Social Influence: Such a Copycat - Essay Example

Social Influence: Such a Copycat Social influence refers to a situation in which an individual’s opinions and behaviors occur as result of other people’s effects other than personal effects (Edwards 16). Various forms pertain to social influence including conformity, peer pressure, obedience among other forms. With a deeper understanding of social influence, three broad varieties are evident. These are compliance, identification, and internalization. Reflective Questions 1. Conformity and factors that can cause our conforming behavior to increase Conformity refers to a situation in which individuals tend to agree with other people’s opinions while deep down, such individuals have private dissenting opinions.

In most instances, people conform to avoid punishment or again reward. Factors that can cause conforming behavior to increase include large group size, which increases conforming behavior. Others include confidence and self-esteem (Edwards 42). 2. Foot-in-the-door phenomenon is an aspect involving people’s compliance to bigger issues and requests after previously the same individuals has complied with smaller requests. The above is an aspect that works together with conformity as individuals have to conform to larger requests after having conformed to smaller requests.

It is always easier for an individual to accept a smaller request then later a bigger one. It involves developing interest towards the bigger request from the smaller request. 3. Door-in-the-face phenomenon, on its part, is a social psychology conformity method involving a persuader making a request that is bigger and one that the respondent would easily turn down. In such situations, the respondent is then seen as a potential candidate for accepting a second reasonable request, other than making the reasonable request being made in isolation.

The phenomenal is named as it is considered banging the door on the face of an individual by making a bigger request first to a respondent. The phenomenon has a low conformity pace. 4. Obedience and factors that can cause our obedient behavior to increase Obedience is a form of social influence attributed to human behavior in which an individual is able to explicit instructions and commands from authoritative figure. Four factors would cause obedience behavior to increase. These are personal responsibility, escalation of harm, proximity of victim and the authority figure involved (Edwards 98).

Work Cited Edwards, David C.. Motivation & emotion: evolutionary, physiological, cognitive, and social influences. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1999. Print.