Normative, Informational and Persuasive Social Influences

What is Social Influence Theory? Social Influence Theory is the change in behavior that another person causes, intentionally or unintentionally. Social Influence Theory has to deal with the social situations of people, and how they affect, persuade, or influence each other. This is especially relevant in today's society in the teenage generation with all their social medias and having high standards for social status that most people follow. Social Influence Theory has three areas that are evident in the story The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The characters Abigail and Tituba are good examples of being impacted or showing Social Influence.

In other words, this theory is based on how the external factors of society affect individuals and their behavior.

The focus and objective of sociology is to examine social patterns. Examining social patterns reveal the sources of pressures and constraints that affect individuals’ thoughts and behaviors. There are three types of social patterns which are culture, social institutions and social structure. Culture is the shared symbols, ideas, beliefs, values, customs and material products by people in a particular society. These shared factors are accumulated through the passage of time. Social Institutions are structures and or mechanisms that provide a set of ideas and or rules that governs how individuals are to act in order to achieve important goals to which that society recognizes. Social structure is the statuses and or pattern of social relationships that have an effect of shaping individuals’ interactions with one another and how various distributions are determined. Hierarchy is one type of social structure.

Conformity is a concept that has been heavily researched in the field of social psychology. Conformity is defined as a change in behavior, beliefs, and attitudes due to group pressure perceived as real (encompassing the presence of others) or imagined (encompassing the pressure of social standards) (Myers, 2010, p. 192). The concept of conformity is a powerful influence on the tendency for people to arrange their thoughts, perspectives, and ideas with others, especially when in a group. This takes away from a person’s individuality because they want to feel accepted by others and therefore, a person will accomplish this basic need of approval through conforming.

There is typically an underlying social force causing the individual to act or think in that specific way. (Cox, 1986)

Influence is powerful in determining one’s future. Actions behaviors and opinions are all connected to impact of others and the way they shape our views on the world as well as ourselves. Self-Image is dependent on the acceptance of others, thus always changing since one’s morals and ethics do not stay the same as time goes on. Influence of others play a role on how one tends to view themselves and people around them, by either being forced to conform to a country’s lifestyle, completing constant tasks to keep up with society’s demands, or being able to be content with oneself rather than being blinded of the onslaught of constant expectations.

Chapter 12 social psychology cover how we affect one another’s behaviors. Culture, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination attitude, and interpersonal attraction are all factors that contribute to behavior in a social setting. Understanding how we influence one another on a social level forces us to look at not only ourselves, but also look at how others affect the world we live in and why it is important to be able to identify these influences and the impact they have on our behaviors good or bad

In our society influence, is the power a person (or group) holds over a general population. Positive influence uses the power held over the population for an overall good, whether this be by helping others,being inspiring and well spoken. Positive influence is demonstrated by powerful people ,up to whom the population looks and aspires to be like.They display the traits above by creating and donating to charities, participating in social movements and challenging not only themselves but others to be better people . These traits influence society positively because when the general public see these idols and celebrities doing these things they are more likely to mimic them, and in turn will grow to become model citizens in the same

One of the theories that Fournier, et al. (2013, p.86) discuss in the article is the Social Norms Theory. The idea of the Social Norms Theory is that our perceptions of how other people think and act affect how we think and act. The theory focuses mainly on how perceptions of unhealthy behavior can lead to more unhealthy behavior, such as binge drinking

* Dr. Cialdini explained that commitments are more powerful when they are active; public; effortful; and viewed as internally motivated. The statement of the commentator is accurate because the motorcycle owners had made their commitment public by tattooing their commitment on their

There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups especially if people were to live and work together, it is likely that they need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours in order to get along and fit-in. Thus, we learnt to conform to rules of other people, the more people see others behaving in a particular way or making particular decisions, the more likely people will feel obliged to follow the suit. This is called conformity and can be defined in different ways, Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2014) stated it is the changing of one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. According to Deutsch and Gerard (1955), social influence should be distinguished into two types, the informational social influence and normative social influence. The occurrence of social influence has implied to many real life events, which has drawn many researchers to attention. This has lead many researchers to design distinct experiments to try and understand the cause of the conformity, whether conformity is situation dependent, and whether we are able to resist social influences.

First, let me offer my sincere condolences on the death of Rehteah Parsons, and commend you for seeking out evidence-based methods to reduce bullying. The heinous nature of the crimes against Rehteah and the humiliation she experienced after them only increase the gravity of the situation at hand.

These are social influences that aim to change the behavior of a person. He use to persuade her of unhealthy habits and perceived it as harmful. After months of this treatment, she began to lose control of herself. Amy was hospitalized and was reported that she had Emphysema. Doctors said it could be an early stage of a disease. Weeks later she was back at the emergency room for an adverse reaction to a medication.

“Social influence is the process by which the actions of an individual or group affect the behavior of others” (Feldman 495). These influences are strongly experienced by members in the group. Every group is unique and is mostly guided by a particular norm and behavior. An individual in a group passively or actively allows himself to be influenced by the group just to have a sense of belongingness. In the bid to prevent being excluded or rejected from a group, some individuals overtly adhere to the norms of the group. “Thus, people conform to meet the expectations of the group” (Feldman 495).

Normative influence primarily occurs in situations where an individual, when amidst others in a crowd, tend to go along with them primarily in order to be liked and accepted by them as part of their fraternity. Research has identified that normative inference normally occurs as an inborn human nature as human beings tends to associate themselves with others in order to maintain a good social contact and relationship with them. Ideally, normative influence is normally furthered by the need for an individual to increase their chances of surviving especially during adverse conditions. This entails that people may at times seem to agree with others just in order for them to appease themselves to them and avoid potential conflict of standing alone and standing out. In some situations normative influence may occur where individuals associate with complete strangers. In such cases, due to mutual fear for each other, an individual may naturally try to agree with the rest in order to avoid appearing as contradictory or controversial.