The Power of Social Influence

He theorized that perhaps the Germanic people were more obedient to authority than people from other countries.

We set out to test the obedience of people in different cultures. What he had hoped to do is test people’s reactions to authority figures in America, Britain, France, and Germany.

He hoped to find that the people in Germany were the most obedient to requests from authority figures.

His Experiment:

Two people entered the laboratory where the researcher was waiting in his lab coat. One person was selected to be the "learner" and one person was selected to be the "teacher". The "teacher" was told that this was an experiment designed to examine how shock could affect learning in a paired association task. The teacher read off a list of word pairs to the learner, who was strapped to an electrical chair in the next room over. Next, the teacher tested the learner by saying one half of the word pair, and the learner had to say the other half. Every time the learner made a mistake, the teacher zapped him and moved the shock machine up one level.

Question: How long will the teacher continue to shock the learner, and how high a voltage shock will they be willing to give?

30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300 330 360 390 420 450

Shock Shock Shock Shock Severe Shock

What percentage of subjects do you think would proceed at:

Strong Shock Level? ________ 85%

Intense Shock Level? ________ 75%

Danger Severe Shock Level? ________ 63%

What helped contribute to their perseverance in the task?

The lab-coated Researcher would prod people into compliance, despite hearing screams of agony from the "learner"

Prod 1: Please Continue

Prod 2: The experiment requires that you continue

Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue

Prod 4: You have no other choice: you must go on

Amazed at the high rates of compliance, Milgram abandoned his plan of cross-cultural comparisons.

But he did conduct a series of experiments to determine what factors were most important in obtaining compliance.

In his second experiment he had the "learner" state that he suffered from a "slight heart condition" and the researcher state that the shocks caused no permanent tissue damage.

However, total compliance still stayed at 65%

Milgram subsequently identified four factors which influenced compliance:

The victims emotional distance:

If "teachers" could not see or hear the "learner", full compliance was almost 100%

If "teachers" had to manually force the learner’s hand onto a shock plate before each trial, full compliance dropped to 30%

Closeness and legitimacy of the Authority

When researchers delivered prods by telephone, full compliance dropped to 21%

When the researcher was called out of the room, and a "clerk" took control of the experiment, compliance dropped to 20%

Institutional Authority

Experiment was originally carried out under the Yale university banner. Milgram moved the experiment to a different location and represented his lab as "Bridgeport Research Associates".

Full compliance dropped to 48%

Group Influence

Milgram had two more confederates also pretend to be "teacher".

When these two confederates refused to go on, and told the real subject to continue alone, 90% of the subjects refused to comply further.

Asch’s study on Conformity

How difficult is it to maintain one’s own opinion, when everybody around you holds a different opinion?

Student’s in the study were asked to make similarity judgements. When shown a "standard" line and asked to judge which of three other lines matched the standard, individuals picked the matching line 99% of the time.

What Asch (1955) did next was to test people in groups, where most of the people in the group were confederates of Asch. Sometimes the confederates chose the proper line, and sometimes they deliberately picked the wrong line. What would the real subjects pick when everyone else in the group chooses the mis-matched line?

75% of people tested agreed with the erroneous judgements at least once.

All together, 37% of the time people agreed with the erroneous judgements.

Two methods of Persuasion

The most effective method for persuasion depends primarily on who you are trying to persuade.

Analytical thinkers who are motivated to think about an issue are most influenced by the central route of persuasion.

Central route persuasion -- Persuasion that occurs when interested people focus on carefully built arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.

If we trying to persuade a non-analytical audience, or if the issue under discussion doesn’t automatically trigger deep thinking, a peripheral route of persuasion may be more effective.

Peripheral route persuasion: persuasion that occurs when people can be influenced by incidental cues, or associations with favorable attributes or behaviors. Peripheral route persuasion is associated with shallow thinking about an issue.

Three factors that can effect how persuasive a message is:

Message Content:

Is persuading people on an issue easier if you argue an extreme position or a position which doesn’t vary as much from current opinions?

Depends on the credibility of the speaker:

If speaker is highly credible, extreme positions can elicit more persuasion

If speaker is not highly credible, modest shifts in opinions are more easily obtained

Should your message be one-sided, or should you mention both sides of an argument?

Again, depends on your audience.

If you believe the audience will readily agree with your argument, and is unaware of opposing arguments, one-sided messages can be effective.

If you are arguing a contentious point, or you believe the audience is well informed on all points of view, then a two-sided messages are seen as more persuasive.

Message factors which influence persuasion (pg2)

If two people are arguing opposing sides of an issue, who has the advantage-- the person going first, or the person arguing last?

If the people immediately follow one another, the first information given is often recalled better (primacy effect).

However, if a decision is to be made concerning the argument immediately after hearing both sides, the information presented second will be more effective (recency effect).

To the extent time passes between the presentations of both arguments, and after the presentations are finished, neither side has a clear advantage.

Are arguments based on reason more effective than arguments based on emotion?

Again, this is audience dependent

Highly analytical audiences prefer to hear reason based arguments. Less-analytical audiences are more affected by emotional arguments.

However, both can be used effectively within an argument in order to achieve the most impact.

Messages associated with good feelings are more persuasive.

Janis, Kaye, and Kirschner (1965) -- demonstrated that people were more likely to be persuaded by a message when people were snacking while they read the argument.

Fear can also induce positive responses

Wilson et al (1987,88) -- Had doctors send patients who smoked an anti-smoking message which either highlighted the benefits of not smoking or the dangers of continued smoking. 30% of the patients receiving the fear-inducing letter attempted to quit while only 8% of the people receiving the positively worded letter attempted quitting.

Who is giving you the message?

Credibility: how trustworthy and expert an individual seems

credibility can refer to a person or a source.

Sleeper Effect: People often believe a piece of information more if they forget that the information came from a less than credible source.

Attractiveness: Physical appeal and similarity can help to influence us.

Multiple speakers: positively contribute to central route persuasive messages, but dilute the effectiveness of arguments relying on peripheral cues

How thoughtful is the audience?

If an audience is forewarned that someone is going to present them with an opinion which is different from the one they hold, they will often generate counter arguments and be a very difficult audience to persuade.

If you can catch people unawares with your argument, you will often be more effective. (Another example of the availability heuristic)

Distractions which partially occur the audience can make a message seem more effective by making them less likely to generate counter-arguments:

For example: Visuals which accompany candidates political ads .

Considering all of these factors together, it is clear that in order to be a persuasive speaker you must:

1. Understand who your audience is

2. Understand how the audience is going to react to you

Paying attention to these two factors will allow you to be the most effective persuasive speaker that you can be.

Conformity -- a change in behavior as a result of real or imagined group pressures.

Conformity can result in either compliance, in which the person publicly conforms while privately disagreeing, or acceptance,

in which the person both outwardly complies and inwardly agrees with the social norm

Muzafer Sherif’s early work on conformity

Sherif (1935, 1937) wanted to determine if social norms could be examined in a laboratory setting.

Day One : Students make distance judgements individually in a darkened room.

Days Two to Four : Students make distance judgements publicly in groups of three

Results: Students gave much more homogeneous distance judgements in groups, and this tendency increased from Day 2 to Day 4.

When Do People Conform ?

Group Size -- Groups of 3 to five people create greater conformity demands than groups of 2. However, increasing group size above five does not seem to significantly add to conformity pressures.

Unanimity : If all confederates make the same judgement, the subject will most likely state the same judgement. However, if at least one confederate disagrees with the majority, subject compliance will drop drastically. (Asch, 1955).

Cohesion Factors : To the degree people feel that group membership is desirable and rewarding, they will be more willing to conform to group norms.

Status: In general, people are more likely to conform with high status people and less likely to agree with marginalized or low status individual.

Public Response: When people’s behavior or opinions are publicly made, their is a greater pressure to conform to societal norms. If, however, a person has already made a public statement which indicates a view opposite of the social norm, this previous statement can stiffen resolve against caving into public pressure.

Resisting Social Pressure

Psychological Reactance : The tendency to act in a manner opposite of other people’s behavior in order to reassert a sense of personal freedom.

Reactance is especially likely in situations where we feel our behavior is being coerced by others.

Heilman (1976) : Increased petition signing rates by having petitioner tell people that someone else that "petitions should not be allowed to be distributed concerning this topic"

Gender: Men are statistically less likely to conform than women. However, this can be interpreted as saying women are more responsive to social situations, and more concerned with interpersonal relationships.

Personality Traits: Research has shown only weak evidence that specific personality traits influence the likelihood of conforming. Personality factors figure most prominently when their are only weak environmental cues on how to act.