
comply with a request, particularly when the shared feature is perceived as
unplanned and rare (such as a shared birthday).
Techniques to Achieve
Compliance • Compliance may be achieved using a
number of techniques known as
compliance strategies. These are often
used by salespeople to persuade
potential customers to fulfill their
request to place orders.
1. Foot-in-the-door technique
• It involves a person making a small initial request in order to gain compliance with another
question. Once a person has complied with a request, they are more likely to agree to a later, more
significant, request. For example, a car sales representative may ask a prospective customer to
agree to test-drive a new car. If the person agrees, they may be able to persuade them to extend
their compliance by accepting a later request to buy the car.
2. Door-in-the-face technique
• It is another compliance strategy which takes an opposite approach. An unreasonably large request
is made initially, followed by the request that the subject is expected to comply with. A person will
almost certainly reject the first request, but the second appears more reasonable when compared to
it, and so they may be more inclined to comply with the second proposition.
3. Low-Ball Technique
• This technique is frequently employed by car salesmen. Low-balling gains
compliance by offering the subject something at a low initial cost. The
cost may be monetary, time related, or anything else that requires
something from the individual. After the subject agrees to the initial cost,
the requester increases the cost at the last moment. The subject is more
likely to comply with this change in cost since he or she feels like an
agreement has already occurred.
4. Ingratiation Technique
• This technique involves “gaining someone’s personal approval’’ so they will be more likely to agree
with a request. Ingratiation can include opinion conformity, and self-presentation (presenting one’s own
attributes in a manner that appeals to the target). For example, before Anna goes to ask for time off from
her manager, Anthony, she does a little research and discovers that he enjoys golfing. When she sees
Anthony next time, she starts out talking about her golfing trip last weekend, and later in the conversation
she requests time off. Since Anna has now ingratiated herself with Anthony, he is more likely to comply
with her request.
5. Norm-of-Reciprocity Technique
• This is based on the social norm that people will return a favor when one is granted to them. Compliance
is more likely to occur when the requester has previously complied with one of the target’s requests.
 • This occurs when an individual identifies with
Identification other members of a group and conforms to its
opinions and behaviors. In doing so, they may
seek to gain the favor of other members and to
be accepted into the group.
• When identifying with a group, a person does
not internalize its norms. When they leave the
group, they may assume their own beliefs and
behaviors.
• For example, an employee joining an office
may go bowling as colleagues on her team like
to visit the bowling alley once a week.
Privately, however, she may dislike the
pastime and prefer to spend it reading at home.
Internalization • Internalization is a form of opinion
conformity, whereby the opinions of a group,
or minority within that group influence an
individual’s own opinions. The person may
not only express the views of the group
publicly, but also adopts these new views
and regards them as being his or her own ‘a
form of private conformity’.
• The internalization of new beliefs frequently
occurs in religious groups, when members
privately adopt the spiritual ideas expressed
by the authority figures as their own personal
beliefs.
 • Obedience is a form of public conformity which
Obedience occurs when a person modifies their behavior to
obey the directions of another, often in a position
of authority. It does not require a subject to alter
his or her private opinion.
• Hierarchical relationships often involve one party
obeying the orders of another. For instance, a son
is expected to obey his parents, a teacher directs
students to behave in class and a soldier takes
orders from a superior officer.
• In each instance, the person in a subordinate
position obeys the other, often for fear of the
consequences of disobeying them.
Milgram (1974) proposed agency theory to explain the tendency to obey authority.
He suggested that an individual may be in one of two states at any one time:
•Autonomous state when an individual’s behavior is determined by his or her own
independent beliefs and responsibility is taken for such actions. When a person
regrets their actions, they experience feelings of guilt.
•Agentic state a person perceives another as being in a position of authority. They
obey orders issued by the authority figure, acting as an ‘agent’ on their behalf.
When this behavior is perceived to be a mistake, the person attributes responsibility
to the authority that ordered it, rather than feeling guilt for their role in it.
 Factors Influencing Obedience
• Proximity to the authority figure: Proximity indicates physical closeness; the
closer the authority figure is, the more obedience is demonstrated. In the Milgram
experiment, the experimenter was in the same room as the participant, likely
eliciting a more obedient response.
• Prestige of the experimenter: Something as simple as wearing a lab coat or not
wearing a lab coat can affect levels of obedience; authority figures with more
status bring out more obedience.
• Expertise: A subject who has neither the ability nor the expertise to make
decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its
hierarchy.

• Deindividuation: The essence of obedience consists in the fact that people come
to view themselves not as individuals but as instruments for carrying out others’
wishes, and thus no longer see themselves as responsible for their actions.
 Factors affecting conformity

Conformity rates within a group vary depending upon a number of factors.

• The size of a majority can affect conformity rates within a group. Asch (1956)
tested conformity rates whilst varying the number of confederates taking a
common position. He found that conformity increased in line with the size of the
majority, but that the most substantial increases occurred as the majority
increased from 1 to 3.
• Additionally, Asch found that group consensus and objecting members can
affect conformity. Unanimity of opinion amongst members increased conformity,
whilst dissenting voices encouraged other members to behave independently.
• Cultural differences can also influence conformity. Conformity levels have been
found to be lower in cultures where individualism is valued (particularly in
Western countries). In collectivist cultures, where individuals are expected to
behave and work in a way that benefits society as a whole, conformity is often
higher.
• Furthermore, task difficulty can affect the extent to which an individual will
consult the majority-held opinion when completing an activity. Lucas et al (2006)
found that individuals’ reduced confidence in one’s own abilities to succeed at a
task, can increase his or her conformity.
 • A further form of social influence is the roles in
Social roles which people find themselves. Each role is
associated with a set of attitudes and forms of
behavior, and the role that a person is assigned
can influence their actions and opinions.
• Most of us are influenced by a number of roles at
any one time. You may play a professional role
from doctor to wait-staff, naval officer to writer.
• For example, people expect a doctor or naval
office to be more serious than a circus
entertainer, and may try fulfill this assumption
when given a particular professional role. Other
types of role, such as gender, family and societal
roles, can also influence behavior.
 Zimbardo’s experiment

• Zimbardo et al (1973) conducted a well-known study to examine how social roles

influence behavior. In the Stanford prison experiment, participants were assigned the
role of either prisoner of prison officer, and were asked to play out their roles in a mock
prison which Zimbardo had built in the basement of Stanford University.
• During the study, Zimbardo himself assumed the role of prison officer in order to observe
the behavior of participants.
• He found that the behavior of those assigned to act as prison officers rapidly changed to
meet their perceptions of the role. They would punish prisoners by asking them to perform
push-ups and in one incident, sprayed a fire extinguisher in an attempt to control a
rebellion.
• Similarly, prisoners themselves adopted a subservient role to the officers,
treating them as authority figures and reporting on the ‘misbehavior’ of
fellow prisoners.
• Zimbardo found that assigned social roles led participants to behave in a
way that they would not normally. He concluded that it was people’s
preconceptions of their assigned roles and the experimental situation in which
they found themselves that influenced their actions.
Social power • Social power is a kind of power that
influences you and other individuals more
effectively.
• Social psychologists John French and
Bertram Raven studied this phenomenon
more than half a century ago.
• Despite its age, their research can still help us
to understand why some leaders influence us,
how prepared we are to accept their power,
and if you are a leader how you can develop
new power bases to get the best from your
people.
 Understanding Power

In 1959, French and Raven described five bases of power:

1. Legitimate: This comes from the belief that a person has the formal right to
make demands, and to expect others to be compliant and obedient.
2. Reward: This results from one person's ability to compensate another for
compliance.
3. Expert: This is based on a person's high levels of skill and knowledge.
4. Referent: This is the result of a person's perceived attractiveness,
worthiness and right to others' respect.
5. Coercive: This comes from the belief that a person can punish others for
noncompliance.
Six years later, Raven added an extra power base:
6. Informational: This results from a person's ability to control the
information that others need to accomplish something.
 The Bases of Power
Let's explore French and Raven's bases of power in two groups;

• A. Positional Power Sources

• B. Personal Power Sources
 Positional Power Sources
• Legitimate
• Reward
• Coercive
• Informational
Legitimate Power
• This type of power, however, can be unpredictable and unstable. If you lose the title
or position, your legitimate power can instantly disappear, because people were
influenced by the position you held rather than by you.
Reward Power
• People in power are often able to give out rewards. Raises, promotions, desirable
assignments, training opportunities, and simple compliments these are all examples of
rewards controlled by people "in power." If others expect that you'll reward them for
doing what you want, there's a high probability that they'll do it.
Coercive Power
• Threats and punishment are common coercive tools. You use coercive power when you imply or
threaten that someone will be fired, demoted or denied privileges. While your position may allow
you to do this, though, it doesn't mean that you have the will or the justification to do so. You
may sometimes need to punish people as a last resort but if you use coercive power too much,
people will leave.
Informational Power
• Having control over information that others need or want puts you in a powerful position. Having
access to confidential financial reports, being aware of who's due to be laid off, and knowing
where your team is going for its annual “away day” are all examples of informational power.
 Personal Power Sources
• Expert power source
• Referent power source
Expert Power
• When you have knowledge and skills that enable you to understand a situation, suggest
solutions, use solid judgment, and generally outperform others, people will listen to you, trust
you, and respect what you say. As a subject matter expert, your ideas will have value, and
others will look to you for leadership in that area.
Referent Power
• Referent power comes from one person liking and respecting another, and identifying with her
in some way. Celebrities have referent power, which is why they can influence everything
from what people buy to which politician they elect. In a workplace, a person with referent
power often makes everyone feel good, so he tends to have a lot of influence.
 Apply This to Your Life

• Go through each power base and write down when and how you've used it.
• Ask yourself if you used the power appropriately. Consider the expected and
unexpected consequences, and decide what you'll do differently next time.
• Think about the people who have power and influence over you. What sources of
power do they use? Do they use their power appropriately? Where necessary, develop
a strategy to reduce someone else's illegitimate use of power over you.
• When you feel powerless or overly influenced, think about how you could regain your
own power and control. After all, you're never without power. Aim to be more aware
of the power you have, and use it to get what you need humanely.