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SOCIAL INTERACTION AND INFLUENCE

Social psychology is the study of how people think and feel about their social world and how they interact and influence one another. Social psychologists trying to answer these questions begin with the basic observa tion that human behavior is a function of both the per son and the situation. Each individual brings a unique set of personal attributes to a situation, leading differ ent people to act in different ways in the same situa tions. But each situation also brings a unique set of forces to bear on an individual, leading him or her to act in different ways in different situations. While forming impressions of other people we should take into account not only the first information we receive, but be able to perceive new data. Stereotypes also influ ence our behavior and social interactions. Attitudes which are likes and dislikes – favorable or unfavorable evaluations of and reactions to objects, people, events or ideas, help us make sense of the world, express our values or reflect our self concepts, help us feel that we are part of a social community, protect us from anxiety or threats to our self esteem and even enable us to pre dict a person’s future behavior. There are a lot of

things that can affect us. We are influenced by social norms, implicit rules and so on.

To most people the term social influence connotes di rect and deliberate attempts to change our beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. Parents attempt to get their children to eat spinach;televisioncommercialsattempttoinduceustobuy a particular product, vote for a particular candidate; a re ligious cult attempts to persuade a person to abandon school, job, or family and serve a “higher” mission.

We react to such social influences in many ways. In some cases – termed compliance by psychologists – we comply with the wishes of the influencer but do not neces sarily change our beliefs or attitudes. For example, the child eats spinach but may continue to dislike it. In other cases, termed internalization, we are convinced that the influencer is correct and change our beliefs and attitudes. And in some cases we resist the influ ence, possibly even showing overt rebellion.

But many forms of social influence are indirect and unintentional; for example, just being with other people can affect us in diverse ways. Even when we are alone we continue to be influenced by social norms – implicit rules and expectations that dictate what we ought to think and how we ought to behave; these range from the trivial to the profound. Social norms tell us to face forward when riding in an elevator and how long we can gaze at a stranger before being considered rude. More profoundly, social norms can create and maintain racism, sexism, or homophobia. As we will see, compli ance with orders or requests often depends on our un witting allegiance to social norms.

Social interaction and influence are central to com munal life. Cooperation, altruism, and love all involve social interaction and influence. Most studies of con formity and obedience focus on whether or not individ uals overtly comply with the influence. In everyday life, however, those who attempt to influence us usual ly want to change our private attitudes, not just our

public behaviors, to obtain changes that will be sus tained even after they are no longer on the scene. As noted such change is called internalization. Certainly the major goal of parents, educators, clergy, politi cians and advertisers is internalization, not just com pliance. In general, internalization is obtained by an influence source who either (a) presents a persuasive message that is itself compelling or (b) is perceived as credible, as possessing both expertise and trustworthi ness. We are going to examine influence that per suades rather than coerces.

Intensive research began in the late 1940s at Yale University, where investigators sought to determine the characteristics of successful persuasive communi cators, successful communications, and the kinds of people who are most easily persuaded. As research on these topics continued over the years, a number of in teresting phenomena were discovered but few general principles emerged. The results became increasingly complex and difficult to summarize, and every conclu sion seemed to require several “it depends” qualifica tions. Beginning in the 1970s, however, interest in in formation processing gave rise to theories of persua sion that proved a more unified framework for analyz ing persuasive communication.

Among the new approaches were several variations of cognitive response theory. This theory proposes that persuasion induced by a communication is actually self persuasion produced by the thoughts that the person generates while reading, listening to, or even just antici pating the communication. These thoughts can be about the content of the communication itself or about other aspects of the situation, such as the credibility of the communicator. If the communication evokes thoughts that support the position being advocated, the individual will move toward that position; if the communication evokes unsupportive thoughts (such as counter argu ments or disparaging thoughts about communicator), the

individual will remain unconvinced or even shift away from the position being advocated.

A number of studies support this theory and ex plain what had previously been a puzzling observation: that the persistence of opinion change is often unrelat ed to an individual’s memory of the arguments that produced that change.

Although much research on persuasion has been conducted in laboratories, there has always been an in terest in the practical applications of the findings. An example is an educational program designed to inocu late junior high school students against peer pressure to smoke. High school students conducted sessions in which they taught seventh graders how to generate counter arguments. For example, in role playing ses sions they were taught to respond to being called “chicken” for not taking a cigarette by saying thing like “I’d be a real chicken if I smoked just to impress you”. They were also taught to respond to advertise ments implying that liberated women smoke by saying, “She’s not really liberated if she is hooked on tobacco”. Several inoculation sessions were held during seventh and eighth grades, and records were kept of how many of the students smoked from the beginning of the study through the ninth grade. The results showed that inoculated students were half as likely to smoke as students at a matched junior high school that used a more typical smoking education program.

Nearly every group to which we belong has an im plicit or explicit set of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that it considers correct. Any member of the group who strays from these social norms risks isolation and social disapproval. Thus, through social rewards and punishments the groups to which we belong obtain compliance from us. In addition, if we respect or ad mire other individuals or groups, we may obey their norms and adopt their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in order to be like them, to identify with them. This process is called identification.

Reference groups are groups with which we identi fy; we refer to them in order to evaluate and regulate our opinions and actions. Reference groups can also serve as a frame of reference by providing us not only with specific beliefs and attitudes but also with a ge neral perspective from which we view the world – an ideology or set of ready made interpretations of social issues and events. If we eventually adopt these views and integrate the group’s ideology into our own value system, the reference group will have produced inter nalization. The process of identification, then, can pro vide a bridge between compliance and internalization.

An individual does not necessarily have to be a member of a reference group in order to be influenced by its values. For example, lower middle class individ uals often use the middle class as a reference group.

Life would be simple if each of us identified with only one reference group. But most of us identify with several reference groups, which often leads to conflict ing pressures. Perhaps the most enduring example of competing reference groups is the conflict that many young people experience between their family refer ence group and their college or peer reference group.

Many of our most important beliefs and attitudes are probably based initially on identification. Whenev er we start to identify with a new reference group, we engage in a process of “trying on” a new set of beliefs and attitudes. What we “really believe” may change from day to day. The first year of college often has this effect on students; many of the views they bring from the family reference group are challenged by students and faculty from very different backgrounds. Students often “try on” the new beliefs with great intensity and strong conviction, only to discard them for still newer beliefs when the first set does not quite fit. This is a natural process of growth. Although the process never really ends for people who remain open to new experi ences, it is greatly accelerated during the college

years, before the individual has formed a nucleus of permanent beliefs on which to build more slowly and less radically. The real work of college is to evolve an ideological identity from the numerous beliefs and at titudes that are tested in order to move from identifi cation to internalization.

As noted earlier, one advantage of internalization over compliance is that the changes are self sustain ing. The original source of influence does not have to monitor the individual to social influence, but in prac tice it is not always possible to disentangle them.

So, there are many forms of social influence. We respond to such influence by complying with the wish es of an influencer, or by changing our beliefs and atti tudes. We are also influenced by stereotypes, social norms, reference groups and so on. We may be under pressure of some authority, a majority or situational forces. The reactions can be different as well – from obedience to aggressiveness and rebellion. In attempt ing to understand others and ourselves we should think about our social environment, be ready to social interaction and influence.

Rita L. Atkinson, Richard C. Atkinson, Edward E. Smith, Daril L. Bem, Susana Nolen Hoeksema. Hilgard’s Intro duction to Psychology. Harcourt College Publishers, USA, 2000, pp. 606–607, 625, 640–641, 662–663, 665–667.

COMPREHENTION CHECK

Exercise 1. Say whether these statements are true (T) or false (F), and if they are false, say why.

Exercise 2. Read the text again, divide it into logical parts, and give names to each of them.

Exercise 3. Make up questions to the following an swers.

1.

of how people think and feel about their social world.

2.

Stereotypes do.

3.

Favorable and unfavorable evaluations of and reactions to objects, people, events or ideas.

4.

we do not necessarily change our beliefs and at titudes.

5.

it depends on our unwitting allegiance to social norms.

6.

Internalization is.

7.

In the late 1940s.

8.

how to generate counter arguments.

9.

10.

through social rewards and punishments.

11.

if we eventually adopt these views and integrate the group’s ideology into our own system.

12.

“try on” the new beliefs with great intensity and strong conviction.

13.

the long term stability of the induced beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Exercise 1. Match the English word combinations in the left hand column with the Russian equivalents in the right hand column.

Exercise 2.

A.Fill in the columns with the proper deriv atives of the following words, whenever possible.

B.Put a suitable word from the box above into each gap.

1.The results showed that the amount of opinion change produced by the ___ was significantly cor related with both the supportiveness of partici pants’ reactions to the communication and with their later recall of those reactions.

2.In a series of classic studies on ___, Stanley Mil gram demonstrated that ordinary people would

___ an experimenter’s order to deliver strong elec tric shocks to an innocent victim.

3.Nine strong arguments should be more ___ than three strong arguments because the more strong ar guments the individual encounters, the more sup portive cognitive responses he or she will generate.

4.Students often “try on” the new beliefs with great intensity and strong conviction, only to ___ them for still newer beliefs.

5.The original source of influence does not have to ___

the individual to maintain the induced changes.

6.Practitioners are concerned to train children and their families in order to produce useful (produc tive, ___, happy) adults.

7.Although behaviorism ___ as early as the 1930s, its practical application did not become widespread until the 1950s.

8.The more mature a student is the stronger his ___

to gain academic success is.

Exercise 3. Arrange the following words in pairs of

(a)synonyms and (b) antonyms:

a)coerce, allegiance, postpone, conform, premature, qualification, untimely, compel, correspond, delay, reservation, loyalty;

b)explicit, inauthentic, obedience, intentional, per suade, credible, delinquent, incredible, dissuade, innocent, implicit, real, disobedience, unwitting.