PSY 345 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: W. M. Keck Observatory, Tupperware, De Beers
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Social Influence, Social Networking, and Advertising
Introduction
- Social Influence – a person’s attitudes, cognitions, or behaviors that are changed by the
doings of another or groups of others
- “It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other
people’s lives.” - Clint Eastwood
- Social influence may sound similar to “attitude change,” but is different in a simple way
– a change in attitude is when a person alters a consistent social cognition they have
formed over time (based on experience)
o A person can change their attitude about something or someone based on
experience, but not change their behavior (i.e. “I have to stop eating unhealthy
food” while eating McDonald’s)
- Social influence involves a change in behavior or social cognitions based on experience
with other people – if a person using some form of social influence on you, it will usually
alter your behavior and thoughts
- The authors discuss 6 basic social principles that influence human behavior…
o 1) Receiving gifts or favors (reciprocity)
o 2) Consistency or loyalty to others
o 3) Follow the lead or imitating the behavior of others
o 4) Being receptive and open to familiar people that we like
o 5) Obedience to authority or social power
o 6) Directing our attention to obtaining resources that are scarce (something rare is
more attractive)
Goal Directed Nature of Behavior – human behavior is goal oriented
- 1) We strive to be affiliated with other humans and form meaningful social relationships
as a social goal
- 2) We try to be as accurate as possible when making decisions so that we can further our
goals (without setbacks)
- 3) We are consistent in our behaviors, beliefs, and commitments in order to further
approach our desired goals
- We have trouble NOT behaving in a way that forms relationships with people around us
and strengthens social connections. Our socially motivated behavior is goal oriented to
do this, and it is difficult to not behave in a way that is most socially adaptive (maybe
even impossible)
- “The sense of obligation to reciprocate a gift, the tendency to value scarce items, the
inclination to turn to similar others or to experts in times of uncertainty, and the desire to
say “yes” to people we like all have likely evolutionary bases (Sundie, Cialdini,
Griskevicious, & Kenrick, 2006)” (p. 388)
- Human evolution is social in nature
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- A very sad example of how we literally need social relationships to live comes from
certain overcrowded orphanages in Romania, where infants received little to no social
interaction each day (other than feeding, changing, and other day-to-day needs).
Unfortunately, the infant mortality rate for these children was 3x what was normal with
other infants in the same region who were receiving more nurturing social interactions
from caregivers. This suggests that social interaction is actually something we need to
survive.
Influencing Compliance – one person’s goals are further influenced by another person’s
actions, cognitions, or attitudes
- Businesses, whose economic/financial success comes from inducing compliance in
customers, rely on professionals who can successfully get customers to follow their
socially oriented goals…
- Advertising, marketing, sales, etc. all rely on the fact that humans have adapted social
behavior towards maintaining relationships with others (one of the fundamental goals of
most people)
- People who want your money know that you might have trouble saying “NO” in certain
situations, that you may be more likely to buy something if they exploit some social
“weakness” of yours
- A lot of social “techniques” that are used are well established ways in which a person is
able to predict the most common behavioral response that people will display in any
given situation
- Professor scammed for $20 in Las Vegas
- Reciprocity
o The norm for behavior is to return the form of behavior that one received from
others
o Heavily influence by culture
o This builds trust in relationships
o Triggers obligation
o Reciprocation Rule: one should be more willing to comply with a request from
someone who has previously provided a favor or concession
o Activates social obligation: if even a small gift is offered, effect of the gift makes
receiver returning the favor likely
o Berry and Kanouse Study (1987)
▪ In a mailed survey to various medical doctors, where compensation was
included with the survey, researchers wanted to see the rate at which
participating doctors completed the survey and/or cashed the checks
▪ The results showed a reciprocity effect with ~90% of doctors (who cashed
the check) completing the survey and mailing it back
▪ Though most doctors who cashed the checks tended to response to the
survey, ~10% of the doctors who cashed the checks, however, did not
respond, were ineligible for the experiment, or refused to complete the
survey
▪ 65% of doctors (who didn’t cash the check) didn’t complete the survey
▪ This demonstrates an interesting effect of the reciprocity rule – that when
provided with compensation before the task, people are generally wiling to
comply with a return request
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o Reciprocity has roots in the development of human civilization, since the trading
of goods or services, across history has been vital to our success as a species.
o Reciprocity allowed individuals or social groups to give a readily available
resource they had to another individual or social group in exchange for a quantity
of resource that was unavailable
o This “even exchange” promotes cooperation and competition in social
interactions
Social Influence Techniques
- Door in the Face Technique
o Offer an extreme request to begin with that will likely be denied by other person.
Then offer a more reasonable request, likelihood of this 2nd request being returned
with favorable odds
o Example: Pawn Stars
- That’s Not All Technique
o Target seller offers a deal, and then immediately offers the same deal before the
customer can respond, only with something extra (to “seal the deal”)
- Human behavior is so oriented towards reciprocating favors or gifts, which a person is
unlikely to ask for help in the 1st place, if they don’t feel that they can give an
appropriate/equal amount of goods/services in return to the person helping them…
- There seems to be an emotional element to human reciprocity – guilt, shame,
embarrassment – all uncomfortable/unpleasant internal states that arise when a gift/favor
is given and not returned
- Social Validation
o The underlying principle behind attribution theory, social validation is the
tendency for people to seek to know behaviors of others and are willing to
validate their behaviors compared to others
- Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954)
1) People have a constant drive to evaluate themselves
2) People will prefer to use objective cues to make these evaluations
3) If objective cues not available, people rely on social comparison instead
4) In doing so, people look to similar others as comparison
o Generally this effect is noted when a person is unclear about a given action in a
situation
▪ Other people’s actions can be valuable source of information for
unfamiliar behaviors/events (if you are in a foreign country, don’t speak
the language). In addition, “following the crowd” generally is perceived
as a safer behavior than going against the crowd
▪ “Do you smell something burning?”
▪ “What do you think about that person’s girlfriend/boyfriend?”
▪ “Is it cold in here?
▪ Despite the facts that we can come up with our own answer to these
questions without resorting to asking other people, we still tend to do this
to validate our own feelings with those of others
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Document Summary
Social influence a person"s attitudes, cognitions, or behaviors that are changed by the doings of another or groups of others. It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people"s lives. Social influence may sound similar to attitude change, but is different in a simple way. Social influence involves a change in behavior or social cognitions based on experience with other people if a person using some form of social influence on you, it will usually alter your behavior and thoughts. Goal directed nature of behavior human behavior is goal oriented. 1) we strive to be affiliated with other humans and form meaningful social relationships as a social goal. 2) we try to be as accurate as possible when making decisions so that we can further our goals (without setbacks) 3) we are consistent in our behaviors, beliefs, and commitments in order to further approach our desired goals.
