Social Psychology: Social Influence

Each experiment has helped gain insight into the effects of conformity on human behavior. I am not certain if these two experiments can be generalized in a sense, but they do give us an idea as to the social implications of conformity and obedience. I have learned that social situations can have an enormous influence on behavior causing normal functioning people to behave badly despite knowing that the situation will produce negative

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.

In social psychology, social influence is a process where someone’s beliefs, thoughts and behaviour change by being exposed to beliefs, thoughts and opinions of others. It manifests in several forms, such as obedience, compliance and conformity. All these types of social influence have been studied by numerous researchers who investigated the reasons why people conform to social norms and obey to authorities, such as Milgram’s classic studies on obedience. His experiments support the popular idea of ‘banality of evil’ –Hannah Arendt (1963)’s famous phrase referring to the capability to accomplish dreadful things out of banal reasons–, revealing that people conform submissively and thoughtlessly to the orders that authorities deliver, no

According to the “Social Forces” note sheet, social forces are the most influential aspect of society and they are big part of everyone's everyday life The many social forces can all come into play throughout

Participants/Subjects of experiment one: Seventy-one male and female undergraduates. .A11 had taken psychological tests approximately 2 weeks earlier.

Imagine a thirteen year old middle school girl, wearing Guess boots and an Abercrombie hood in order to fit in. Visualize a thirty five year old man listening to the top forty radio stations and watching American Idol, so he can have something to add to the discussion with his co-workers over coffee break. The various types of behaviours stated before are pertained to as conformity. Conformity refers to the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours are influenced by other individuals. Except, how do these necessities manipulate a being? Social psychologists have conducted an assortment of experiments and concluded that, through a range of forms of social influence, groups can alter their members’ personality.

Conformity is a type of social influence which involves a change in behaviour and belief of a minority to fit in with the group concerning real or imagined group pressures. This behaviour could be defined as the pressure to behave in ways that are viewed as acceptable by a particular group, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked. The main factor that influences conformity are social norms. Social Norms are a pattern of expected behaviour in certain situations either implicitly or explicitly. Conformity exists in two categories, normative influence where the individual’s desire is to gain social approval and acceptance from the group to make a favourable impression. And informational social influence where a person is looking for guidance in an ambiguous situation as the individual listens to other member 's views and opinions to be guided to an answer. Conformity is distinguished in three different types; Compliance is the most superficial type of conformity. It refers to a person who conforms publicly with the views and attitudes expressed by the group but still continue to privately disagree. This temporary short term behavioural change which often results normative social influence. For example, It is a student 's first day of college, but has arrived late and missed the induction to which he doesn 't know where to go. He then sees a group of students filing off towards a corridor and

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

A flaw that was encountered during the experiment was that during the first trial with candy, the presenter did not ask anyone if they would like to earn a piece of candy. During trial two and three, people would be asked if they would like to earn a piece of candy. Throughout trial one and two when there was no candy involved, citizens would be asked if they would like to complete a kind act. People were not asked this question throughout the third trial, however, because there needed to be one trial when the presenter didn’t speak because the presenter didn’t communicate during the first trial when there was

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

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.

Social influence is defined when a person's emotions, opinions, or behaviors are affected by others in a group. I noticed this concept in the scene at the beginning when all 12 juries were at the table. The jury was going around the room listening to each other opinion on why the teen was guilty or not. This scene is an example of social influence because one of the juries got up and explain to the rest of the jury how the teen was guilty. He went on explaining how the teen went to juvenile for throwing a rock at his teacher, how he was 14 years old and stole a car, and by explaining how he was arrest twice for trying to knife a kid. The man on the jury was going on and on about how he was a bad kid and the rest of the jury shook their head and agree with him. With his behavior changing and him getting up and sharing his opinion, he affected other people in the

Informational Influence and Normative Influence are both categorized under conformity in sociology. Informational is basically when we conform to others behavior because we believe it provides information about reality. It is often when we care about getting the right answer and trying to be rational. It also deals with the "Maybe they know something I don't know" phenomenon. An example, could be choosing to eat at a busier restaurant opposed to the empty one, or imitating the locals when outside your country. In contrast, Normative Influence is when we conform to others behavior because they expect us to. This is when we believe conforming may have positive consequences, such as approval or the enhancement of our reputation, or when we believe not conforming may have negative consequences, such as disapproval or punishment. An example of Normative Influence is laughing at a joke you don't get, or agreeing with an opinion you believe in others.

In pyschology conformity can be descibed as an indiviual’s tendency to follow the unspoken rules or behaviours of the social group to which he/she belongs to or wants to be apart of. Many psychologists including , Jenness (1932), Sherif (1935) both experimented in psychology, investigating conformity and group pressure. However, perhaps the most famous conformity experiment was done by Solomon Asch (1951) and his line judgment experiment. (McLeod 2007)

“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).