Social Influences on Behavior

Cialdini and Trost (1998) mentions that there are many way in which social influences can be used to persuade others. In better understanding compliance with a request, six tendencies of human behavior play a major role in explain why other comply: reciprocity, returning a favor or service; consistency, keeping up with prior engagements or commitments; social validation, group acceptance, or normative influences; liking, what is desired or accepted; authority, conforming to rules established by individuals higher in a hierarchy; and scarcity, opportunities which are scarce or difficult to obtain. Social psychology views these six principles as the motivating factors that influence compliance (Cialdini, 2004).

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.

Additionally, Spector (1983) utilised Rotter’s scale on 157 students to evaluate whether conformity is linked with locus of control. He discovered that participants with a higher internal locus of control weren’t as likely to conform only in circumstances of normative social influence, where people adapt in order to be accepted, whereas there was no significant difference between the two groups in situations of informational social influence, where people conform for their need to be right. (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955) This finding proposes that normative social influence

Human beings are defined as ''social animals'' because in every aspects of life they live together, they form a variety of groups and improve relationships with each other. Interaction with others is a natural result of living in society. In the process of interaction, society and its rules has a social impact on each individual. If people face with any kind of social impact such as group pressure, great part of them show conformity by changing their behaviors, ideas, decisions in expected way. A person conforms if he or she chooses a course of action that a majority favors or that is socially acceptable. Some kind of conformity is natural and socially healthy but obeying all the norms, ideas, and decisions without thinking or accepting

Conformity has been extensively studied in social psychology, and three central motivations for conforming behavior are suggested: a desire to be accurate by properly interpreting reality and behaving correctly, to obtain social approval from others, and to maintain a favorable self-concept (Elsevier 140)

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.

Obedience and conformity have big impacts on the way we respond to our social groups and authority. Whether we have different opinions or fears from them, we tend to change our minds and go along with everyone else to fit in and be the norm. Social pressure, while it may not be talked about often, is something we deal with in our everyday lives and seem to have conformed to it as

As social creatures, we are greatly influenced by our environment and more specifically, our social environment. Conformity is one type of social influence that we are subjected to, whether it is real or imagined, and involves the way in which we change our beliefs or behaviors in order to fit in with a certain group (McLeod, 2007). Typically, conformity is used to describe an agreement to that of the majority position. Aronson (2012), describes conformity using three levels: compliance, identification, and internalization. Compliance is used to describe the behaviors of a person who is motivated by a desire to either gain a reward, or avoid punishment (Aronson, 2012). On the other hand, identification explains how sometimes individual’s responses

First, every individual has a desire to be correct. An individual stands to be correct and accurate in both their observations and judgments. It’s often, one depends on the social cues that are around to help in making interpretations of a given situation. It’s observed that, when a task that is not difficult is imposed to an individual, their morale to correctly do the task lessens the effect of a pressure from a group that answers it wrongfully (Basil 264). Even though each person answers differ, the subject knows the correct answer and feels less pressure to side with the group

A group is formed when two or more people come together for the sole purpose of achieving a common goal or objective. It is important to note that mostly, group members happen to be related to each other at a social or organizational level. In this text, I explore group dynamics, norms, conformity, as well as influence. In so doing, I will utilize the findings of a group observation exercise I engaged in recently. Literature from reliable sources will be used to substantiate my findings.

Alleviating the laidback behavior of a loafer in a group setting is crucial for shared responsibilities and tasks completion in the group. Also, lack of effort from a group member like Brian can be frustrating and can elicit the sucker effect among partners of a social loafer (Simms & Nichols, 2014). Various social loafing studies have examined the antecedents and preventions of social loafing with variables such as the effect of personal effort, motivation, the group size and expectations (Simms & Nichols, 2014). Each variable examined revealed that people who are well motivated in completing an assigned tasks are more likely to engaged in social facilitation when they are part of a group (Voyles, Durik, & Bailey, 2015). Also, people tends to contribute less personal effort and accountability to group tasks, when they feel that their individual efforts have little or no impact on the outcome of a group project (Voyles, Durik, & Bailey, 2015). If Brain assumes that his effort in the group is not essential to the team outcome, personally he assumes a lesser role and expect someone else to take action on task. Also, this diffusion of responsibility is experienced in the bystander effect where individuals have the tendency to decline rendering assistance to a person in trouble when other bystanders are present. Hence, motivating Brain by verbalizing the uniqueness of his contribution to the group can deter him from engaging in social loafing.

Social influence refers to changes in an individual’s own thought, belief, attitude and behaviours in accordance with other individuals or groups thoughts and feelings (Moussaid, Kammer, Analytis & Neth, 2013). There are three main forms of social influence, these includes conformity, compliance and obedience which has an impact on the daily lives of people in the society. Conformity can be referred to as when a person changes their attitudes to fit into the social norms of different groups. The concept of obedience takes place when an individual follow the instructions of others that they feel are more influential than them. Compliance can refer to a situation where an individual submits to other people’s requests. Psychologists have

Social influence is an essential focus of study for researchers and social psychologists. Social influence pertains to different methods utilized by individuals to impact the feelings, behaviors and beliefs of others through interpersonal relationship (Fiske, 2008). Also, some key concepts in the analysis of social influence include conformity, compliance, and obedience. Compliance refers to a change in performance in response to an overt or an obscure demand made by a different individual. Hence, compliance is viewed as a dynamic form of social influence due to the emphasis on intentionality in initiating a change in behavior. Also, compliance is conceptualized as a consequence of variations in internal belief, attitudes or emotional state of a person (Fiske, 2008). On the contrary, conformity denotes instances while individuals alter their attitudes, behaviors, beliefs and feelings to fit in a group norm. Hence, members of a group change their views and actions consequently. However, obedience exemplifies a shift in actions in response to a command from an authority figure.

George (1996) stated that individuals who reduce effort when performing collectively than when performing independently and where the individuals performance cannot be acknowledged as excellent and important are called as social loafing (Joseph & Timothy 2012). Social loafing is the characteristic of individuals in a part of their academic life. It may be seen as a failure to willingly satisfy the duties and commitments to others because of the perception of reduced social pressure. Yet, social loafer or free-rider without exerting effort in a team will gain benefits from the work of others as the outcome of the team performance is shared by the team members (Weldon & Mustari 1988, p. 33).

At a group level, there are group norms which are strong informal norms that specify appropriate and inappropriate behaviors and govern interactions between group members. Change will inevitably alter these sets of informal norms. Group cohesiveness although beneficial to an organization, can sometimes impede the necessity for change within an organization. The reason is the group will unite to protect its status quo and protect its own interests at the expense of other groups. Finally groupthink, which is the discounting of negative information within a group in order to agree, and escalation of commitment, which the continued pursuit of an action even though the group realizes its decision was wrong, will greatly cause resistance to change. This is due to the difficulty in changing the groups