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Assignment on Social Psychology Sample

   

Added on  2020-07-22

6 Pages2098 Words38 Views
Social psychology

Social psychology is concerned with determining the ways in which presence of othersimpacts the thoughts and behaviors of people. Social influence refers to changes in behavior of aperson caused any another person intentionally or unintentionally (Bond and et.al., 2012). Theperson who has changed perceives himself to be in relation with the person who has influencedhim. Social influence takes place when the behaviors, opinions and emotions are affected byothers. However, there are situations when people resist social influence. Social psychologypresents a solution to explore the reasons underlying resistance. The present essay focuses onanswering the question ‘What can social psychology tell us about how people resist socialinfluence’. There are several, factors that explain the reasons behind people resisting to conform.Conformity is defined as a type of social influence whereby a person changes his belief orbehavior in order to respond to social pressure which may real or imagined (Lorenz and et.al.,2011). There are different types of conformity. Compliance refers to agreement by a person inpublic while disagreement in private. In contrast to this, internalization refers to the changes inthe behavior of a person to conform to a group but also agreeing with them in private. Aschconducted a study to investigate if people conform to majority. The number of confederates werealtered by Asch to explore how conformity was influence by this. From the study, it was foundthat there was an increase in the conformity with the presence of each extra person in the group.However, no increase was seen in the conformity once the group size became 4- 5. Hence, thiswas considered as the optimal group size. According to conformity concept of Social psychology, the probability of an individualconforming to a group is more is the size of group is bigger (Muchnik, Aral and Taylor, 2013).Therefore, it can be analyzed that people might resist to social influence if the size of the groupto which they are required to conform is less. Unanimity is another concept in social psychologyaccording to which an individual conforms if majority of the members in a group are inagreement and have the same opinion. This provides a reason that people resist social influenceif majority of the people do not conform to same answer. They may also resist when they aresure about a particular task whose difficulty level is low. As per concept of normative influence, people conform to be a part of the group in orderto prevent being appear as fool. This is driven by the desire to be liked. However, this change ofbehavior is temporary (Guadagno and Cialdini, 2010). Hence, on the basis of this concept of1

social psychology, it can be inferred that social influence is resisted by people if they do not havethe desire to fit in to a group. Another type of social influence is obedience which ischaracterized by a person following another person’s behavior whom he assumes to be anauthority figure. In this regard, Milgram’s shock study can be discussed. Milgram explored thereason behind Germans’ willingness to kill Jews. He assigned the role of either teacher or learnerto two participants (Shermer, 2012). Every time a wrong answer was given by the learner, theteacher was instructed by an experimenter through a series of prods to administer shock to thelearner (Gass and Seiter, 2015). The experiment highlights Agency theory according to which anauthority figure is obeyed by the people if they have a belief that he will be responsible for theconsequences of their actions. Through Milgram’s experiment, social psychology provides insights that people will notbe influenced and will not obey if they find absence of an authority figure who is willing to takeresponsibility for the consequences of their actions. This provides a reason of resistance ofpeople to social influence, Absence of an authority figure makes people resist to social influence(Cosley and et.al., 2010). Moreover, if the authority figure is recognized by other as beingmorally wrong, this would also make people resist social influence. Secondly, people do notconform to social influence if the status of location is not credible. This is also guided by socialpsychology through Milgram’s experiment. The experiment was conducted in Yale Universitywhich is considered to be prestigious due to which the participants were more likely to obey.Third reason behind resistance to social influence, as guided by social psychology is that peopleresist if the person influencing them is not in close proximity. This was better explained byMilgram’s experiment where the participants did not administer lethal shocks to learner when theinstructions were provided by the experimenter over phone (Fiske, Gilbert and Lindzey, 2010). Social influence is also resisted due to the presence of a dissident. This is because withthe presence of a dissident, a person gets social support. This makes him feel confident about hisdecisions which leads to decrease in conformity level. Further, when there is presence of socialsupport, the level of conformity declines which is depicted in the form of resistance to socialinfluence (Snyder and Deaux, 2012). The term ‘Locus of control’ provides useful information about the reasons for whichpeople resist social influence. ‘Locus of control’ refers to the control of a person on his ownbehavior. A person can either possess internal or external locus of control. People with High2

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