Social influence refers to the way individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are shaped by others. This concept encompasses a variety of types, such as Kelman’s compliance, identification, and internalization, which refer to different levels of individual acceptance of social influence. It also includes phenomena like conformity, minority influence, self-fulfilling prophecy, and social contagion, each with its unique dynamics and implications.
However, social influence can also take on negative forms, such as psychological manipulation, abusive power, propaganda, and hard power. These forms often involve the exploitation or coercion of individuals.
Various factors can impact the extent and nature of social influence, including antecedents like social impact theory and Cialdini’s Weapons of Influence, as well as social structures like unanimity and status. Cultural and emotional influences also play a significant role, shaping conformity and behavior within social structures.
Research in this field explores topics such as the influence of social networks, cognitive limits on information transmission, challenges in social media[1] analysis, and the pursuit of a causal understanding in social influence.
Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. Typically social influence results from a specific action, command, or request, but people also alter their attitudes and behaviors in response to what they perceive others might do or think. In 1958, Harvard psychologist Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence.
- Compliance is when people appear to agree with others but actually keep their dissenting opinions private.
- Identification is when people are influenced by someone who is liked and respected, such as a famous celebrity.
- Internalization is when people accept a belief or behavior and agree both publicly and privately.
Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard described two psychological needs that lead humans to conform to the expectations of others. These include our need to be right (informational social influence) and our need to be liked (normative social influence). Informational influence (or social proof) is an influence to accept information from another as evidence about reality. Informational influence comes into play when people are uncertain, either from stimuli being intrinsically ambiguous or because of social disagreement. Normative influence is an influence to conform to the positive expectations of others. In terms of Kelman's typology, normative influence leads to public compliance, whereas informational influence leads to private acceptance.
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