PSY 530 Module 4 DQ 1

PSY 530 Module 4 DQ 1

Provide a real-life example of informational social influences impacting a person’s decision or behavior. Provide a real-life example of normative social influences impacting a person’s decision or behavior. Can the influence of conformity, compliance, or obedience be decreased? How would this impact the situations you identified?

Answer:

Deutsch and Gerard (1955) have distinguished two types of social influence. They refer to informational social itifluence as the “influence to accept information obtained from another as evidence about reality,” that is, as evidence about the true state of some aspect of the individual’s environment. They reserve the term normative social influence for the influence to conform to the expectations of another person or group.

When we do not know how to behave, we copy other people. They thus act as information sources for how to behave as we assume they know what they are doing. Also because we care a great deal about what others think about us, this provides a safe course of action—at the very least, they cannot criticize us for our actions.
We are more likely to use this principle when the task in question is important to us.
This leads to such effects as people ignoring public muggings and cult members being led into bizarre and even suicidal acts.
Private acceptance occurs when we genuinely believe the other person is right. This can lead to permanent changes in beliefs, values and behaviors.
Public compliance occurs when we copy others because we fear ridicule or rejection if we behave otherwise.
An example of informational social influence impacts a person’s decision or behavior from real life would be my friends older brother was a police officer he would always say to us if we knew anybody that sold drugs around us we should tell him and even though we did not hang out with people who used drugs his brother just was always on our back and the fact that he was a police officer gave him a sense of authority over us, we actually even started looking out for the drug dealers to go report to his brother but never really came up with anything. We conformed to him because we felt like he had accurate information about some people who hung out in the neighborhood sold marijuiana.

An real life example of normative social influence which impact a person’s decision or behavior would be another friend of mine he pledged a fraternity to fit in to be liked and needed he had no knowledge of greek life or fraternities nor the interest prior to starting college but again he joined this fraternity because he could afford it,had the grades, and got accepted this gave him a sense of worthyness and a part of ones of the larbgest fraternities internationally this is normative social influence because he did something to be liked or to fit in.

Yes the influence of conformity,compliance,obedience can be decreased because of our social surroundings and we can easily be influenced by normative and informational social influence because of the need to fit in with the norms.

The sitautions I explained earlier would impact conformity,compliance, and obedience at a decrased height because we live in a world that is based on social status and what influences us comes socially being engaged, we as youth are mechanically trained from social influence whether it be through family, culture, or ethnic backgrounds.

Reference:

Motivation 1976 Lincoln Nebraska; University of Nebraska Press 1967

http://gcumedia.com/digital-resources/pearson/2012/social-psychology_ebook_8e.php

Miyajima, T., & Naito, M. (2008). Conformity under indirect group pressure in junior high school students: Effects of normative and informational social influences and task importance. Japanese Journal Of Developmental Psychology, 19(4), 364-374.

Skewes, J., Skewes, L., Roepstorff, A., & Frith, C. (n.d). Doing What Others See: Visuomotor Conversion to Informational Social Influence. Journal Of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception And Performance, 39(5), 1291-1303.