What do sociologists mean when they claim that they study how social contexts influence individuals?

Abstract

Social influence involves intentional and unintentional efforts to change another person's beliefs, attitudes, or behavior. Unlike persuasion, which is typically intentional and requires some degree of awareness on the part of the target, social influence may be inadvertent or accidental. Social influence often operates via peripheral processing. Hence, the target may be unaware of the influence attempt. Unlike compliance gaining, which is usually goal directed, social influence is often nongoal directed and the outcomes may be inconsistent with, or unrelated to, a communicator's goals. Social influence encompasses such strategies as indebtedness or reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking and attractiveness, authority, and scarcity.

Introduction

Social influence is ubiquitous in human societies. It takes a wide variety of forms, including obedience, conformity, persuasion, social loafing, social facilitation, deindividuation, observer effect, bystander effect, and peer pressure. Research on social influence has a long history in social psychology, and an experiment on social facilitation effect that was conducted in 1898 by Triplett [1] is often considered the first social psychological experiment (see also Ref. [2]). Since then, social influence has fascinated scholars in various fields.

Since 2005, researchers in the emerging and growing fields of social neuroscience, neuroeconomics, and neuromarketing have begun to explore the neural bases of such complex social phenomena using methods in cognitive neuroscience including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). In this chapter, I will cover social neuroscience and neuroeconomics studies investigating the following two forms of social influence: (1) the effect of others' presence on prosocial behavior (observer effect) and (2) the effect of others' opinion on an individual's preference (social conformity). Both the observer effect and social conformity can be considered primary examples of social influence, as they represent two of the most relevant and ubiquitous forms of social influence in our everyday social lives.

6 Conclusions and Future Directions

Social influences from peers and family have a profound impact on positive youth adjustment. Although susceptibility to social influence is often viewed as a vulnerability in adolescent development, particularly in the peer domain (and arguably so, given the evidence for peer-related increases in risk taking behaviors), we reviewed empirical support that underscores the positive side of susceptibility to social influence. Peers and families provide an opportunity for social adjustment, with the potential to redirect negative trajectories and increase positive outcomes. With empirical evidence showing that social influence relates to positive adjustment, it is key to capitalize on the social context and use this time as a period of investment, perhaps especially during middle school when adolescents are thought to be most socially sensitive (Knoll, Magis-Weinberg, Speekenbrink, & Blakemore, 2015; Van Hoorn, Van Dijk, et al., 2016). Indeed, recent prevention programs designed to decrease problem behaviors (e.g., tobacco use, peer victimization) and/or increase positive behaviors (e.g., prosocial behaviors) have successfully applied aspects of social learning and social identity theories in the promotion of positive classroom norms and use of socially salient referent peers to change negative attitudes (Paluck & Shepherd, 2012; Van Lier et al., 2011). Despite increasing attention to the positive side of social influences and its application in interventions, further research is needed to fully capture the inherent complexities of the social influence process and its relation to positive youth adjustment. With increased understanding of the social influence processes involved in deviancy training, we could modify and apply them to prosocial training, in which youth are exposed to more positive social influences.

Emerging evidence from developmental neuroscience has identified neurobiological processes through which peers and family influence decision making and positive adjustment via changes in functional brain activity. Indeed, social influences from peers and parents are neurally represented in the adolescent brain by activity in a collection of cognitive, affective, and social brain areas. Adolescents’ decisions and positive adjustment outcomes are likely affected by differential neural sensitivity to family and peers, and future studies should further probe the neural mechanisms of simultaneous and interactive influence from these two salient social sources. Given that social influence often occurs on a more implicit and unconscious level, the developmental social neuroscience perspective provides an informative additional layer of assessment that complements behavioral self-report and experimental methods.

While the peer and family contexts are especially critical in understanding positive adolescent development (Van Ryzin et al., 2012), this is admittedly a narrow view of the social context. Other salient persons in the immediate environment may also be potent sources of social influence, such as sports team coaches, teachers, and mentors. Large individual differences exist in such proximal social contexts, and it is important to consider these individual differences within the larger social network (i.e., school context, neighborhoods, and larger community; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Some youth may have access to mentoring opportunities in their local neighborhood (both setting an example as mentor and learning as mentee), whereas others do not, which may greatly impact the form and power of social influence. While those with no access to mentoring opportunities are perhaps more exposed to social influences from parents and siblings at home, youth with a larger social network who play sports or music with peers may be more exposed to peer norms. Hence, in order to help youth thrive, it is important for future work to study the complex influences from the social context on positive youth development. And perhaps, the question posed at the start of the chapter will eventually be complemented with “If your friends would [insert something positive here], then would you too?”

Social influence phenomena often are divided into conformity, compliance, and obedience categories. People exhibit conformity when they change attitudes or behaviors to reflect a perceived norm. Conformity can be motivated either by a desire for accuracy, called informational influence, or a need for social approval, called normative influence. Several variables affect conformity rates. These variables include culture, age, gender, and the size of the group. Norms can be divided into injunctive norms (what society says one should do) and descriptive norms (what people actually do). Either of these norms can lead to conformity, depending on which the person attends to. Compliance refers to agreement to an explicit request. Investigators have identified several procedures that increase compliance rates. These sequential-request procedures include the foot-in-the-door technique in which agreement with a small request is followed by a larger request. Other effective procedures include the door-in-the face, low-ball, and that's-not-all techniques. People exhibit obedience when they respond to a command from an authority figure. Studies find surprisingly high levels of obedience to commands. Researchers point to the studies to illustrate the often-unrecognized power of the situation to affect behavior.

1 Social Influence

The social-influence hypothesis presumes that negative outcomes associated with teenage childbearing are due to the specific effects of teenage childbearing. The social-influence hypothesis focuses on how teenage childbearing disrupts the developmental trajectory of young mothers, introducing social and economic stressors that constrain their ability to parent effectively (Jaffee et al., 2001). As a consequence of early childbearing, teen mothers have lower educational achievement, which may constrain employment opportunities (see Section IV.A.1). Additionally, teen mothers are more likely to be single parents. The combination of these factors increases the likelihood that teenage mothers will be raising their children in a sociodemographic profile marked by poverty and low maternal education attainment that is associated with poor outcomes. Therefore, the social-influence hypothesis posits that it is the developmentally disruptive effect of the timing of teenage childbirth that produces poor outcomes for teenage mothers and their children.

Introduction

Social influences on creativity have received a huge amount of attention in the scholarly research, especially of late. This is because social processes and structures represent such dramatic influences on creativity. Very likely, no creative potentials would be fulfilled without social support of some kind. Moreover, creative efforts often would go unrecognized without social attributions and recognition. Some creative people work for that recognition. Many are influenced along the way by competition and other social situations. Industries and organizations attempting to stay competitive, diversify, and innovate look to situational influences in order to insure that the creativity of their employees is supported.

For those reasons the second part of this chapter examines the organization, teams, and the like. Yet “social influence” is a broad concept and covers more than organizational issues. Many influences on development and growth, for example, including those presented by parents and teachers, reflect social processes. In that light this chapter presents one perspective on social processes, with complementary perspectives given in the chapters covering the developmental, cultural, and historical perspectives.

The various social perspectives are quite practical. Indeed, the developmental, educational, and social/organizational research demonstrates very well that creativity is a practical concern and not just an academic topic of study. This practicality will be particularly obvious in the discussion of organizational theories, for these tie innovation and productivity to different aspects of the creative process. Late in this chapter additional practical implications are explored. Some may operate on the most general level, namely within society at large. The effects are apparent in indicators of aggregate creativity.

The social perspective has spawned various focused theories, including the attributional theory of creativity (Kasof 1995), a theory of the creative class (Florida 2002, 2005Florida, 2002Florida, 2005), and the communitarian theory (Seitz 2003). Each is described after we address the general question: How do social factors influence creativity? The discussion then shifts to questions about organizations and pinpoints how teams, brainstorming, and other organizational arrangements can influence both creativity and innovation. At the end of the chapter we step back further, to a macro-social level and examine society at large. It may be that cities in the United States, and even countries around the world, differ in their creative talents. Why is that, and what determines it? In the conclusion to this chapter we address the question: Can anything be done to direct social influences toward the fulfillment of creative potential?

Social Influences

Social influences on drinking behavior are primarily related to peers, including peer modeling of inappropriate use and direct or indirect pressure to use, and inaccurate perceptions overestimating the prevalence and acceptability of drinking in the college culture at large (e.g. beliefs such as “all college students drink”) and more proximal peer groups (e.g. “all my friends drink, and they drink more than I do”). Misperception of drinking norms is often considered a cognitive etiological factor, but it is grounded in selective observation of actual peer behavior. Students who are drinking may engage in other behavior (e.g. sustaining an injury, causing a disturbance) that is more likely to be noticed and to bother nondrinkers and drinkers alike, making drinking look more prevalent due to the ease with which such events are brought to mind. Moreover, students tend to estimate norms based on the behavior of proximal peer groups who most often engage in similar drinking behavior. Students who estimate drinking norms based only on their proximal peer group are ignoring the large percentage of students whose drinking behavior they have not observed. Studies suggest that approximately 20–30% of US college students abstain from alcohol use, and these individuals are the most likely to be discounted when students try to estimate the behavior of “typical college students.”

Community Unit-Based Involvement

Most social influence-based prevention programs occur in the school classroom setting. There is evidence showing that school-based programming can be successful. Indeed, school-based programming is a central means of delivery since youth are a captive audience to this type of programming. However, as introduced earlier in this chapter, other community units may exert preventive effects. In particular, regarding the micro-social climate, it is important to recognize the influence of the family unit because of the close and historical patterns of interaction within the unit. Family involvement-based programming is a relevant way of providing prevention material outside school and can lead to a 15% relative effect in compliant families (e.g. the Strengthening Families Program and Family Matters are two examples). Strategies to strengthen family dynamics in such programs include instruction in family skills training and resource acquisition instruction, family therapy, cognitive and behavioral parent training, contingency management, stimulus control, and family support training to prevent drug use.

CONCLUSIONS

Studies of social influence on food preference in rats have resulted in the discovery of a previously unsuspected major determinant of diet choice. Such studies have also provided a useful model system in which to explore the many ways in which social interactions can modulate behavioral development (Galef, 1991a; Hill, 1995). Our findings, together with those of others working in the area, have revealed multiple systems that permit naive rats to extract information from their more experienced fellows thus increasing the probability that the food choices of the naive will be beneficial.

As many other chapters in this volume make clear, neither rats nor foraging animals are unique in using socially acquired information to guide their behavior. Although the details of the processes supporting social influence on the food choices of rats may be of interest only to experts in feeding behavior, the general message that a complex of nonimitative social-learning processes can play a central role in development of locally adaptive patterns of behavior should be of importance to all with an interest in the causes and functions of the behavior of animals. Whether one's interests are in the mate choices of guppies (See Dugatkin, this volume), predator recognition by rhesus macaques (Mineka & Cook, 1988), or the spread of novel means of food extraction by European titmice (Fisher & Hinde, 1949; Sherry & Galef, 1984) investigations of social-learning processes are likely to provide insight into how locally adaptive patterns of behavior are acquired.

5 Incorporating social influence into choice models

Choice models of social influence expand upon the model shown in Eq. (20.1) by incorporating the actions, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of other individuals or institutions into an individual's payoff for making a choice:

(20.4)Pni=fni(xin;βi)+sni(Gn,m−n,xi(−n);ψ )+eni(En;μi)+εnid(Pni,∀i∈J)→y n

where:

sni ≡ a function which maps factors of social influence, including endogenous and contextual social influence, to units of payoff

m−n ≡ the social influence indicators; actions, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of others (individuals or institutions other than individual n) that influence an individual's decision process

xi(−n) ≡ additional social influence indicators from the characteristics of others (individuals or institutions other than individual n) who influence an individual's decision process

En ≡ environmental factors on individual n (may include correlated environmental factors)

ψi, μi ≡ model parameters that weight the influences of others and environmental factors, respectively, on an individual's payoff

Travel may involve different types of social influence processes with varying motivations and generated from different types of social networks including peers, family, neighbors, colleagues, and even society at large. Incorporating these social effects into discrete choice models – which are grounded in the individual choice of independent decision makers – is non-trivial, thus making the choice of the functional form of sni important. The choice of appropriate social influence mechanisms and the associated social networks and influence sources should not be taken lightly.

This has spawned a variety of different model specifications using different social network structures and social influence processes and motivations. But there has not been much guidance in the choice of model structure for social influence choice models. Social influence choice models incorporate theories and terminology from different social science fields. Additionally, various model specifications using differing social network specifications, influence sources, and social influence types and processes have been developed. For example, network structures vary from cliques to sparse networks and the connections made can be due to similarity in social standing and interests as well as geographic proximity. Maness et al. (2015) proposed a theoretical behavioral framework to behaviorally classify the various formulations of social influence choice models. The framework separates the social influence mechanism from the source of its influence and explicitly acknowledges the role of social networks in the model structure. Their review showed that most models are conformity models with utility maximizing agents. This form assumes a direct-benefit effect is generated from conforming to the behavior of others (i.e. utility itself is directly increased by conforming). But this direct-benefit conformity formulation can be generated by different motivations; the question of why are people conforming often is not being answered. Are individuals transferring information? Are people envious of others and aspiring to obtain a similar status? Is this just a fad and people are just following the crowd? These motivations are important for understanding long-run behavior and for guiding organizations on appropriate intervention strategies to encourage behavioral change. For example, Cialdini and Goldstein (2004) classified social influence as originating from motivations for accuracy, affiliation, and maintenance of a positive self-concept. Current models either do not acknowledge the motivations for social influence or use formulations that emphasize affiliation and maintaining a positive self-concept.

Direct-benefit conformity model specifications are often relevant for behavior where imitating others provides direct benefits such as in popularity and status seeking. In contrast, if the conformity is indirect – for example, some forms of informational – then perhaps: (1) the attributes of the new alternatives should increase in attractiveness, (2) the individual's choice set should change to include this new option or (3) the individual's perception of the attributes of the alternative could become more accurate. Informational conformity occurs when individuals feel uncertain about a decision and conform to the behavior of more knowledgeable others. This is an example of a motivation for accuracy.