Zimbardo and Milgram: An Overview of Social Influence and Psychological Research on Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience

This report provides an overview of social influence and psychological research on conformity, compliance, and obedience. It discusses the concept of social influence and its impact on an individual's perception and behaviour. The report also highlights the controversial experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and the social influence theory proposed by Kelman. The influence of social media on mental health is also discussed.

Social influence

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
Social influence is defined as the aspect which is well related with the intentional and
unintentional efforts in order to change another person belief, attitude and their attribute or the
behaviour (Vukanovic, 2018). Therefore, the unlike persuasion, that is associated with the
typically intentional and they require proper degree of awareness which is well related with the
part of target, social influence which may be advertent or the accidental (Carlin and et. al., 2019).
In this report, the major discussion is based on the social influence and overview of the
psychological research which is conducted on the conformity. Whereas, the overview of the
psychological explanation and their theories are well related with the concept of influence that
include norms, roles, groups, conformity and obedience. Therefore, the research is usually show
the explanation that is related with the opinions which is influenced by the others and by their
social context (Cox and et. al., 2019).
MAIN BODY
Social influence is defined as the process by which the individual attitude, belief or the
behaviour are usually modified by the presence or action of other. There are some of the
influence which is taken in this report for the elaboration of social influence such as conformity,
compliance and obedience and minority influence. In addition, the conformity is defined as the
social influence which is well defined as the change which is show their belief or behaviour in
response to real or they imagined social pressure (Gursoy, Chi, Lu, and Nunkoo, 2019). It is also
show the aspect which is well known as the majority influence. The social influence is important
because it conform to better meet the basic goals of the self-concern and the other concern. In
addition, they conforming help to do the thing better by providing support and care to make the
accurate and informed decision. the social influence usually elaborates the thought, feeling and
behaviour respond to the social world (Xiong and et. al., 2019). They are usually including
tendencies to conform the other, follow social riles and obey the figure. The social influence is
usually take two basic form that is implicit expectation and explicit expectation. Overall, the
social influence is defined as the way in which the individual changes their behaviour in order to
meet the demand of the social environment which is well related with the issue of social
influence. It takes many form and can be seen in the term of conformity, socialisation, peer
pressure, obedience, leadership and many more (Haruvy, and Popkowski Leszczyc, 2018).
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Conformity is chosen as the type social behaviour where the investigation has outline
which provide some of the information that defines conformity is defined as the type of social
influence that generally involve the change in belief or behaviour in order to make the approach
which is fitted within the group. The change is usually show the response which is based on real
that involve the physical experience of other or imagined that generally show the involvement of
social norms and expectation towards the pressure that is linked with groups (Ponomarev and et.
al., 2019). Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist and well known for the
controversial experiment on obedience which is performed in the 1960s. Milgram experiments
on obedience to authority is a part of social psychology experiment regulated by Yale university.
The case study on the social psychology by one of the most known researcher Stanley Milgram
has given the concept of obedience to authority. It is the most argued studies of scientist ever
carried out. According to this study, one person delivers dangerous high electric voltage shocks
to other person due to this, peoples are highly influenced by the obedience to authority.
According to experiment, there were 40 men has taken using ads and each one was paid. The
participants are playing role of teacher who is deliver electrical shocks to the students which
having different levels such as slight shock then moderate shock and then moving to severe
shocks or danger shock (Ponomarev and et. al., 2019).
Social influence theory in the psychology is well related with the central theme of the
social influence theory which is generally proposed by the Kelman, it is defined as the individual
behaviour attitude, belief, norms and subsequent action and behaviour which is generally
influenced by the referent to other through the three process which is well defined as compliance,
idenitifcation and internationalisation (Mansori, Safari, and Ismail, 2020). The psychological
explanation of the social influence theory is usually related with the various of core context that
is well related with the norms, values and conformity and obedience which play vital role in the
term of psychology. The social influence theory is defined as the theory which is well related
with the psychology that talk about the how people are more likely to do whatever they see as
being the norms and values (Sharma, John, and Sahu, 2020). It also states about the group,
conformity and obedience which may provide the aspect which change their behaviour according
to those who is around them and those which is nearby have the stronger effect than the those
which is further away. Moreover, they also state about the first impression which is very
important that can alter the perspective and perception of the someone and something which
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generally create the snowball effect on the proper decision making. For example, an individual
may not even known the certain opinion and person is living in their norms, value, group,
conformity and obedience and due to the social influence the individual has change their
knowledge and belief that may render their output due to the social influence (Parady, Taniguchi,
and Takami, 2020).
Someone's opinion, understanding and response to any specific information are highly
affected by their surrounding and society where an individual used to live. Social context
influences the perception of an individual. When we communicate with someone who has
capability to show their perception and dominant his/her views on others; somehow we actually
get impacted by their thoughts and start believing what they believe.
Social influence describes our thoughts, mentality, feeling, and our way of react/behaviour
to any situation to our social world. It includes are tendency to agree or disagree to other's
opinion, follow society based rules and regulations and confirm are presence and degree to
agreement by obeying authority figures. Public opinion can be influenced by public relations,
authorised persons (like political leaders/ celebrities or any other authorised public figures to
whom people like to hear and follow. The influencer can manipulate the idea and perception of
an individual in either a positive or negative way (Zhao, Zhan, and Liu, 2018).
CONCLUSION
As per the above discussion, it is well defined as social influence can alter the people
perception towards the thing. In addition, psychological explanation may also show that the
social influence has the wide range of perspective that is related with the social context that alter
and render the individual norms, values, conformity and obedience toward the particular aspect
which may contributed towards the social group and community.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Carlin, R.F., Mathews, A., Oden, R. and Moon, R.Y., 2019. The influence of social networks and
norms on breastfeeding in African American and Caucasian mothers: a qualitative
study. Breastfeeding Medicine, 14(9), pp.640-647.
Cox, M.J., DiBello, A.M., Meisel, M.K., Ott, M.Q., Kenney, S.R., Clark, M.A. and Barnett, N.P.,
2019. Do misperceptions of peer drinking influence personal drinking behavior? Results
from a complete social network of first-year college students. Psychology of addictive
behaviors, 33(3), p.297.
Gursoy, D., Chi, O.H., Lu, L. and Nunkoo, R., 2019. Consumers acceptance of artificially
intelligent (AI) device use in service delivery. International Journal of Information
Management, 49, pp.157-169.
Haruvy, E. and Popkowski Leszczyc, P.T., 2018. The influence of social media on charitable
fundraising. Available at SSRN 3201494.
Mansori, S., Safari, M. and Ismail, Z.M.M., 2020. An analysis of the religious, social factors and
income’s influence on the decision making in Islamic microfinance schemes. Journal of
Islamic Accounting and Business Research.
Parady, G., Taniguchi, A. and Takami, K., 2020. Travel behavior changes during the COVID-19
pandemic in Japan: Analyzing the effects of risk perception and social influence on
going-out self-restriction. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 7,
p.100181.
Ponomarev, I.E., Gafiatulina, N.K., Zritineva, E.I., Kasyanov, V.V., Bahutashvili, T.V. and
Ponomarev, P.A., 2019. The influence of social justice crisis on social health and spiritual
security of young students (a case study of the south of Russia). Abstracting/Indexing,
p.284.
Sharma, M.K., John, N. and Sahu, M., 2020. Influence of social media on mental health: a
systematic review. Current opinion in psychiatry, 33(5), pp.467-475.
Vukanovic, Z., 2018, September. The influence of digital convergence/divergence on digital
media business models. In International Conference on Entertainment Computing (pp.
152-163). Springer, Cham.
Xiong, F., Shen, W., Chen, H., Pan, S., Wang, X. and Yan, Z., 2019. Exploiting implicit
influence from information propagation for social recommendation. IEEE Transactions
on Cybernetics, 50(10), pp.4186-4199.
Zhao, X., Zhan, M. and Liu, B.F., 2018. Disentangling social media influence in crises: Testing a
four-factor model of social media influence with large data. Public relations
review, 44(4), pp.549-561.
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