Social Influence PDF

**What is social influence?** - ***Normative social influence*** - Pressure to conform to the positive expectations of other people and the perceived \'norms of the group (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955) - ***Informational social influence*** - People want to be correct and accur...

**What is social influence?** - ***Normative social influence*** - Pressure to conform to the positive expectations of other people and the perceived \'norms of the group (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955) - ***Informational social influence*** - People want to be correct and accurate so accept information from others   **Referent Informational Social Influence** - Tajfel & Turner (1979) argue this ***dual process dependency model of social influence*** is flawed - Social identity perspective: - We adhere to group norms because we feel that the group is part of us - People conform to the group norm because they are group members   **Emergence of social norms** - Provide a reference frame within which to locate our own behaviour (e.g sherif, 1935, 1936, 1961); supported by MacNeil & Sherif (1976) - Descriptive norms and injunctive norms can influence behaviour in different ways (Smith, Louis & Abraham, 2017) - Norm is true group phenomenon (Turner, 1991)   **Asch (1951) \"Perceptual judgement task\"** - 7-9 male participants but only one true participant - Across 18 trials, confederates gave incorrect responses on 12 - \'Average\' conformity rate= 35% - 1/4 showed no conformity   **Asch Updated** - Asch\'s results replicated without confederates (Mori & Arai, 2010) - Participants conformed to robot\'s erroneous line judgements (Ullrich et al., 2018)   **Do Asch\'s findings still hold when participants are paid for correct answers? (Franzen & Mader, 2023)** - Found an average error rate of 33% - Introducing monetary incentives reduced the error rate to 25%, indicating that while incentives lower errors, social influence remains significant. - In the political opinion tasks, a conformity rate of 38% was observed, suggesting that group pressure extends to political opinions.   **Social media as a platform for social influence** - People align with the majority opinion on social media to gain acceptance or avoid criticism, even if they privately disagree. - Minority influence possible due to status and echo chambers amplify minority voices - Fear of being \'cancelled\' leads to conformity, as individuals seek to adhere to perceived social norms.   **Examples of contemporary conformity** - **Tiktok trends and challenges** - Why do people conform to viral trends - FOMO - Social validation - Social norm enforcement - Content exposure and body dissatisfaction (Blackburn and Hogg, 2024)   **AI-driven social environments may influence moral decision-making just as much as human groups (Bocian et al., 2024)** - **Study 1 (N = 103):** participant judged moral character privately, then later in a group with rea humans. 43% changed their moral judgments under group pressure. - **Study 2 (N = 138):** Used VR with group pressure from either human-controlled or AI-controlled avatars. Moral conformity still occurred (28%), with no difference between human and AI influence. - Both human and nonhuman groups can shape moral character judgments   **Examples of contemporary compliance** - **Influencers as compliance agents** - Tiktok users grew by 87.1% in 2020 - Reciprocity - giveaway culture - Social proof - trend credibility - Scarcity - limited time trends and \'hype drops\' - **Algorithmic compliance** - From benign to extreme content - Compliance with \'For You\' recommendations? - Promotion of compliance with more radical content?   **Obedience Studies (Milgram, 1965; 1974) \"Understand the effects of punishment on learning\"** - Two participant - one \'learner\' , one \'teacher\' - Shock generator - 30 switches - 15-450 volts in 15 volt increments with verbal descriptions SLIGHT SHOCK TO DANGER - SEVERE SHOCK XXX - Teacher (naïve participant) must administer learning test to leaner in the other room (confederate) - Correct answer - move on to the next item; incorrect answer - electric shock is delivered - 65% went to 450 volts; all went to 300   **Milgram Replicated and Identity Based Obedience (Burger, 2009; Reicher, Haslam & Smith, 2012)** - 70 adults participated in a replication of Milgram\'s Experiment 5, stopping at 150 volts when the learner first protested. - Participants were told they could leave at any time and still receive payment (50\$) - Helps explain real-world acts of compliance, from workplace hierarchies to extremist movements. - Acts of harm and brutality occur when people identify with leaders and their cause (Reicher, Haslam & Smith, 2012)   **Milgram Replicated in VR** **Slater et al. (2006)** - 34 participants ordered to deliver electric shocks during a word pair task (23 visual, 11 hidden) - HC administered all 20 shocks, VC - 17 gave all 20, 3 gave 19 then 18, 16, 9 by one person each) - High correlation found between Autonomic Perceptions Questionnaire responses and physiological measures   **Revisiting Obedience: Challenges to the Agentic state in VR studies** - Recent critiques (e.g Haslam, Reicher & Millard, 2015; Haslam & Reicher, 2018; Hollander & Turowetz, 2017) argue that obedience is not purely about passive submission to authority figure and the perceived legitimacy of their cause. - Gonzalez -franco et al., (2018) providing new insights into how people respond to authority in controlled digital environments.   **Deindividuation (Festinger et al., 1952; Zimbardo, 1970)** - Zimbardo drew on Le Bon\'s work on anonymity in the crowd and Festinger\'s concept of deindividuation - Loss of personal responsibility - Loss of identity - Less self-conscious - Reduced concern for consequences of ones actions   **Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; 1986)** - \'...two or more individuals who share a common social identification of themselves or...perceive themselves to be members of the same social category.\" (Turner, 1982, p.15) - Social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE) by Reicher, postmes & spears (1995) argues that anonymity and reduced identifiability in group settings shift individuals from s personal identity to s social identity, enhancing conformity to group norms and behaviours.   **SIDE and online behaviour** - Increased private self-awareness, reduced public self-awareness \> leads to high self-disclosure online - Disinhibition occurs even with identifiable users - Online behaviour follows social norms from active group identity, rather than being purely anti-normative - Polarisation effects strengthen ingroup attachment and intensify social influence - Users dissociate from real-life identity, adopting social identity online, which fosters empowerment and group driven behaviour