Psychology 315 Ch. 8 Social Influence and Persuasion Part 1

Includes a wide variety of tactics designed to change behaviorOne of most common forms of social influence occurs when behavior is guided by social norms

The influence of social norms

Adherence/behavior change in response to a direct requestMost research on compliance has taken tactics used by salespeople, scam artists, and other "influence peddlers" and studied if they are as effective as claimed

Adherence to direct demand

Regulate social interactionPrevent social chaos - prevents social unpredictabilityProvide automatic guides for behavior - reduces the amount of thinking we have to do in situations

Solomon Asch and Muzafer Sherif Tried to understand why social norms so powerful, both studied conformity - interested in how easily people would conform and the factors that determined levels of conformity

Sherif – used the autokinetic effect – vision system wired to follow, detect movement, however different if you are in a dark room with a spot of light that is stationary the light will appear to move, the amount of movement varies by individualWanted to determine if norms would develop in a group and then persist as group membership changedConverging of judgments when the people are put in a room together with the light Sherif found that diverse judgments converged in a group and that the group norm persisted when new members joined (when asked to make judgment alone, variability in answers but over the course of several trials in the same room their judgments start to converge, if you take a person out and put a new person in the room they will eventually conform to, judgment forms over time, converges and carries on even when the people in the group are not the same) Due to the fact that people want to be right and look to others to get the right answer

Asch used line judgments to determine if characteristics of the group would affect conformity to an emerging norm When the participant had a “partner” they were less likely to conform Normative conformity – apprehensive of disapproval by disagreeing In the Asch approach, a single subject confronted an emerging majority who gave a clearly incorrect answer to a line judgment task, subject had to decide whether to go along with the incorrect group, or to trust his senses and break the majority – conformity was 37% of trials (though some people conformed more than others)Most participants conformed to an incorrect majority at least once (about ¼ of subjects did not conform at all, majority of people, about 1/3, conformed on 1-3 trials)

Group size – dramatic increase in conformity (to about 35%) as you increase group size up to 3-5 people then conformity level levels off Why might conformity start to go down at group sizes of 50 people – seems implausible that all those people give the incorrect answer, when more people less important to get along with all of them Group cohesiveness – tend to conform more in highly cohesive groups (i.e. friends), don’t want to go against cohesive group because more likely to trust your friends’ answers, don’t want to damage the relationship or threaten rewards Task importance and uncertainty – when stakes are high tend to conform more too Presence of an ally – as long as they get a different answer than the majority (even if it is incorrect) from an ally, less likely to go along with the majority and conform

Participants made judgments under conditions of high motivation (payment for correct judgments) or low motivation (no payment) Low motivation = low conformity High motivation = percentage of conformity goes up on difficult task (Sherif like task) because you can’t trust vision system, trust others to help you get the right answer so you can get the reward, however with easy task (Asch-like task) can trust your own visual information and so tend to go against the response of the crowd, decreasing conformity

The need to be rightThe need to be liked(One information based, one liking based reason)

On Sherif’s difficult autokinetic task, informational social influence causes conformity and participants are likely to privately accept their judgments (really think the light moved two inches)

On the simpler Asch line judgment task, normative social influence causes conformity and participants are unlikely to privately believe their public judgments

Descriptive norms indicate what people ordinarily do (i.e. littering in a park)Injunctive norms indicate what people ought to do. Injunctive norms exert a stronger influence on behavior (seeing someone cleaning up in a park, if even just one person can activate this norm then that will change behavior)

If we feel that the norm limits our freedom or choice à psychological reactance (psychological process that explains this)