Mechanisms Of Social Influence Research Articles

Interpersonal influence and attitude change toward conformity in small groups: A social psychological model

Friedkin and Johnsen's interpersonal influence model (Friedkin, 1999; Friedkin and Johnsen, 1999) does not specify the mechanism of social influence, how they affect each other. I introduce some social psychological theories and bring those into Friedkin's model so that the emergence of social influence through the social psychological process is clearly described. At the same time, the possibility of reactance against the persuasion is introduced. Reactance plays a role for the people in the group to have similar but not identical attitudes.

Arousal, Capacity, and Intense Indoctrination

This article considers the process of intense indoctrination, specifying procedural conditions, internal states, mechanisms of social influence, and key output behaviors associated with extremely manipulative and coercive programs of attitude and value change. Most descriptions of intense indoctrination point out that emotional arousal and stress are integral features of such programs of systematic persuasion. This article focuses on the hypothesis that this arousal, coupled with other features of the indoctrination process, compromise the attentional capacity of indoctrinees and that this impairment of attentional capacity increases the impact of several social influence mechanisms in such settings. The research evidence relevant to this hypothesis is reviewed.

Intraorganizational Influence

This study explored the influence of communication networks on job-related opinions in a public organization. Theoretical discussion pointed out that opinions of one’s own work and opinions of the organization represent two types of job-related opinions that might be differently attuned to social influence. Moreover, discussion of social influence mechanisms has suggested that current measurement of positional social influence suffers from a serious conceptual problem. According to the empirical results, job-related opinions were affected by social influence after controlling for other relevant variables. Opinions of the organization were more vulnerable to social influence than opinions of one’s own work. Structural equivalence was the most prominent mechanism of social influence. This study offers an alternative method of measuring positional social influence.

Guilt and Social Influence

Research bearing on the role of guilt in social influence is reviewed in this chapter. Guilt is an emotion naturally suited to exploitation in the service of social influence, by virtue of its action-motivating aspects and its ability to be aroused by relationally significant others. Guilt can be a very powerful influence mechanism, as indicated by studies of guilt arousal in everyday life (where self-reports of behavioral change suggest that guilt commonly effects change), by studies of the relationship between transgressions and compliance (in which, a meta-analytic review reveals, relatively large effects of transgression on compliance are obtained under a variety of conditions), and by studies of hypocrisy-induction effects (which commonly are ascribed to dissonance but might equally well reflect guilt). However, guilt-based influence can fail quite dramatically; a meta-analysis of research on guilt-based appeals in persuasive messages reveals that, although more-explicit guilt appeals successfully arouse greater guilt than do less-explicit appeals, they are significantly less persuasive. Finally, recent research suggests that anticipated guilt feelings can play an important role in shaping conduct and hence may provide mechanisms of social influence.

Solomon Asch's Legacy for Group Research

Asch's work has had a profound impact on how psychologists think about and study social influence in groups. To appreciate this impact, we must go beyond his classic conformity experiments and consider his broader theoretical framework. This article examines 4 of Asch's ideas that have proven to be particularly influential in later efforts to understand social influence in groups: (a) Social interaction depends on individuals' ability to represent others' positions, define themselves as members of the same group, and regulate their behavior in terms of the norms and values of the group; (b) independence is critical to effective group functioning; (c) independence and conformity are not simply mirror images that can be explained in terms of a unitary psychological process; and (d) change of meaning is an important mechanism of social influence. Finally, Asch's role as a theorist and researcher in the wider area of group dynamics is considered.

Structural Learning: Attraction and Conformity in Task-Oriented Groups

This study extends previous research that showed how informal social sanctions can backfire when members prefer friendship over enforcement of group norms. We use a type of neural network to model the coordination of informal social control in a small group of adaptive agents confronted with a social dilemma. This model incorporates two mechanisms of social influence, informal sanctions and imitation. Both mechanisms vary with the strength of the social tie between source and target. Previous research focused on the effects of social sanctions. Here, we demonstrate a curvilinear effect of imitation on compliance with prosocial norms. Moderate doses of imitation reduce the coordination complexity of self-organized collective action and help the network achieve satisfactory levels of cooperation. High doses, however, undermine the agent-based learning required to find cooperative solutions. Increasing group size also diminishes compliance due to increased complexity, with larger groups requiring more imitation to overcome the coordination problem.

The Dissemination of Culture

Despite tendencies toward convergence, differences between individuals and groups continue to exist in beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. An agent-based adaptive model reveals the effects of a mechanism of convergent social influence. The actors are placed at fixed sites. The basic premise is that the more similar an actor is to a neighbor, the more likely that that actor will adopt one of the neighbor's traits. Unlike previous models of social influence or cultural change that treat features one at a time, the proposed model takes into account the interaction between different features. The model illustrates how local convergence can generate global polarization. Simulations show that the number of stable homogeneous regions decreases with the number of features, increases with the number of alternative traits per feature, decreases with the range of interaction, and (most surprisingly) decreases when the geographic territory grows beyond a certain size.

Social Information Processing and Social Networks: A Test of Social Influence Mechanisms

After identifying the implicit assumptions about social influence mechanisms and the social structural bases reflected in the social information processing literature, social network analysis concepts and structural models are used to clearly specify three alternative influence mechanisms. Simple interaction contact, norm enforcing cohesive groups, and the occupation of structurally equivalent positions or roles in an interaction structure are hypothesized as the structures underlying different social influence processes. The relative efficacy of these various structural configurations in predicting similarity of perception of and attitudes about organizational phenomena are then evaluated. While the evidence seems to indicate that the social influence of norm enforcing groups is most robust, multiple mechanisms appear to operate, sometimes simultaneously, for different kinds of perceptions. The limits of social information processing effects are discussed in light of the findings here of no significant effects on some perceptions.

Persuasive conversations between friends about health and safety precautions.

One hundred eighty-five conversations in which a college student attempted to convince a friend to adopt a health or safety precaution were examined. A detailed category coding system was developed to describe the content of such conversations and to answer nine specific questions about these interactions. Among other results, the data showed that subjects spend very little time describing the nature of the harm that might occur and usually speak of protection in dichotomous, all-or-none terms rather than acknowledging degrees of risk. Much time is spent discussing the correct actions to take and the problems faced in carrying out these actions. Initial and 2-month assessments of of persuasiveness found no significant relationships between the presence of specific themes and changes in intentions or behavior. The observed content of these conversations is discussed in relation to current theories of self-protective behavior and likely mechanisms of social influence.

Identifying mechanisms of adoption of tobacco and alcohol use among youth: The Bogalusa heart study

Network procedures revealed social influence mechanisms on alcohol and tobacco adoption. Children who smoke have best friends who smoke. Children who drink additionally develop drinking cliques. Smokeless tobacco is less social. Tobacco and alcohol adoption also spreads indirectly by imitation of an admired other's friends. Children's healthful programs must develop techniques which consider the sociability, visibility, social norms and public acceptance of the behavior, indirect nature of role models, and social support for non- or alternate use.

Contents of volume 1

Naturalistic observation and experimental studies in humans and other primates show that observing an individual in need automatically triggers helping behavior. The aim of the present study is to clarify the neurofunctional basis of social influences on individual helping behavior. We investigate whether when participants witness an emergency, while performing an unrelated color-naming task in an fMRI scanner, the number of bystanders present at the emergency influences neural activity in regions related to action preparation. The results show a decrease in activity with the increase in group size in the left pre- and postcentral gyri and left medial frontal gyrus. In contrast, regions related to visual perception and attention show an increase in activity. These results demonstrate the neural mechanisms of social influence on automatic action preparation that is at the core of helping behavior when witnessing an emergency.

Social standard setting: The achilles heel of informational accounts of therapeutic change

Two common clinical interventions-self-statements and modeling-usually thought of as being effective due to their informational components were compared in the treatment of children's fear of the dark. Some children were told that the experimenter would know the specific treatment implemented while other children were led to believe that no one would know the specific treatment they received. Results showed that when the treatments took place in a public context, children improved an average of 50 sec in dark tolerance. However, when implemented in a private context, children's dark tolerance decreased an average of 2 sec. A nonspecific public control group improved an average of 1 sec in dark tolerance. If the interventions were effective because of new information learned, then the private treatments should have been as effective as the public treatments in changing behavior. The results are interpreted as showing that in this situation these therapies were effective due to specific social influence mechanisms. When public, the treatments appeared to set up social criteria for improved performance. These results and other related research suggest that many common clinical interventions, usually thought of as being effective because of new information learned, may operate through such social mechanisms. Therapeutic researchers should be aware of such “specific” social influence processes in addition to the “nonspecific” social influence processes usually controlled for in therapy research.

Communication structure and the locus of the reinforcing function of speaking in reply

The communication structure of experiments on the reinforcing function of speaking in reply is designed to permit the subject to reply to the other person while rigorously excluding information feedback, and consequently it is unlikely that a social influence mechanism could be the locus of the reinforcing effect. It is possible to design a communication structure which increases the opportunity for social influence within the no-feedback structural constraint. An experimental group having such a structure (N = 50) was compared with a control group which followed the standard reply procedure (N = 50), and the results unambiguously confirmed that the locus of the reinforcement effect does not lie in social influence or the opportunity for social influence.