Social Psychology and The Notion of Social Influence

How do our daily interactions influence the decisions we make, and ultimately individual behavior, feeling, and thoughts? How does our society shape and build our identity? All of this sample questions come into our mind which leads us to think carefully of the social psychology. The urgency of understanding how humans relate to another in cooperation or conflict became important despite the innovation and the advance of the technology. Social psychology supplies insights that can alter the world as is all about us. It is about how we figure out who we are, and how its linked to our relationships with others about families, co-workers, and strangers. Social psychology is the study of how society, culture, and context shape our attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. Social psychologist Kurt Lewin is known as “the father of social psychology”. He is known for his field theory of behaviour as he is one of the first psychologists developed many important ideas of the discipline, including a focus on the dynamic interactions among people. Within the field of social psychology there have been wide and varied themes which seem endless include social cognition, social influence, group processes, prejudice and discrimination, interpersonal processes, and aggression. Social influence is an overarching topic that covers the way of how human intentionally and unintentionally feel and believe about others and situations. It takes many aspects and can be considered in advertising, peer pressure, conformity, social facilitation, and attraction.

There is such a number ways of how people allow social influences to affect their beliefs, thoughts, and decisions; however, much of the persuasion we experience comes from outside forces. Because social media platforms has the ability to use social influence to reach out to individuals, they are earning a large popularity among firms, television, print, and internet; therefore, advertising as a communication is one of an effective strategy to persuade consumers to buy a company’s products by getting attention, impacting their choices and actions, and creating interest. There is many tools used in advertising and one among it is repetition which is a powerful technique in both visual and auditory advertising. The repeated use of statements and images keep a brand or product in the forefront of people’s mind which can aid them to remember the advertising messages and even believe on them because consumers accept that the opinion is more prevalent. In the visual advertising, color has been known to have an enormous psychological impact on audience’s behavior and decisions, so an advert designs must be created with careful and smart use of color. Colors play an important role in order to catch audience’s attention as they can be the primary and the sole reason of leading someone to purchase a product. As an example of choosing specific and essential color, red color is often used to trigger erotic feelings; it associates with movement and passion. It creates a sense of urgency which is valid for promotion, and clearance sales. Advertising is responsible for creating cognitive dissonance as the company's use it to their advantage as a persuasive methode. They persuade consumer to buy a product or service even that’s in not in their best interest or could not benefit them. Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by the psychologist Leon Festinger where in his theory states we have an intern drive to hold all of our attitudes, behaviors, and opinions in harmony that runs counter to our positive self-perceptions, so we experience psychological discomfort.

Advertisements show up everywhere, anytime and on different formats. There is no doubt that advertising influences our culture, which in turn influences us. Every year, women spend billions of dollars in exchange for smooth skin, fancy lipsticks, and lustrous hair. In fact, most of our beauty culture was largely shaped by modern advertising. Women all around the globe are convinced on a daily basis by the beauty industry advertisers that they aren’t good enough and should use their products. Everytime and whenever I see in a cosmetic advertising a gorgeous, free, and unparalleled woman’s model that has an elegant femininity and has comfortable and enjoyable time, I experience dissonance. I automatically wish her desirable state with the product she is using even I don’t necessarily to buy it. The purpose of the ad is that as woman I am too could be look happy and beautiful if I use the same product that the model uses. The modern cosmetics advertising have changed our perceptions, attitudes and cultural values toward beauty and how we look at ourselves. Unfortunately, the majority of personal care brands have been exploiting women’s insecurities to increase their sales and customers with a comprehensive and ever increasing amount of advertisements that constantly tell us how we should think of and behave with our bodies.

Here are different type of social influence: conformity which is the change of a person’s behavior or belief in order to fit in with a group, even if he does not agree with it. The most famous conformity experiment was by Solomon Asch, in 1951. He executed what was to become one of the defining experiments of social psychology to determine how social pressure from a majority group could affect the thoughts, opinions, and behaviors of a person to conform. In his study Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity where participants were asked to carry out a visual perception, the same that carried out by Sheriff’s participants. The experiment stated a comparison between a series of printed line segments of various lengths: a,b, and c and fourth line segment which the participants were asked to distinguish which line from a,b, and c was most resembled and matched to the fourth line. Asch’s found participants ignored their eyes and gave an incorrect answer by measuring the number of times each participant conformed to the majority of view. The difference between the Asch’s line estimation experiment and the Sheriff's light estimation is that in the Sheriff’s experiment there was no clear answer; however, in the Asch’s study the correct answer was obvious as the people were willing to reject the reality in order to conform to the rest of the group. So why do people conform? And what the factors that lead a person to yield to group pressure? There are two main reason of the motivation to conform one is informational social influence and the other is normative social influence. Informational social influence is depending on other people’s attitudes to gain information when a person is uncertain about what response to give because he believes that the group is right and competent. However, normative social influence is the desire to simply fit in, to feel good, to be accepted and belong to a group; therefore, this type of social influence was operating in the Asch conformity experiment because the participants did not depend on the group to earn the information. This study emphasizes that the size of the majority is important for a stranger normative influence whenever the greater the number of people present, the more likely an individual will conform.

Fashion is a way that makes people to conform in order to fit in and to gain acceptance by society which often affected by normative social influence. It has a major role in changing our attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors. Fashion is one of the most valuable forms of self expression available to us as people as it is a way that inspires and stimulates us to express ourselves and to express our creativity as we want to be different. It allows us to feel good about ourselves. “ when we look good we feel good'. It is an art worn everyday, it has an important part that can reflect our moods, our personality. However, it has a negative impacts that for example may diverts or distracts people’s attention especially youth from other important activities and skills. In addition, from an economic or business standpoint, fashion has a very positive role in society since it stimulates the economy by creating a customer base and demand for products because if consumers prefer a specific product, the price of that product will enhance.

As humans we are social beings, so social interaction is so important in our daily life which has a greater focus on individual’s productivity and performance, and it is known by social facilitation. It can be defined as in the presence of others, people perform better at whatever task they do. In 1898, Norman Triplett in his experiment on social facilitation, he used children and fishing reels. He demanded from his participants, children, to turn fishing reels as fast as they could. From this experiment, he found that many children turned the fishing reels far more faster in the presence of the pairs than carry out the task individually. So why and how do people perform better in the presence of others? A simple explanation is evaluation apprehension which is the fear and anxiety to be judged by others that can cause heightened psychological arousal such as, secretion of adrenaline, and enhancing of heart rate; as a result, it catalyses the body to perform simple task, or tasks at which we are skilled better and more quickly. There are two types of social facilitation which are co-action effects and audience effect. Co-action effect arises when an increased task performance is present when encompassed by other individuals progressing the same task, and it was first perceived by Triplett in his experiment of children and fishing reels. While an audience effect emerges when an individual’s behaviour can alter, because he thinks that someone else witnessing him.

I believe that the presence of others tend us to improve our performance better on many types if it is physical or cognitive than we do alone. I had an experience when I found myself caving into peer pressure in fourth grade. My teacher told my parents that basically I was inactive because of my shyness as he asked me and other student to give a short presentation to the class about a topic. I only spoke when I was asked to in front of the class. I was simply uncomfortable in any circumstance not only at my classroom, but also in engaging in a new relationships by meeting new friends. I had a hard moment to speak in front of people. It is an obstacle that I have dealt with my life. It is truly that shyness can hold people back, and give a negative impacts. In contract of other students, they were confident to speak, and they didn’t find it a hard task; besides, they perceived a higher level of performance. Fortunately, my parents didn’t use vicious methods to confront my shyness because they understand that shyness is a personality trait and not a fault. They motivated and encouraged me to interact kids with the same age which from there. I learned vicariously how to overcome my timidity and rise my self-esteem and self-confidence.

Social psychology is all about relationships. So what determines how we act in relationships if it is between lovers, friends, or family. John Bowlby, child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known for his first attachment theorist of how children form bonds with their primary caregivers his or her mother in 1696. His theory suggest that depending upon the experiences individual has with his or her primary caregiver, it determines how he will react with others in relationships in later life. Theory emphasizes that an attachment secure style is developed in child whose mother is sensitive, consistent and responsive to his needs. He is merry and trustful to his mom to be there with him. An avoidant style is developed when a child don’t trust to his mother as she didn’t respond consistently to his needs; thus, finding difficulty to perform bonds and to trust to other people. In addition, In anxious/ambivalent style, a child feel insecure and negligible because his mother shows a disinterest in interacting with him. This experience leads children to appear anger towards their mothers, and in later life to not believe one is worthy of love.

Of all the types of love, a mother’s love is the strongest as we do not have to win our mothers’ love in which child develops attachment secure style. It is something that no one can explain, It is made of deep sincerity and sacrifice. The love between mother and child arises instantly, as a vital bond uniting two bodies and souls. Mothers offer endless, unconditional and eternal love, which doesn’t depend on the child’s circumstances or characteristics where we were born, whether we were ugly or cute, good or bad. Even the father’s love is different than mother’s love. Fathers are rough, while mothers are gentle; for example, Fathers tend to play with their children while mothers tend to care for them. My mom is one of the most important people in my life which is I can’t believe my life without her. My mom’s love aids me to grow up with an emotional safety net and helps me to move forward with self-confidence. I can be attracted to my mom without a single word being said. It’s a reaction between the chemistry of our bodies which is natural, undeniable connection between us.

Social psychology is all about social universe, and the people that qualify our daily life. It is there in every interaction, every behavior, and every attitudes we take. It is a study that helps us to gain a good recognition in order to grasp the communications that we receive which has a relation to persuade us to change our attitudes, thoughts, and behavior. The study of social psychology takes a wide range on many important insights for attitudes, leaderships, attraction, love, conformity, social facilitation, marketing, and advertising. Advertising as a communication is one of an effective strategy to persuade consumers to buy a company’s products even they didn’t need it as it responsible for creating cognitive dissonance. The power of situation can lead us to conform, to fit in to a group, and to be accepted. It is a reason of why people allow social influence to affect their behaviors and beliefs. The term conformity is often used to indicate an harmony to the majority situation, the majority could make the minority feel uncomfortable about disagreeing. Through social facilitation people perform better on simple tasks, or tasks at which they are skilled better in the presence of others.