Topic > Social psychology and the concept of social influence

How do our daily interactions influence the decisions we make and, ultimately, individual behavior, feelings and thoughts? How does our society shape and construct our identity? All these example questions come to mind and lead us to think carefully about social psychology. The urgency of understanding how humans relate to each other in cooperation or conflict has become important despite the innovation and advancement of technology. Social psychology provides insights that can alter the world around us. It's about how we understand who we are and how it relates to our relationships with others regarding 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 behavioral theory in the field as he is one of the first psychologists to develop many important ideas of the discipline, including the focus on dynamic interactions between people. In the field of social psychology there have been broad and varied topics that seem endless and include social cognition, social influence, group processes, prejudice and discrimination, interpersonal processes, and aggression. Social influence is a general topic that covers how humans intentionally and unintentionally feel and believe about others and situations. It has many aspects and can be considered in advertising, peer pressure, conformity, social facilitation and attraction. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay There are many ways that people allow social influences to influence their beliefs, thoughts, and decisions; however, much of the persuasion we experience comes from external forces. Because social media platforms have the ability to use social influence to reach individuals, they are gaining great popularity among businesses, television, print media, and the Internet; therefore, advertising as communication is an effective strategy for persuading consumers to purchase a company's products by attracting attention, influencing their choices and actions, and creating interest. There are many tools used in advertising and one of them is repetition, which is a powerful technique in both visual and auditory advertising. Repeated use of statements and images keeps a brand or product at the forefront of people's minds, which can help them remember advertising messages and even believe them because consumers accept that opinion is prevalent. In visual advertising, color is known to have a huge psychological impact on audience behavior and decisions, so the design of an advertisement must be created with careful and intelligent use of color. Colors play an important role in capturing the public's attention as they can be the primary and only reason that drives someone to purchase a product. As an example of specific and essential color choice, the color red is often used to trigger erotic feelings; it is associated with movement and passion. It creates a sense of urgency that is valid for promotion and sales. Advertising is responsible for creating cognitive dissonance as the company uses it to its advantage as a persuasive method. They persuade the consumer to buy a product or service even if it is not in his interest or could not benefit him. Cognitive dissonance has been studiedfirst by psychologist Leon Festinger that, according to his theory, we have an internal drive to keep all our attitudes, behaviors and opinions in harmony that goes against our positive perception of ourselves, so we experience psychological distress. appear anywhere, anytime and in 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 shiny hair. Indeed, much of our beauty culture has been largely shaped by modern advertising. Women around the world are convinced daily by beauty advertisers that they are not good enough and should use their products. Every time I see a gorgeous, free and incomparable female model in a cosmetic advertisement who has elegant femininity and spends comfortable and pleasant moments, I feel dissonance. I automatically wish her her desired state with the product she is using even if I don't necessarily have to buy it. The purpose of the ad is that, as a woman, I too could look happy and beautiful if I use the same product as the model. Modern cosmetic advertising has changed our perceptions, attitudes and cultural values ​​towards beauty and the way we look at ourselves. Unfortunately, most personal care brands exploit women's insecurities to increase their sales and their customers with a comprehensive and ever-increasing amount of advertisements that constantly tell us how we should think and behave about our bodies. Here are different types of social influence: conformity which is the changing of a person's behavior or beliefs to fit in with a group, even if he or she does not agree with it. The most famous conformity experiment was that of Solomon Asch, in 1951. He performed what would become one of the definitive experiments in social psychology to determine how social pressure from a majority group could influence a person's thoughts, opinions, and behaviors. to comply. . In his study, Asch used a laboratory experiment to study compliance in which participants were asked to make a visual perception, the same one made by the Sheriff participants. The experiment involved a comparison between a series of printed line segments of various lengths: a, b, and b and the fourth line segment where participants were asked to distinguish which line between a, b, and c most resembled and corresponded to the fourth line. Asch found that participants ignored their own eyes and gave an incorrect answer by measuring the number of times each participant conformed to the majority's view. The difference between the Asch line estimation experiment and the Sheriff's light estimation is that in the Sheriff's experiment there was no clear answer; however, in Asch's study the correct answer was obvious since people were willing to reject reality to conform to the rest of the group. So why do people conform? And what are the factors that lead a person to give in to group pressure? There are two main reasons behind the motivation to conform: one is informational social influence and the other is normative social influence. Informational social influence depends on the attitude of other people in obtaining information when a person is uncertain about what answer to give because he believes that the group is fair and competent. However, normative social influence is the desire simply to fit in, to feel good, to be accepted, and to belong to a group; therefore, this type ofSocial influence operated in Asch's conformity experiment because participants did not depend on the group for information. This study highlights that the size of the majority matters for extraneous normative influence whenever the greater the number of people present, the greater the likelihood that an individual will comply. Fashion is a way that causes people to conform in order to fit in and earn money. acceptance by society which often suffers from normative social influence. It plays an important role in changing our attitudes, thoughts and behaviors. Fashion is one of the most precious forms of self-expression available to us as people as it is a way that inspires and stimulates us to express ourselves and 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 every day, it has an important part that can reflect our moods, our personality. However, it has a negative impact which, for example, can divert or distract the attention of people, especially young people, from other important activities and skills. Furthermore, from an economic or commercial point of view, fashion has a very positive role in society as 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 increase . we are social beings, so social interaction is so important in our daily lives that it has a greater focus on the individual's productivity and performance, and is known as social facilitation. It can be defined as in the presence of others, people perform better in whatever task they perform. In 1898, Norman Triplett used children and fishing reels in his experiment on social facilitation. He asked his participants, the children, to spin the fishing reels as fast as possible. From this experiment, he found that many children spun fishing reels much faster in the presence of pairs than when performing 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 of being judged by others which can cause increased psychological arousal such as adrenaline secretion and increased heart rate; as a result, it catalyzes the body to perform simple tasks or tasks we are proficient in better and more quickly. There are two types of social facilitation: compulsion effects and audience effects. The compulsion effect occurs when there is an increase in task performance when surrounded by other individuals who are proceeding with the same task, and was first perceived by Triplett in his experiment with children and fishing reels. While a public effect emerges when an individual's behavior may alter because he thinks someone else is observing him. I believe that the presence of others tends to improve our performance in many aspects, both physical and cognitive, better than we do alone. I had an experience where I found myself giving in to peer pressure in the fourth grade. My teacher told my parents that I was basically inactive because of my shyness as he asked me and other students to give a short presentation to the class on a topic. I spoke only when asked to do so in front of the class. I simply felt uncomfortable in every circumstance, not only in class, but also in starting new relationships and meeting new friends. I had a hard time speaking in front of people. It's an obstacle I've faced in mine.