Social Influence

Social Thinking and Influence
Prepared by Ayesha Zafar

Lecturer
Department of Psychology, IU Karachi.
Learning objective
• Understanding social cognitions
• What are attitudes?
• Understanding of attribution theory
• What is conformity, compliance, obedience, prejudice and
discrimination?
• Understanding of helping behaviours
Social perception
• Social perception is the study of how people form

impressions of and make inferences about other
people.
•Social Norms
•Descriptive Norms
•1) Shaking hands with the opponent after a game
•2) We use an umbrella when it is raining
•Injunctive Norms
•1) No Swimming
•2) Wearing clothes
•3) Don’t arrive on parties exactly on time
Asch’s Research on Conformity
About 75% of participants conformed and 25% of
participants never conformed.
Why did the participants conform so readily?
• When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that
they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along
with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar".
• A few of them said that they really did believe the group's answers were
correct.
• Fourth:
People who cannot conform
The more we admire a group and want to commit to it, the greater is
the pressure to conform
Eg:
•Being polite in a fancy restaurant
•Staying silent in the library
•Sometimes, the effect of situational

norms is automatic and we behave
without consciously realizing their
impact
Minorities hence induce the majority to engage in systematic
processing about the issues they raise which helps in causing
a large scale social change
Getting people to say yes to a request
Professionals who make use of Compliance:
•Salespersons
•Advertisers
•Politicians
•Fundraisers
•Con Artists
•Negotiators
How is Persuasion different from
Compliance?
• Persuasion is concerned
with changing beliefs,
attitudes, intentions,
motivations, and behaviors. • Compliance is more
restrictive, typically
referring to changes in a
person's overt
Cialdini (1994)
Tactics based on Friendship/ Liking
Impression Management
Techniques: Ingratiation: Attempt to make
• Flattery others like us by conveying that
•Improving ones own we like them 🡪 More likely to
appearance comply
•Doing Favors
Tactics based on Commitment
Foot in the Door Technique Lowball procedure
• A person first makes a • An offer or deal is
small request and when changed to make it less
that is granted, they attractive to the person
make a much bigger after this person has
request. accepted it
• The bigger request is the
one they actually want
all along
A car dealer initially quotes a low price and
then claims the quote was a mistake and the
real price is higher. Many customers are
inclined to accept the higher price because
they have already decided to make the
purchase
Tactics based on Reciprocity
•One way this can be done is by adding
extra 'gifts' to a product offer
• I'm not going to give you this cookie cutter. No. That's not all
I'm going to give you. For the same price, I'm going to throw in
a fine steel spatula. A bargain I hear you say? But I'm going to
make it even better, with this splendid temperature probe,
absolutely free. Now, who wants this wonderful offer now?
• Mr Jones, you've been treated badly and I'm going to make

sure you're ok today. First, I'm going to call the service team.
Then I'm going to talk to the manager and then I'll get him to
call you today. Is this ok for you?
Tactics based on Scarcity
m Experiment
40 men recruited using
newspaper ads
• Roles:
Student 🡪 Gave answers to questions
Teacher 🡪 Administer shock for wrong answers
All were paid $4.50
All were given the role

of the teacher
•The student was actually a confederate in the experiment who was simply pretending to be
shocked.
•The student would give many incorrect responses which would result in a shock being given to
them
•Voltage of shock increased as more incorrect answers were given
Highest: 450 volts
• Seeing the student in pain, participants asked the experimenter whether
they should continue:
"Please continue." "The experiment requires

that you continue”
"It is absolutely essential "You have no other choice,

that you continue." you must go on."
• The level of shock that the participant was willing to deliver was used as
the measure of obedience.
•
How far do you think that most participants were willing to go?
Read the experiment from your book or online:

http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
Results
• Of the 40 participants in the study, 26 delivered the maximum shocks
while 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels.
• Many of the subjects became extremely agitated, distraught and angry at
the experimenter. Yet they continued to follow orders all the way to the
end.
Criticized for being unethical

Destructive Obedience
• Why did so many of the participants in this experiment give so much pain
to the student on the instruction of an authority figure?
The fact that the study
was sponsored by Yale
(a trusted and
The physical presence authoritative academic
of an authority figure. institution) led many
participants to believe
that the experiment
must be safe.
Participants assumed
The selection of
he was an expert. The
teacher and learner
shocks were said to be
status seemed
painful, not
random.
dangerous.
They were being paid

What are Attitudes?
• Attitudes refer to people’s evaluation of any aspect of
the social world
• Can be both favorable and unfavorable
• Eg: Same sex marriages, political opinion, abortion

Difference between attributes
and attitudes?
•Attribute
•Reasons behind a persons behavior
•Can be internal and external
•Attitude
•Evaluation/ judgement of a person
•Can be positive or negative
•Eg: I don’t like her
Attribution
Attribution refers to the process of understanding
and thinking about people within social
situations, as one tends to try and explain the
behavior of others and sometimes the self.
THEORIES OF ATTRIBUTION
Correspondent Inference Theory
• Jones and Davis (1965)
• The theory is concerned with how we decide, on the basis of

others’ overt actions, that they possess specific traits which
they carry with them from situation to situation.
• These tend to remain fairly stable over time.
• Match with personality

Kelley’s theory of causal attribution. •
• Proposed by Horald Kelly in 1967.
• The theory says that people assign the cause of behavior to
the factors that covaries most closely with the behavior.
• According to theory, behavior can be attributed to
dispositional (internal) or Situational (external) factors
3 major dimensions
• Consensus: It is the extent to which others react to same stimuli or event
in the same manner as the person.
• Consistency: It is the extent to which the person react to the stimuli or
event in the same way on similiar occasions across time. Extend to which a
behavior Y always co-occurs with a stimulus X
• Distinctiveness: It is the extend to which the person react in the same
manner to other different stimuli or event. i.e. whether the person reacts
same only with one stimuli, or is common to many stimuli.
• Tom is laughing at a comedian.
• 1. Consensus: Everybody in the audience is laughing. Consensus is high.

If only Tom is laughing consensus is low.
• 2. Distinctiveness: Tom only laughs at this comedian and not on others.

Distinctiveness is high. If Tom laughs at everything distinctiveness is low.
• 3. Consistency: Tom always laughs at this comedian. Consistency is high.

Tom rarely laughs at this comedian consistency is low.
Pro-social Behavior
Why do people help?

What is Prosocial behavior?
• It is a helpful action that benefits other people without
providing any direct benefits to the person performing the act
• It may even involve a risk for the person who is helping

Altruism
Behavior that is motivated by an

unselfish concern for the welfare of
others
No indirect or direct benefit for the

person helping
Feeling component of attitudes
• Prejudice is NOT personal
• It is the negative feelings experienced which are based solely on the
person’s membership in a particular group
• The person is disliked for belonging to a specific group
• Those who have a prominent prejudice towards a certain group, will be
more concerned about knowing the group the other person belongs to
where it may not be obvious
• Prejudice can be in the presence of or by simply thinking about members

of a certain group
Discrimination depends on the type of emotion felt
Anger
Attempts will be
made to harm
the out group for
hurting members
of the in group
Disgust
Attempts will be
made to avoid
the out group
whenever
possible

Social Influence

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Social Influence

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Social Influence

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Social Thinking and Influence

Prepared by Ayesha Zafar

• Social perception is the study of how people form

•Sometimes, the effect of situational

• Mr Jones, you've been treated badly and I'm going to make

All were paid $4.50

All were given the role

"Please continue." "The experiment requires

"It is absolutely essential "You have no other choice,

Read the experiment from your book or online:

Criticized for being unethical

They were being paid

• Eg: Same sex marriages, political opinion, abortion

• Jones and Davis (1965)

• The theory is concerned with how we decide, on the basis of

• Match with personality

• 1. Consensus: Everybody in the audience is laughing. Consensus is high.

• 2. Distinctiveness: Tom only laughs at this comedian and not on others.

• 3. Consistency: Tom always laughs at this comedian. Consistency is high.

Why do people help?

• It may even involve a risk for the person who is helping

Behavior that is motivated by an

No indirect or direct benefit for the

• Prejudice can be in the presence of or by simply thinking about members

You might also like