Social Influence

In this topic, you learned how social psychologists have identified important examples of social influence, or ways that an individual’s actions are changed by the presence or actions of others. Humans have a natural tendency to conform, or to match their behavior to that of those around them. As experiments like those of Asch have demonstrated, it can be very difficult for people to resist pressures to conform, but small cues, such as one other person disagreeing, or allowing individuals to vote in private, can greatly reduce pressures to conform. Obedience is another form of social influence, and as Milgram’s controversial experiments demonstrated, individuals will often commit acts in obedience that they would otherwise be unlikely to commit. Groups often can influence behavior in negative ways, as examples such as social impairment, groupthink, and group polarization often demonstrate. However, not all group influences on behavior are negative. For example, pressure to conform can cause people to take positive actions as well as negative ones; and examples like social facilitation show how groups can sometimes provide a boost to individual performance.