Psychology
Social Impact Theory
Social Impact Theory, proposed by Bibb Latané, suggests that the influence of others on an individual's behavior depends on the strength, immediacy, and number of people exerting the influence. It emphasizes the impact of social forces on individual behavior and highlights the importance of group size, proximity, and strength of the source in shaping social influence.
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6 Key excerpts on "Social Impact Theory"
eBook - ePubEssentials of Social Psychology
An Indian Perspective
- Shubhra Mangal, Shashi Mangal(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
- It tells us that our thoughts, feelings and actions are influenced with the interactions and presence of others and vice versa. Proceeding further, it acquaints us with the way these are influenced in the presence of others in one or the other social situations. In other words, thus, social psychology may be found to look at human behavior as influenced by other people and the social context in which this occurs.
- For influencing and affecting our feelings, thoughts and actions, the actual presence of others is not essential. It can happen also with their imagined and implied presence such as when watching television or following internalized cultural norms.
- Social psychology provides a scientific explanation of what, how and why people think, feel and behave the way they do with others, influence them and have interactions and relationships with them in one or the other social situations.
- It helps us in understanding and explaining the manner in which our thoughts, feelings and actions influence others or get influenced in the presence/interactions with others. Apart from the ongoing behavior of others, social experiences preserved in our memory, and the attitudes formed out of these experiences, and physical factors also influence our behavior towards others.
Social PsychologyAn applied branch of the subject psychology that deals with the scientific study of the behavior of individuals in a social context enabling us to get an explanation of the nature and causes of their thoughts, feelings and behaving with others in one or the other social situations.- In this way, what is available in the form of social as well as other variables to us in our social environment at one or the other time, proves quite significant in influencing our bent of mind (in terms of our attitudes, perceptions and motives) and our actions and behavior at that time and also in future in the similar encounters. By highlighting all such things, social psychology tries to bring out all the factors that lead us to behave in a given way in the presence of others, and look at the conditions under which certain types of behavior/actions and feelings occur.
eBook - ePubSocial Identifications
A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes
- Dominic Abrams, Michael A. Hogg(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
This is intended to be a theory chapter to equip the reader for subsequent chapters which explore specific topics that the approach addresses. In turn, these later chapters will provide the empirical findings which have bearing on the theory and will dwell in more detail and elaborate upon those aspects of theory relevant to the topic. However, before doing this we shall spend some time contextualizing the approach. We feel it is very important to show where the social identity perspective fits in social psychology: how it differs from other perspectives, what assumptions it shares. Here we are really concerned with metatheory, with what type of theory the social identity approach represents. In order to do this we will need not only to define social psychology and explore the implications of our definition but also to examine the historical milieu and intellectual climate in which the approach has its origins. This contextualizing exercise will broaden out to include the metatheoretical location of the social identity approach with respect to cognitive psychology, general psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and perhaps more importantly sociology and other social sciences. Social psychology DEFINING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY What is social psychology? Although there are almost as many definitions as texts, it is not unduly difficult to detect a common underlying theme: social psychology is the scientific study of human social behaviour. As a working definition this will suffice, as it describes both the method and the focus of what passes as social psychology, or what most social psychologists do as social psychologists. They study human social behaviour scientifically
eBook - ePub- Miles Hewstone, Wolfgang Stroebe, Klaus Jonas, Miles Hewstone, Wolfgang Stroebe, Klaus Jonas(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- BPS Blackwell(Publisher)
Even though social psychologists are mainly interested in studying how attitudes change in response to social influence attempts (see Chapters 7 and 8), they also use attitudes to predict individual behaviour (see Chapter 6). Furthermore, within social psychology, researchers have often been interested in studying individual difference variables, such as the degree to which individuals are prone to prejudice and susceptible to Fascist ideologies (‘authoritarianism’; Adorno et al., 1950; see Chapter 14), or the degree to which individuals are oriented to situational cues or reactions of others (‘self-monitoring’; Snyder, 1974). Since there is a great deal of agreement that individual behaviour is influenced by personality traits (see Chapter 9 on aggression) as well as the social context, the two fields of personality psychology and social psychology are, in fact, difficult to separate. It is therefore not surprising that the leading social psychological journal is the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and that most American social psychologists are members of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. However, there are subtle differences in focus. Social psychologists are typically interested in personality variables as moderators. They look for the extent to which the impact of an independent variable on a dependent variable is qualified by, or depends on, the level of an individual’s score on a personality measure. For example, there is a higher correlation between attitudes and behaviour for ‘low’ than for ‘high’ self-monitors (Snyder & Kendzierski, 1982). Many of the chapters in this volume refer to such personality influences on social behaviour. Social psychologists also tend to emphasize that the impact of personality variables on social behaviour is weaker in ‘strong’ compared to ‘weak’ social situations (Mischel, 1977)
eBook - ePub- Vivien Burr(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Other research and theory, particularly that which focuses upon dynamics within and between groups, has sometimes gone beyond this position to suggest that a person’s location within social groups is an important source of identity and self-esteem. The role of the social here is not simply one of impacting upon a pre-existing individual but in some way helping to create that individual. However, developments in psychological social psychology towards the end of the twentieth century have led to an increasingly individualistic position, and one which may be hard to defend as social at all. The rise of cognitive psychology and cognitive science has been mirrored in social psychology. Cognitive theories have been enthusiastically developed in two areas of what has come to be known as ‘social cognition’, attitudes and attribution, which now occupy central positions in social psychology. Attitudes used to be thought of as predispositions to respond to a certain object or class of objects (such as President Bush, computers or Italian food) in particular ways. These responses included our thoughts, our emotions and our behaviour. Even here, the concept can be seen to have moved substantially away from the notion of social attitudes used by earlier social psychologists (see Chapter 1). But today the concept of attitude is more likely to be used to refer to our general evaluative stance toward an object, that is the extent to which we see it as good or bad or the extent to which we may be said to like or dislike it. A good deal of contemporary attitude research and theory has focused upon the relationship between attitudes and behaviour, that is whether we can predict a person’s behaviour from knowledge of their attitude. By the 1960s and 1970s it was becoming clear that general attitudes (such as a person’s political stance or their attitudes toward ethnic groups) were very poor at predicting specific behaviours (Wicker, 1969)
eBook - ePubUnderstanding Group Behavior
Volume 1: Consensual Action By Small Groups; Volume 2: Small Group Processes and Interpersonal Relations
- Erich H. Witte, James H. Davis(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Table 11.1 ). The concrete integration of these ideas into EGST is a task for the future. It shows, however, how a theoretical core can be used to implement more and more complex conditions.The hitherto existing combination of the different concepts has shown those empirical effects on which each approach is grounded, and that the concepts are not counterparts, but complements explaining individual behavior in small groups. Social Impact Theory explains the influence of normative information on the individual reaction without further discussion, a concept that might also be extended in the future to discussion-group settings. The influence depends on that social and behavioral force field, which is a direct extension of this theory, if the theory is further specified.The social decision schemes, on the contrary, are concentrated—from the perspective of EGST—on informational influence without normative aspects. Different rules mean a different integration of informational elements so that the basis of decision schemes are found in the transformation of individual reactions before discussion into reactions after discussion.The research on communication structures has to do with the weighting of the individual reactions as a means of determining the group standard. This research is thus more specific than the decision schemes because the concept contains the individual characteristics of the group members.Finally, the explanations of some interesting empirical effects, if they are accepted as such, has been a test of the EGST as a connection between theory and empirical data. In the future, many more such reconstructions and, of course, more direct predictions are necessary. EGST is only a theoretical framework within which to build a middle-range theory of individual behavior in small-group situations. Its prediction has been tested on the level of an average individual so that the individual variation has been eliminated. This corresponds with the usual test of means, which ignores the standard deviation. In the future, the individual reactions themselves have to be reconstructed or predicted. Such a strategy will lead to the introduction of personality variables and other individual characteristics as necessary predictors of individual reactions, and as a means of reducing the error variance.
eBook - ePubThe Sciences Of Man In The Making
AN ORIENTATION BOOK
- Edwin A. Kirkpatrick(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
HAPTER XBEHAVIOUR IN RELATION TO OTHERS, OR SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
THE NEED FOR A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
THE concept of general psychology is of an organism reacting to the physical environment, and improving in doing so by practice. Individual psychology not only recognizes differences in human organisms but emphasizes the truth that, in reacting in his special way, each individual builds a self whose parts are so organized that what is done in response to a situation is not wholly determined by either the situation or the sense and motor apparatus responding, but by the personality of the actor. Social psychology shows that there is also a social determiner of conduct. It no longer assumes a general “ social mind ” of which each individual mind is a part, but emphasizes the truth that the individual is directed and moulded by companions and by the customs and institutions of the group of which he is a part. These influences are shown to have more to do with determining behaviour than bodily structure or physical environment. Realization of the importance of personal and cultural influences in human behaviour has led to the present deep interest in social psychology, which is concerned with these interrelations.THE EFFECTS OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF ONE UPON ANOTHER
A hungry individual animal or man, when food is perceived, responds to the situation in a positive and active way. Another individual, also hungry, observes the response perhaps before he has observed the food, and is then influenced by the two stimuli to more vigorous action than the first one, who had the food stimulus only. As the second approaches and begins taking food, both become more active in getting it than would be the case if each was alone, especially if the amount is limited. If one interferes with the other’s attempt to get a portion the natural reaction is one of anger, which usually calls forth a similar response with further interference of each with the other, and increase in vigour of struggle. For a time, perhaps, the food is neglected while each tries to match the aggressive behaviour of the other by more effective responses of a similar kind.
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