Growing up from infant to
teenagers and proceeding to adultery, a person would interact with thousands of
people such as family, friends, teachers, colleagues and random people and we
must interact with them on daily basis. Daily interactions with other human
being provide ample opportunity for other people to directly or indirectly
influence one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This is social influence and
there are many form of social influence.
Conformity
Farouq and Andy are hanging out
with their friends. Then one time, Andy tell a joke to his friends. That joke
is dull and boring to Farouq but the rest laught to their heart content.
Looking at his friends laugh, Farouq laugh too. What happen to Farouq? He is
the victim of conformity
Conformity is changing one’s
behaviour to more closely match the actions of others. This phenomenon is
because of a few factor. The first reason is fear of being ridiculed or thought
as peculiar thus it is easier to conform with other people than being laugh at.
The second reason is because of a person want to fit into a group or also known
normative influence. The last reason is because the person believe that the
group is better informed tha he/she is. For example in an exam, you had choose
your answer. Because of uncertainty you took a peek at the candidates on your
left and right. Their answer both are the same but different with yours. So you
think that they are much more correct than you are so you tend to change your
answer. Unfortunately after you got your paper back, your answer were the
correct one and you feel stupid for copying other people answer.
Group Think
Groupthink occur when people
within a group feel that it is more important to maintain the group
cohesiveness or harmony than to consider the facts reastically.
This video
are the perfect example for groupthink. The “plastics” are telling Katy all the
rules they have in order for her to sit with them. These rules allow the girls
to have a cohesive relationship. By establishing rules like you can only wear
ponytails once a week, only wear jeans and track pants on Fridays, asking the
rest of the group if someone can sit with them, or asking what guys you can
like is suppose to minimize the conflict between the girls in the group. Katy
must have her own opinion on this rules but she kept to herself to maintain the
group harmony even though the harmony would eventually corrodes later on in the
movie because of the rules.
Group Behaviour
Interestingly,a
group can alter the behaviour of a person just like Conformity and Groupthink.
Fortunately, there are more example of social influence in a group.
The first one is Group Polarization which is
define as A phenomenon wherein the decisions and opinions of people in a group
setting become more extreme than their actual, privately held beliefs. Example
in a group of geeks, they have a discussion on how excited are they on the
upcoming Batman Vs Superman movie. After the discussion, they tend to appear
much more excited on the movie than ever. Group Polarization is thought to be
due to both Normative Influence and Informative Influence.
Sometimes, the success or a
failure of a person depend on the group that the person blends in. If a task is
perceived as easy ; the presence of other people seems to improve the
performance. If a task is perceived as difficult; the presence of other people
seem to give a negative impact on the performance. The positive influence of
others on performance is called Social Fasilitation. The negative influence of
others on performance is called Social Impairment. Everybody will have one friend
that like to be lazy in a group assignment. The psychological term that we use
for these lazy people is Social Loafer. Social Loafer tend to be lazy in group
most probably because the evaluation is done on the group as a whole. But if a
personal task is given on the Loafer, the loafer will work harder because the
evaluation is focus on one person only. That is the reason why they like to be
lazy working in a group.
Compliance
Compliance occurs when people
change their behaviour as result of people directing for the change. Compliance
is based on the study of consumer psychology but can also be applied on social
influence.There are four ways of compliance and these are mostly applied by
salesman.
4 Ways of Compliance:
1) Foot-In-Door
:- It happen when a person ask for a small commitment and after you comply with
it, they ask for a bigger commitment. For example, Your neighbour wish to
borrow your bicycle. Without hesitating you agree with him/her but after seeing
you comply with the small commitment he ask to borrow your motorcycle. Since
you are to young and dumb you agree because you already comply with the small
commitment. You are the victim of this first technique.
2) Door-In-The-Face
:- A person ask for a huge commitment and after you refused, they ask for
smaller commitent. For instance, your neighbour ask for a car,but after he
refused you ask for a bicycle instead but in truth the bicycle is your goal.
3) Low
Ball Technique :- Used in sales and other styles of persuasion to offer
products or services at a bargain price in order to first attract a buyer, but
then adds on additional expenses to make the purchase less of a bargain than
originally thought. This is the technique often seen in car sales when the
salesperson quotes a low price for the basic car, but then tacks on options,
extended warranties, service packages, etc. to end in a much higher price tag
than was originally quoted.
4)
That’s-Not-All
Technique :- A sales technique in which the persuader makes an offer and then
adds something extra to make the offer look better before the target person can
make a decision
Obedience
Changing one behaviour at the direct order of an authority figure. This is found by Stanley Milgram in his research (search about it). The simple example of obedience is when a dictator gave out an inhumane order, the citizens or the person that received the order would do it out of fear to the authority. Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up. People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and / or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school and workplace.
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