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Psychology of Communication: social influence
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Psychology of Communication: social influence
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In the popular mind the mass media are incredibly powerful. Scares about their influence keep cropping up. It seems almost that every time there is some particularly ghastly crime, the mass media are supposed to be implicated in some way. There is also a widespread belief that Nazism would not have been successful in Germany or Communism in the Soviet Union, had it not been for the massive propaganda machines which kept the public's support for abhorrent régimes. Critics of the media castigate advertisers for instilling 'false needs' in an unsuspecting public who are cynically manipulated by their capitalist exploiters. The Broadcasting Standards Council and the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association are on constant guard against dangerous sex and violence .... and so on.
However, if you have looked at any of the research into mass media effects, you will be aware that things are not quite so simple as that. For example, Katz and Lazarsfeld's research which led them to formulate their Two-Step Flow Model, suggests that the pattern of our social contacts plays an important rôle in mediating mass media messages.
In this section on social influence, we will be looking at other factors in our social contacts which may tend to limit or strengthen the effects of the mass media. We also deal with persuasion under our discussion of the Hovland approach, as well as under the sections on political propaganda and advertising. You may also find it useful to take a look at the section on memes. I readily confess to knowing little about this relatively new theory, but you may find the section a useful starting point for further investigation.
It is useful at the outset to distinguish between the terms persuasion and compliance. In liberal democracies such as ours much of what we do is to seek to persuade others (the targets) of the value of our point of view or of the desirability of behaving in a certain manner, rather than coercing them to do what we say, though, of course, coercion also plays a significant rôle. Try counting as you walk or drive into town the number of attempts made to influence your behaviour: the stop signs, the traffic lights, the 'one way' signs, which induce compliance because you'll get a heavy fine if you don't do as you're told) and the inducements to buy sticky sweets which help you 'work, rest and play', pop into the church because God can 'is the only way', take out a loan because rates 'have never been lower'. You'll soon lose count. The arguments and other methods we deploy in order to persuade others are referred to as our advocacy. If our advocacy is successful, then we consider that we have changed the target's attitudes. Compliance does not involve changing attitudes. For example, the use of heavy penalties as deterrents may induce compliance with drink-drive laws, but still leave many drivers who with the attitude that there is no harm in drink-driving and that they would drink and drive if there were no penalties. Persuading drivers of the undesirability of drinking and driving requires attitude change and that requires changes not only in behaviour, but also in the cognitive component of attitudes (i.e. beliefs about the behviour) and the affective component (i.e. the emotional response to the behaviour)
The factors we shall be considering are not only helpful in understanding the limits on media influence; they should also be very useful to you in your study of communication in groups and teams.
We shall be considering the following:
Conformity
Diffusion of responsibility
Obedience
Rebellion
Minority influence
Power of social rôles
Conflict resolution
Groups and Teams
Mass Media Effects Research
Political Propaganda and Persuasion
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