social influence principles & techniques where one person’s attitudes, cognitions, behaviours,...
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Social Influence
Principles & techniques where one person’s attitudes, cognitions, behaviours, changed through doings of another
Focus on behaviour change
Background
Study of people’s influence on each other is one of the big 3 of social psych (others are attitudes & attributions).
‘Messy’ research as it’s very much real-world based.
A humanist need to understand war and conflict generally.
Three classic studies: obedience, conformity, & compliance.
original context of the studies (why then?; could we do them now?).
apply to both enduring and topical scenarios.
Definitions
Obedience: explicit order. Conformity: Implicit process; go along with
what’s out there. see also compliance: yielding to others.
Some room for cross-over.
Factors causing compliance
Social Influences on compliance
Focusing on powerful effects (ability to change compliance decisions) experiment not most useful determiner
Development of powerful compliance inducers
6 psychological principles
Reciprocation Friendship/liking Scarcity Consistency Social Validation Authority
Reciprocation
return a gift, favour, service - widely shared feeling of human obligation
Rule for compliance: more willing to comply with request from someone who has
previously provided favour/concession.
Unsolicited gift + request for donation technique - socialised sense of discomfort of unpaid debt
Reciprocal concessions: Door-in-the-face-technique (extreme followed by moderate
request) Cialdini et al. 1975 That’s-not-all-technique Burger 1976
Friendship/Liking
Rule: more willing to comply with friends, liked individuals
Tupperware parties
Tactics to increase liking: Physical attractiveness Similarity Compliments Cooperation
Scarcity
Rule: one should try to secure those opportunities that are scarce/dwindling
2 sources of power of scarcity: availability of item determines quality lose freedoms, psychological reactance
theory (Brehm 1966)
limited access – increased desire –assign positive qualities to justify desire
limited access to information also makes it more desirable and more influential, Brock 1968
Idea of potential loss v important in human decision making, Tversky & Kahneman 1981
Consistency
Desire (to appear) consistent - prime motivator of behaviour
Festinger 1957, Heider 1958, Newcomb 1953, Baumeister 1982
How is force engaged? commitment Rule: having committed to a position, more willing to
comply with requests consistent with that position
Strategy to generate crucial instigating commitment:
Foot-in-the-door technique (Freedman & Fraser 1966) (children not influenced until understand idea of stable personality trait)
commitment maximally effective to extent it is active; effortful; public; internally motivated
Social validation
Use beliefs, attitudes, actions of similar others as standard of comparison for self-evaluation
Rule: more willing to comply with request for behaviour if consistent with what similar others are doing .
Asch (1955, 1956) - Conformity
The cornerstone of group studies. 7-9 students, taking part in an exercise of visual
judgment. 6-8 confederates.
2 cards: reference line and a card with 3 ‘candidate’ lines. One was obviously correct.
1st 2 trials: correct for both confederate and participant.
Subsequent: unanimous choice of wrong line by confederates.
Results
Floor level of wrong answers (1%) on 1st 2 trials. 37% on subsequent. Interesting points:
One ‘dissenter’ lessened conformity drastically. Low self-esteem strongly inclined (cf. Crowne & Marlow, 1964). Gender – very much nuanced.
Eagly & Carli (1981) – small diff. in a meta-analysis. Cialdini & Trost (1998): men less likely to conform in public settings.
Festinger’s Social Comparison theory 1954
– constant drive to evaluate ourselves
– if available, prefer to use objective cues
– if not, rely on social comparison evidence
– prefer similar others for comparison purposes
List technique Reingen 1982
Authority
Legitmate authorities v influential, Aronson et al. 1963 Rule: more willing to follow suggestions of authority Hofling et al. 1966 – Dr. on phone, nurses willing to
administer unsafe level of drugUniforms, etc.
Lefkowitz et al. 1955 Jaywalker in business suit
Milgram (1963, 1974) - Obedience One of the most cited studies of all time in all social
sciences. Inspired by the hypothesis that the Germans were
‘different’. Yale setting (important). Confederate (learner) – participant design. 40 subjects. 1-30 shock level. No one stopped before level 20 (top end of ‘intense
shock’). 26 went to the top of the xxx shock. Mean max shock was 27.
Explaining the effect
Obedience to authority: Apparatus of authority is crucial Coat; Yale; scientific progress; gravitas…
Variation - NO subject gave shock when non-authority demanded it
Gradual increase in demands; consistency needs Limited source of information in a novel situation Responsibility not assigned or diffused
Norm information? Personality variables?
Impact
Huge applicability (average white men). Ecological validity debate
Did they know it was a set up?Unlikely: physiological and direct
observations; new for its time). Ethics: should you be able to do this to
people?None regretted it in the debriefing.
Interesting findings (Blass, 2000). Women as ‘prone’ as men. Proxemics is a factor. Self-reports in advance don’t tally. Personality factors: RWA (Altemeyer,
1996).
Zimbardo (1972, 1975): roles &
compliance. Prison guard study. 22 college students. Volunteered for this study. ‘Hygiene’ (1983) important: arrested,
fingerprinted, stripped, ‘deloused’ (deodorised!), uniformed.
Key details
Uniform was smock like (emasculating). Mirror sunglasses. No names used (not told to do this). Half the prisoners dropped out due to stress. Ganged up on each other. Milder officers moved towards the position of the more
‘hard core’ ones. Parole board – denied; returned to cells. Due to last 2 weeks; abandoned after 6 days. No ‘good’ guard intervened
Obedience when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social & institutional support
Cognitive dissonance theory Power of authority Power of a strong situation