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

Reading (All in June’s office)

Reading 37 & 40 in Forty Studies that Changed Psychology.

Zimbardo interview American Psychologist January 2009,

64(1)

1-11, 12-19, 20-27, 28-31, 32-36.