Social Influence - Essay Example

How to use tactics of social influence Here is the notion of social influence that is given in encyclopaedia: "Social influence is when the actions or thoughts of individual(s) are changed by other individual(s). Examples of social influence can be seen in socialization and peer pressure." (Wikipedia) In case the person uses pressure, it means that someone is forced to do definite things, which we wouldn't like to do. The person is forced to do these things because it would help keep up relations with people that are important for him by this or that reason. This may occur in various circumstances when the peer pressure is used by relatives, close friends etc. The notion of power is also referred to the social influence, as this means the capacity of the person to bend people in his will. These are usually outside factors that provide people with power - for instance, wealth, physical attractiveness, success in career. These factors place the person to a higher position compared to other people around. So even in case the person is not powerful as politician or military man, he may also possess the power that is not so evident but is also strong and intense. The singers and actors may serve as the example of the persons that possess this kind of power. They are not powerful in political sense, but they are attractive, recognized and successful, so they may influence other people. (Wikipedia) The researches observing social influence and social activity rapidly grow at present, as this problem is relevant in modern society. These researches may appear to be helpful in solving various social problems, as well as provide people with the measures that should be taken in case any kind of problem appears. Jan Bruins in his research observes the nature and effects of social influence and social power and their implementation in the relations of people, within the groups of people and among the groups of people. His study also touches upon communicational situations that occur with individuals in various situations. These contacts and relations provide people with many possibilities, for instance, giving and receiving information, the feeling of security, affirming the person's identity etc. But the most important issue that is pointed by the author is that they allow people influence each other in many senses, including their emotions, feelings, attitudes and values. Various kinds of situations produce various kinds of effect that the influence may have: "For instance, in interpersonal situations, a faltering influence process can lead to the breakup of close personal relationships and to interpersonal aggression. At the intragroup level, it can lead to effects such as family violence and organizational burnout, and at the intergroup level it can result in discrimination and hostilities like gang wars and the Rodney King beating." (Bruins) The main subject for consideration is the way the social influence and power create the base for problems that individuals may face, both as individuals of as the representatives of a definite social group. The author also focuses on the problems that start on individual level, as they may produce effect that will touch upon higher levels of interpersonal communication. When the problems that appear on the individual level start to increase and spread its influence, this may lead to collective attempts to change the situation: "in combination, individual-level problems as directly addressed in this issue not only are interesting in their own right, but can also contribute to the occurrence of larger scale disruptions like the Los Angeles riots, student uprisings, and other forms of protest and civil unrest." (Bruins) In his investigation, author addresses historical context of the problems, observes earlier researches on this topic and describes conceptions and definitions that are related to the problems of social influence and power. The problems of power and social influences were observed by the social sciences within the centuries. Such famous philosophers and scientists as Lukes, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Weber paid much attention to this issue. Many theoretical researches now serve as the basis for modern investigations of the problem, inspiring most modern approaches. The modern approaches address many old theories, and the theory of Kurt Lewin is considered to be the source from which modern theories derive: "Lewin considered power the possibility of inducing force on someone else, or, more formally, as the maximum force person A can induce on person B divided by the maximum resistance that B can offer." (Bruins) French and Raven followed the concepts suggested by Lewin. They reflected their ideas in their writings concerning social power, determined social influence and a power as a tool with the help of which one individual (the agent) influences someone else (the target) to produce necessary changes in the goal, comprising changes in behavioural schemes, feelings, notions, attitudes, purposes, and values. Thus, influence is "kinetic power, just as power is potential influence" (qtd in Bruins). Their famous work gives the following sources of social power: reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert power. The sixth was added later, it was the power of information. (Bruins) Coercive power and reward depend upon the person's capacity to give the purpose negative and positive results, respectively. Usage either of the sources mentioned will produce only a surface change in the target. So, none of the beliefs, values or attitudes that are inherent to the target are changed. Instead, this is a public agreement that is received, the extension of which derives from the successful reaching the target by the agent. Legitimate power derives from the target's assurance that the agent possesses the right to produce effects, and that the target has to agree to this influence. It drives to acceptance of the individual that derives from the target and it does not demand supervision of the agent to reach a successful result. The next kind of power, referent power, is up to the target's holding with the agent. It then results in the acceptance of the individual by the target with the help of giving the target an opportunity to establish successful relations with the agent and regard himself as the one that is similar to the target from the point of view of definite dimensions. (Bruins) One more kind of power that was pointed out by the author is expert power. A degree of the power that agent possesses, depends upon the level of knowledge and experience that the target attributes to the agent. When there is a definite belief in agent's abilities and talents, expert power leads to acceptance of the individual of a definite element of the target. Informational power, the last kind of power, produces deep and long-term process of changes in the set of beliefs, feelings and attitudes of the target. Unlike above mentioned sources of power, informational power does not depend upon the identity of the agent and upon his relations with the target. It is based on the importance and adequacy of the information. One more scientist, who worked out the theory investigating related subjects, was Kelman. (Bruins) Within his investigations Raven enlarged and re considered the original sources of power. He created a Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence. In addition to a much more specific description of the sources of social power, the model was different from the classification of the sources that was given earlier, and suggested a dynamic vision of the social influence and power implementation. The essence of the model is the description of the agent as a "rational decision maker who weighs various costs and benefits of the power bases available to him/her before invoking one of them to influence the target". (Bruins) The model gives the description of results that may be provided by the attempts of influence, for instance, changes that may occur in the set of motivation of the agent which is designed to produce the effect on target, in target's evaluation of the power sources that are available, and in emotions directed to the self identity and the target. Besides, the target may also encounter the effects of the attempts of influence, and these effects may influence the acceptance of the individual and the public approval, the target's perception of his own identity and the nature of relations established by means of power. (Bruins) A concurrent development of the theories investigating the social power and social influence revealed from the book The Powerholders by Kipnis. In his writing, Kipnis suggests a Power Act Model that touches upon the observation of the processes of influence from the viewpoint of the agent that is influenced. The author of the model insists that person's choice of tools of influence is dependant upon the bases the person has available, upon person's attempts to bring about a source of power, "as determined by one's estimate of the costs of using a power basis, one's subjective values and attitudes, individual differences, and social norms, and on the resistance that one expects on the part of the target toward the influence attempt". (Bruins) A process is described with the help of the following scheme: at first the agent considers the reasons that produce the resistance and objection, and then the results of the consideration shapes the choice of the agent related to the tools of influence. As the resistance and objection grows, the agent may either stop the attempts to produce influence, shape his individual needs, or address to stronger means of influence. If we compare the Power/Interaction Model and the Power Act Model, we will see that the latter is more detailed and it focuses on the results of the processes that are illustrated by the model. The model suggests that the tendency of the agent to create an interior attribution to the compliance of the target depends upon the degree of the power of the tools that are used to produce influence. This may lead to negative estimation of the target and increase of the distance that is set by the society towards the target. These issues of the theories are investigated by Kipnis and Rind in their writings. (Bruins) The theories that derived from the book described above went on observing the tools to produce the influence were used by Kipnis. He determined the schemes of behaviour that people may use to produce desired effect on others. Kipnis and his colleagues pointed out 8 subtypes of tactic schemes: "assertiveness, ingratiation, rationality, sanctions, exchange, upward appeal, blocking, and coalitions." (qtd in Bruins) The means of estimating the tactic schemes that could be used to produce influence on those who place superior position were reworked by Hinkin and Schriesheim at the beginning of 90s. A model that is similar to the one worked out by these scientists was also forged by Yukl, Falbe and Tracey. As Bruins describes the Power Use Model, Brains "predicts someone's choice of influence tactic only in terms of its softness versus hardness. This dimension is defined in terms of how much freedom a tactic leaves the target to decide either to yield or to resist the influence attempt: Hard tactics (e.g., sanctions) leave the target less freedom than soft tactics (e.g., reasoning)." (Bruins) The above describe dimension has been addressed to by the following authors: Falbe, Yukl, Howard, Blumstein, chwartz, Kipnis, Schmidt. The recent findings supported the notions suggested in these writings by demonstrating that the dimension of soft versus hard is the major dimension which helps to tell various tactics of producing influence. The Power Use Model suggests that (in case of the tactics of influence are possessed by the agent), agents who regard the target as the member from outside the social group, will use more severe tactics compared to the agents that perceive the target as the fellow member of the same social group. "Whether a target is seen as an in- or an outgroup member is, in the model, not simply a matter of predetermined group boundaries as they can be readily observed in our ordinary conceptualization of reality (e.g., mother, father and children are all members of the group family), but instead, group boundaries are defined at a psychological level" (Bruins). The notion about the boundaries of groups will be dependent upon the characteristics of the situation that change due to the context. For instance, when two parents discuss the strategies to improve the behaviour of their child, the parents perceive each other as the fellow members of the same group, while their child is regarded as the person not included into this group. In the case when a father and his son plan their future holidays and reach an agreement in this planning, the father perceives his son as the fellow member, while their mother is regarded as the member to belonging to the same group. (Bruins) In spite of the fact that the perception of the other people as the members of the same group or of the other group is the only factor that influences choices of influence tactics and strategies. The described concept of the boundaries of the group in the perception of the person adds flexibility to the Power Use Model. At present there are five elements that are included into the model. These elements as they are set or together with the variables that are not included into the model may influence the relationships within the group, in which both the agent and target are included. The agent may choose any of the following tactics and strategies: "uncertainty reduction, expected opposition, desire to be liked, assertion of group membership, and cognitive consistency". (Bruins) Actually, all constituencies may play a significant role in the process, depending upon the context, circumstances and the situation As far as the results are concerned, the Power Use Model assumes that the response of the target, in alliance with dimension of soft versus hard in the strategies that are used, moderates the notion about the relations between the agent and the target under the conditions of membership in the same social group. The shifts that may occur in this perception lead to the changes in some of the variables that are suggested and then, in the probability of using soft versus hard strategies in attempts to produce influence in future. (Bruins) The author states that the investigations within the sphere of social influences and social power have two directions of development. The first direction which is reflected in the Power/Interaction Model can be described as a line that derive from theories that are related to social influence and power and proceed to the researches in the sphere of empirical experience related to these ideas. The second direction, focusing on the scheme of tactics and strategies of social influence, appeared on a base of empirical results of the investigations of people's attempts to produce definite influence on the people around. Then this direction proceeds to the attempts to describe these results with the help of the terms of the theory. The main benefit of the first model (that goes from the theoretical findings to the practice) is accuracy of the scientific research. But it is not still clear if the theory provides full and fine reflection of all the strategies and tactics that are used by the people. The second model (which starts from the practice and goes to seek for the theoretical base for the evident experience) is valuable due the fact that the empirical description that is presented by this model is complete. But as far as the major mechanisms that direct the processes that are observed by the theory are concerned, this model is not really useful. (Bruins) It is obvious, that it would be better to combine the most precious features of both models to receive the most appropriate scheme. There were some attempts to combine those two models, which were implemented in Dyadic Social Influence Model and the Power Use Model. There are two possible directions in which the situation may develop. The first one as suggested by Bruins is as follows: "Similar to finding out whether an object is a hammer by considering the materials of which it is made and its shape, size, and weight, one avenue is to test the proposed models empirically in (field-) experimental studies. However, one can also learn more about hammer-like properties of an object by investigating whether it allows a user to comfortably drive a nail into a plank." (Bruins) The other direction is to observe and examine the border to which both these models and the processes of producing the influence may forge solutions to the problems referred to real life and to which extent these solutions would be effective. It may seem that this module is less precise, but it has evident advantages that lie in suggesting the opportunity to solve definite problems that may occur in the social life. Thus, this point tends to move in the second direction of above-mentioned alternatives. It may provide for the point for more applied process to start by pointing to the productivity of dealing with the theory that observes various social issues from the viewpoints of social influences and social power. (Bruins) The author makes a conclusion that the progress in investigations related to social power and influence was persistent but slow. But recently the interest to this issue increased, which led to the new tendencies both in theoretical approaches and empirical experience. Bruins states that it is now "an appropriate time to address the extent to which the progress made in this area can be applied to a variety of social problems. Besides rigorous empirical testing, suggesting possible solutions to social problems will be the major test for the advances made toward better understanding influence and power processes." McShane and Vin Glinow give the following definition of leadership: "the process of influencing people and providing an environment for them to achieve team or organizational objectives. Effective leaders help groups of people define their goals and find ways to achieve them" (p. 434). When they speak about leadership and the social power they add the following idea to that notion: "effective leaders help groups of people define their goals and find ways to achieve them". (p.435) These two authors in their book "Organizational Behavior" observe the definitions of the management, leadership and social power and investigate the relations between these notions. To some extent it may seem that they set leadership opposite to the notion of management. They state that the notion of management also includes leadership in its structure. They say the processes that are involved into the system of management have the features that are inherent to the leadership. They list administrator functions, maintaining definite terms and conditions, taking control over the employers as the functions that include leadership. (McShane) Besides, McShane and Von Glinow add one more issue to this idea, which hasn't been observed by other authors. Managers also doing attempts to reach organizational purposes, in spite of the fact that these are the chiefs who set these goals. So these authors added the reaching of organizational purposes to their definitions of leadership, social influence and social power. Some commentators state that they missed some important aspects, like the aspects of changes in organizational structure or inspiration. Works Cited McShane, Steven, Von Glinow, Mary Ann. Organizational Behavior. McGraw-Hill/Irwin; 3 edition (March 10, 2004) Social influence. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Bruins, Jan. Social power and influence tactics: a theoretical introduction - Social Influence and Social Power: Using Theory for Understanding Social Issues. Journal of Social Issues. March, 1999 Read More