Psychological Analysis: Understanding Social Influence and Conformity

This psychology assignment delves into the concepts of informational and normative social influence. Part 1 examines how informational social influence, authority, obedience, psychological manipulation, and conformity led to a theft scenario. Part 2 explores normative social influence, defining the need for acceptance and analyzing Schachter's "Johnny Rocco" study to describe the stages of persuading rebels to conform. The assignment also includes a personal reflection on an instance where the student adopted group norms. The assignment provides a comprehensive analysis of how social influences shape individual behavior and decision-making, supported by relevant psychological theories and studies.

Running head: PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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PART 1.
Objective: Recognize characteristics of informational social influence.
After checking into a hotel, Emma suddenly hears pounding on her door. A man in a uniform is
standing there telling her there’s smoke on a lower floor and the electricity is possibly going to
shut off. She should prop her door open and evacuate as quickly as possible. Later, Emma
returns to find that her laptop and jewelry have been stolen. She has fallen victim to
informational social influence. Based on your understanding of informational social influence,
outline and explain the four (4) factors and conditions that encouraged Emma to conform.
Informational social influence is a form of social influence where a person conforms in
order to gain knowledge (Li et al., 2011). This happens when one believes that the knowledge
possessed by the other person is correct. Social influence itself refers to the process through
which an individual modifies his or her behavior in order to the meet the demands of the
surrounding social environment. There are several factors which affect an individual in this case,
such as, conformity, peer pressure, leadership, persuasion and more (Li et al., 2011). Social
influence generally comes from a particular action, order, or request; however, individuals are
also affected by their own thoughts, that is, they alter their behavior as a response to how they
think they are being perceived by others. In this case, the criminal used informational social
influence in order to distract the woman and the latter conformed to the idea that she truly might
be in danger.
Looking at the incident closely, there are certain elements and actions which happen in a
chronological order, prompting Emma to leave the door open and evacuate. It started with the

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pounding on the door. This sudden incident leaves Emma clueless as to who might be knocking.
While opening the door, she sees a man wearing a uniform. This shows that the man is someone
of authority. According to Robert Cialdini who proposed the first concept of informational social
influence, authority is one of the six weapons of influence (Dietz, 2011). At the same time, it
also connects with obedience as a conformational action. Looking at a man in a uniform
immediately proposes the notion that the person is someone of authority, thus prompting
obedience, like the infamous Milgram’s experiment (Russell, 2011). Therefore Emma
automatically complies with whatever the man says. Obedience and authority are therefore the
first two aspects that victimize Emma.
Progressing forward, the man in the uniform informs Emma that there is smoke in the
lower floor and the electricity might get cut off. This instils a sense of immediate danger in
Emma’s mind. Given that animals in general have an innate sensitivity towards imminent life
threatening danger, this acts in favor of the man by making Emma comply with his proposition.
Here Emma has fallen victim to the third element, which can be termed as psychological
manipulation (Handelman, 2009). Psychological manipulation refers to the type of social
influence where the behavioral modification happens through certain tactics, deception being one
of them. The man in the uniform uses the probability of fire (Peters, Ruiter & Kok, 2013) as a
deception to lure Emma out of the hotel room and use the distraction to his advantage.
The final element that Emma falls a victim to can be regarded as Conformity. This aspect
is not explicitly evident in the current context, but conformity does not necessarily have to be
group based. It refers to the actions that a particular social group tends to follow, thereby
prompting individuals to amend their behavior in order to fit in with the norms, as well as
conform to any pre – existing standards (Alquist, Ainsworth & Baumeister, 2013). Emma knows

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that when there is a fire in a building, she must escape because that is something that others
would also do. Even if the prospect of threat to life is not considered, social conformity would
automatically prompt Emma to follow safety instructions and do as the man says, that is leave
the door open and evacuate.
Thus, overall, the four specific factors that have victimized Emma can be classified as
obedience, authority, psychological manipulation and conformity.
PART 2.
Objective: Describe the need to be accepted in the context of normative social influence.
Based on Schachter’s “Johnny Rocco” study, describe three (3) stages involved in persuading
“rebels” to conform to group norms. Describe an instance in your life when you were persuaded
to adopt or reject group norms.
In the context of Normative Social Influence, the need to be acceptred can be described
as the innate tendencies of people to be either liked or disliked by a group (Rimal & Real, 2005).
Mostly, people tend to act in order to be liked by a group, meaning that, irrespective of personal
cognitions, people will modify their behaviors and attitudes in order to fit in with the social
norms. In other words, the normative social influence has prompted the individuals to act in
accordance with the group’s normative behavior, for acceptance.
Schacter’s study of Johnny Rocco case showed how a particular gathering reacts to the
individual who has no regards for the normative social structures. ‘Rebels’ as they would be
called, were usually ones who continued to disregard social norms and were therefore identified
as a non - conforming entity (Wesselman et al., 2014). Schachter’s studies showed that the

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majority of the appeals were in favor of Johnny Rocco being provided with an amalgamation of
affection and strictness. However, Schachter had already installed an associate within the
gathering who was expected to work as the deviant. The deviant, alternate to the group’s notions,
proposed that the rebellious behavior be treated with the strictest disciplinary measures.
Resultantly, the group conformity was strong enough to modify the deviant’s behavior and make
him fall in line with the group norms (Wesselman et al., 2014). The study highlighted that the
elements that can make rebels conform to group can be termed as firstly, the one where the
increased interaction time with the rebel continued to increase deviant behavior and secondly, in
the presence of a large conforming group, the communication and interaction with the deviant
dies down and slowly regresses to one where the deviant is being ignored. Besides that, in the
presence of a norm and a slider, the group treated the slider equal to the deviant, whereas the
norm was spared communication. This indicated that the group cohesiveness works in tandem
with how much the members of the groups are cohesive to the norms (Wesselman et al., 2014).
One instance where I was persuaded to accept group norms was when I was persuaded
into joining Facebook.Social media conformity is a common trend in a lot of people, however in
my case, I joined Facebook simply because my other friends were already on the platform and
they talked about the various interesting features that Facebook allows. This intrigued me into
following the social group norms.

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References.
Alquist, J. L., Ainsworth, S. E., & Baumeister, R. F. (2013). Determined to conform: Disbelief in
free will increases conformity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(1), 80-86.
Dietz, T. (2011). The art of influence: Thomas Dietz reassesses Robert Cialdini's revolutionary
treatise on the science of decision-making. Nature, 479(7372), 176-177.
Lee, M. K., Shi, N., Cheung, C. M., Lim, K. H., & Sia, C. L. (2011). Consumer's decision to
shop online: The moderating role of positive informational social influence. Information
& management, 48(6), 185-191.
Peters, G. J. Y., Ruiter, R. A., & Kok, G. (2013). Threatening communication: a critical re-
analysis and a revised meta-analytic test of fear appeal theory. Health psychology
review, 7(sup1), S8-S31.
Rimal, R. N., & Real, K. (2005). How behaviors are influenced by perceived norms: A test of the
theory of normative social behavior. Communication research, 32(3), 389-414.
Russell, N. J. C. (2011). Milgram's obedience to authority experiments: Origins and early
evolution. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50(1), 140-162.
Wesselmann, E. D., Williams, K. D., Pryor, J. B., Eichler, F. A., Gill, D. M., & Hogue, J. D.
(2014). Revisiting Schachter’s research on rejection, deviance, and communication
(1951). Social Psychology.