How Social Psychology Explains Resisting Social Influence: Essay

This essay delves into the field of social psychology to explore the reasons behind people's resistance to social influence. It defines social influence and conformity, differentiating between compliance and internalization. The essay discusses key studies like Asch's conformity experiment and Milgram's obedience experiment, highlighting the impact of group size, unanimity, and authority figures. It also examines concepts such as normative influence, agency theory, locus of control, and minority influence. The essay further explores how moral considerations, personality traits, and the presence of dissidents contribute to resistance. Ultimately, the essay concludes that various factors, supported by psychological theories and research, explain why individuals choose to defy social pressure and maintain their autonomy. The essay draws on the work of Bond et al., Lorenz et al., Muchnik, Aral and Taylor, Guadagno and Cialdini, Shermer, Gass and Seiter, Cosley et al., Fiske, Gilbert and Lindzey, Snyder and Deaux, Vallance, Perkins and Dixon, Estrada, Oc and Bashshur.

Social psychology

Social psychology is concerned with determining the ways in which presence of others
impacts the thoughts and behaviors of people. Social influence refers to changes in behavior of a
person caused any another person intentionally or unintentionally (Bond and et.al., 2012). The
person who has changed perceives himself to be in relation with the person who has influenced
him. Social influence takes place when the behaviors, opinions and emotions are affected by
others. However, there are situations when people resist social influence. Social psychology
presents a solution to explore the reasons underlying resistance. The present essay focuses on
answering the question ‘What can social psychology tell us about how people resist social
influence’.
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 or
behavior 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 in
public while disagreement in private. In contrast to this, internalization refers to the changes in
the behavior of a person to conform to a group but also agreeing with them in private. Asch
conducted a study to investigate if people conform to majority. The number of confederates were
altered by Asch to explore how conformity was influence by this. From the study, it was found
that 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, this
was considered as the optimal group size.
According to conformity concept of Social psychology, the probability of an individual
conforming 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 group
to which they are required to conform is less. Unanimity is another concept in social psychology
according to which an individual conforms if majority of the members in a group are in
agreement and have the same opinion. This provides a reason that people resist social influence
if majority of the people do not conform to same answer. They may also resist when they are
sure 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 order
to prevent being appear as fool. This is driven by the desire to be liked. However, this change of
behavior is temporary (Guadagno and Cialdini, 2010). Hence, on the basis of this concept of
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social psychology, it can be inferred that social influence is resisted by people if they do not have
the desire to fit in to a group. Another type of social influence is obedience which is
characterized by a person following another person’s behavior whom he assumes to be an
authority figure. In this regard, Milgram’s shock study can be discussed. Milgram explored the
reason behind Germans’ willingness to kill Jews. He assigned the role of either teacher or learner
to two participants (Shermer, 2012). Every time a wrong answer was given by the learner, the
teacher was instructed by an experimenter through a series of prods to administer shock to the
learner (Gass and Seiter, 2015). The experiment highlights Agency theory according to which an
authority figure is obeyed by the people if they have a belief that he will be responsible for the
consequences of their actions.
Through Milgram’s experiment, social psychology provides insights that people will not
be influenced and will not obey if they find absence of an authority figure who is willing to take
responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This provides a reason of resistance of
people 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 being
morally wrong, this would also make people resist social influence. Secondly, people do not
conform to social influence if the status of location is not credible. This is also guided by social
psychology through Milgram’s experiment. The experiment was conducted in Yale University
which 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 people
resist if the person influencing them is not in close proximity. This was better explained by
Milgram’s experiment where the participants did not administer lethal shocks to learner when the
instructions 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 with
the presence of a dissident, a person gets social support. This makes him feel confident about his
decisions which leads to decrease in conformity level. Further, when there is presence of social
support, the level of conformity declines which is depicted in the form of resistance to social
influence (Snyder and Deaux, 2012).
The term ‘Locus of control’ provides useful information about the reasons for which
people resist social influence. ‘Locus of control’ refers to the control of a person on his own
behavior. A person can either possess internal or external locus of control. People with High
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internal locus of control perceive themselves as possessing high control over their behavior.
They consider themselves responsible for their behavior (Vallance, Perkins and Dixon, 2011). In
contrast to this, when the external locus of control is high, a person perceives that his behavior is
a result of external influences. On the basis of this, it can be analyzed that people resist social
influence if they have an internal locus of control. This is because, an internal locus of control
makes them less obedient and conforming. They believe that they are capable of affecting the
external situations. Further, they also do not need any external approval. Therefore, they are able
to resist social pressure as they consider themselves as being responsible for their action rather
than external influences.
Influence generated by a small group over the opinion of a larger group is known as
minority influence. This social influences occurs when minority behaves in a consistent manner.
consistency can be of two types, one is being consistent over time and the other is synchronic
consistency which is consistency between the members (Estrada, 2011). Social psychology
guides about the tendency of people to resist social influence which may be due to lack of
consistency. Inconsistent influence may fail to cause a change in the behavior of a person.
Moral considerations are also an aspect that may cause people to resist social influence. If
a person considers an act to be wrong on moral ground, he may not conform to it thus depicting
resistance. Further, people with a non- conformist personality are often less likely to conform to
social influence. Some people are not concerned about social norms (Oc and Bashshur, 2013).
These are the people who resist majority influence as they do not feel pressurized to ‘fit in’ a
particular group. However, there are some people who are against majority influence. Hence,
resistance to social influence will always be seen in case of these people.
Social psychology assumes that people obey in presence of certain factors. Removal of
these factors lead to resistance to social influence. Because then it becomes easier for people to
disobey it. According to Zimbardo, some individuals are characterized by ‘Heroic Imagination’
which indicates that they act in a heroic manner. When these people are given order to obey, they
resists. This is especially more in the situation when the order is considered to be morally wrong.
Furthermore in social psychology, obedience is also explained through personality factors rather
than situational factors. A person favoring social system characterized by Authority have a
tendency to admire being obedient to authority figures. People who like this personality may
therefore resist social influence.
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Sometimes, when a person who influences is self confident and dedicated, then it is likely
that the majority will be influenced. This commitment makes the majority to obey. However,
lack of commitment may make the people go against social influence (Lorenz and et.al., 2011).
Along with this, if the minority is perceived by the majority of people to be rigid and inflexible,
then they may not obey thus leading to resistance to social influence.
From the essay it can be concluded that there are several reasons due to which people
may resists social influence, these reasons are better explained with the help of the studies,
concepts and theories that form a part of social psychology. Hence, it can be inferred that social
psychology provides sufficient details about the reasons as to why people may resist social
influence. Absence of authority figure, moral consideration, presence of a dissident are some of
the reasons for which people resist social influence.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Bond, R. M. & et.al., (2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political
mobilization. Nature, 489(7415), 295-298.
Cosley, D. & et.al., (2010). Sequential Influence Models in Social Networks. ICWSM, 10, 26.
Estrada, M., & et.al., (2011). Toward a model of social influence that explains minority student
integration into the scientific community. Journal of educational psychology, 103(1),
206.
Fiske, S. T., Gilbert, D. T., & Lindzey, G. (Eds.). (2010). Handbook of social psychology (Vol.
2). John Wiley & Sons.
Gass, R. H., & Seiter, J. S. (2015). Persuasion: Social influence and compliance gaining.
Routledge.
Guadagno, R. E., & Cialdini, R. B. (2010). Preference for consistency and social influence: A
review of current research findings. Social Influence, 5(3), 152-163.
Lorenz, J. &. et.al., (2011). How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd
effect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(22), 9020-9025.
Muchnik, L., Aral, S., & Taylor, S. J. (2013). Social influence bias: A randomized
experiment. Science, 341(6146), 647-651.
Oc, B., & Bashshur, M. R. (2013). Followership, leadership and social influence. The
Leadership Quarterly, 24(6), 919-934.
Snyder, M., & Deaux, K. (2012). Personality and social psychology. In The Oxford handbook of
personality and social psychology.
Vallance, S., Perkins, H. C., & Dixon, J. E. (2011). What is social sustainability? A clarification
of concepts. Geoforum, 42(3), 342-348.
Online
Shermer, M., 2012. What Milgram’s Shock Experiments Really Mean. [Online]. Available
Through: <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-milgrams-shock-
experiments-really-mean/>.
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