Societal Influence

There are several societal influences on our thoughts, feelings and behaviour:  

• Social norms:  Rules that regulate human life, including social conventions, explicit laws and implicit cultural standards.  
• Imitation:  Probably the most powerful social influence on our behaviour and attitudes is the behaviour of other people.
• Social facilitation:  Increased activity resulting from the presence of another person.
• Social loafing:  Decreased activity resulting from the presence of another person.
• Reciprocity:  Another strong social influence is reciprocity, the tendency to pay back favours others have done for us.  Reciprocity does not require that the “favour” be initially requested or even wanted.  The debt of obligation can be so strong that reciprocity can be exploited by those who want us to comply with their requests when we would otherwise not do so.
• Commitment:  Once people commit themselves by making a decision and acting on it, they are reluctant to renounce their commitment.  Commitment increases people’s compliance even when the reason for the original commitment is removed.
• Attractive people:  One of the reasons people tend to comply with the requests of attractive people is that they want to be liked by attractive people; in their minds, being liked by attractive people makes them more desirable, too.  People tend to emphasize their associations with attractive and important people.
• Authority:  People tend to comply with the requests of people in authority and to be swayed by their persuasive arguments, and such obedience is generally approved by society (Buskist et al., 2002, p. 504-513).