Social Influence In Psychology

In 1951, Solomon Asch carried out several experiments on conformity. The aim of these studies was to investigate conformity in a group environment situation. The purpose of these experiments was to see if an individual would be swayed by public pressure to go along with the incorrect answer. Asch believed that conformity reflects on relatively rational process in which people are pressured to change their behaviour. Asch designed experiments to measure the pressure of a group situation upon an individual judgment. Asch wanted to prove that conformity can really play a big role in disbelieving our own senses.

Conformity refers to an individual’s behavior that is performed because of group pressure, even though that pressure might not involve a direct request. Many people want to think that they are conformist enough so that they are not looked upon as strange to others and nonconformist enough to demonstrate that they are capable of thinking by themselves. For many years, psychologists have been interested in human conformity. Usually when people are in groups, they behave according to how those in the group behave. That indicates that conformity can affect a person’s behavior and make a person do things that may be against their ethics, attitudes, and morals. The study of

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

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

Conformity is changing your behavior or beliefs in order to be correspondent with other satisfying the need to belong (Gilovich et al, 2012). According to psychologists, the need to belong is being part of a group, which leads to many benefits such as security, connections to potential mating partners, and resources (Gilovich et al, 2012). Conformity can be determined by two mechanisms: informational social influence and normative social influence. Psychologist, Sherif, demonstrated the influence of normative social influence in conformity using an Autokinetic effect where participants in this study were asked to estimate how much a stationary point in a dark room has moved. Results from the study showed that there was deviations in answers between the answers gave while participants were separated from everyone else contrasted with the answers they gave while in a gathering (Gilovich et al, 2012). Participants reported that reason for their adjustment in answers was because they were uncertain where the dot was actually moving and therefore they looked at their surroundings for the correct answer. (Gilovich et al, 2012). In order to properly understand how informational social influence is involved in the protest in Baltimore, it is important to take the some of the events in South Africa into

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

The researcher chose this project because the different reasons people conform to someone or something’s standards interests the researcher greatly. The person running this experiment would like to

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.

Informational Social Influence this theory consists of the need to analyze different the information and different points of view. When a person is found in an unknown environment, without sufficient information about it. That person will look at other people’s behavior to know what the social norm is and will then behave in a similar way. People need information about their environment to feel comfortable.

Solomon Asch was a psychologist that conduced numerous expirments designed to illustrate the increasing conformity within social groups. The experiments also invesigated the effect the number of people present within the group had one the conformity rate. Asch hypothesized, “ that the majority of the people would not conform to something obviosly wrong; however, when surrounded by (other) individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, 75% of them(the participant) will conform to the groups answer” (Watzlawick 1976)

“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).

All humans’ behavior is affected by social influences to some extent. The level of influence will vary from person to person, depending on the several factors, such as self-esteem, their level of self-awareness, morals, and values (Velden, 2007). People do many things to ensure they are accepted by the people in their group and to keep from being ostracized by individuals around them (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Individuals are usually guided by their own sense of what is right or wrong and will make logical decisions based on this. However, they will sometimes completely push their own individual identity

Human behaviour is the response to given stimuli, which are socially and environmentally affected. This response is something that can easily be influenced and shaped through many personal, situational, social, biological, mental factors. In this essay the case of social norms influencing human behaviour will be analyzed using previous studies. Social norms are part of a larger influential scale generally named as social influence. Social influence is the exercise of power that an individual or a group can use on other individuals or society in order to alter their attitudes, behaviours and lead them to a desired