Have you often wondered about the drivers behind social media psychology? That is, what makes us so focused on Facebook, Instagram, and the like? Well stay tuned, and we will tell you what the AT&T social psychology guide tells us about social media.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the presence of others.
The statement that others’ presence may be imagined or implied suggests that we are prone to social influence even when no other people are present, such as when watching television or following internalized cultural norms.
Social psychologists deal with the factors that lead us to behave in a given way in the presence of others and look at the conditions under which certain behavior/actions and feelings occur.
Hotel Campaigns … Follow these Winning Digital Marketing Strategies
Social psychology is concerned with the way feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and goals are constructed and how such psychological factors, in turn, influence our interactions with others.
You probably already realize that other people can have a dramatic influence on the way you act and the choices you make. Consider how you might behave in a situation if you were all alone versus if there were other people in the room.
The decisions you make and the behaviors you exhibit might depend on not only how many people are present but exactly who you are around. For example, you are likely to behave much differently when you are around a group of close friends than you would around a group of colleagues or supervisors from work.
There are many ways that people can influence our behavior, but perhaps one of the most important is that the presence of others set up expectations
We do not expect people to behave randomly but to behave in certain ways in particular situations. Each social situation entails its particular set of expectations about the “proper” way to behave. Such expectations can vary from group to group.
One way in which these expectations become apparent is when we look at the roles that people play in society.
Social roles are the part people play as members of a social group. With each social role you adopt, your behavior changes to fit the expectations both you and others have of that role.
In the words of William Shakespeare:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits, and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
These lines capture the essence of social roles. Think of how many roles you play in a single day, e.g. son, daughter, sister, brother, students, worker, friend, etc. Each social role carries expected behaviors called norms.
In 2010 Pepsi pulled its Super Bowl ads and invested $20 million into its Refresh project, which employed crowdsourcing to support good causes. It was an astounding social media success, with more than 87 million votes cast.
Unfortunately, as this HBR case study points out, it was an abysmal business failure and Pepsi eventually fell to third place in the soda category, behind Diet Coke. For all of the hype and hoopla on social media, sales suffered dearly.
Research by the Content Marketing Institute estimates that 90% of consumer marketers are investing in content. Unfortunately, most of those efforts will fail. In order to succeed, marketers will have to learn to think like publishers. That will mean more than a change in tactics or even strategy, but a starkly different perspective.
AT&T social psychology guide … social norms
Social Norms are unwritten rules about how to behave. They provide us with an expected idea of how to behave in a particular social group or culture. For example, we expect students to arrive at the lesson on time and complete their work.
The idea of norms provides the key to understanding social influence in general and conformity in particular. Social norms are the accepted standards of behavior of social groups.
These groups range from friendship and work groups to nation-states. Behavior which fulfills these norms is called conformity, and most of the time roles and norms are powerful ways of understanding and predicting what people will do.
Norms provide order in society. It is difficult to see how human society could operate without social norms.
Human beings need norms to guide and direct their behavior, to provide order and predictability in social relationships and to make sense of an understanding of each other’s actions.
These are some of the reasons why most people, most of the time, conform to social norms.
Social psychology for social media … social conformity
Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior to fit in with a group.
This change is in response to real (involving the physical presence of others) or imagined (involving the pressure of social norms/expectations) group pressure.
Conformity can also be simply defined as “yielding to group pressures” (Crutchfield, 1955). Group pressure may take different forms, for example, bullying, persuasion, teasing, criticism, etc. Conformity is also known as majority influence (or group pressure).
The term conformity is often used to indicate an agreement to the majority position, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked (normative) or because of a desire to be correct (informational), or simply to conform to a social role (identification).
AT&T social psychology guide … types of conformity
Group acceptance
This occurs ‘when an individual accepts influence because he hopes to achieve a favorable reaction from another person or group. He adopts the induced behavior because….he expects to gain specific rewards or approval and avoid specific punishment or disapproval by conformity’. Kelman, 1958 53).
In other words, conforming to the majority (publicly), in spite of not agreeing with them (privately).
Acceptance of group norms
This occurs ‘when an individual accepts influence because of the content of the induced behavior – the ideas and actions of which it is composed – is intrinsically rewarding. He adopts the induced behavior because it is congruent [consistent] with his value system’ (Kelman, 1958, p. 53).
Acceptance of group norms always involves both public and private conformity. A person publicly changes their behavior to fit in with the group, while also agreeing with them privately.
This is the deepest level of conformity where the beliefs of the group become part of the individual’s belief system. This means the change in behavior is permanent
This is most likely to occur when the majority have greater knowledge, and members of the minority have little knowledge to challenge the majority position.
Group membership
This occurs ‘when an individual accepts influence because he wants to establish or maintain a satisfying self-defining relationship to another person or group’ (Kelman, 1958, p. 53).
Individuals conform to the expectations of a social role, e.g. nurses, police officers. It is similar to compliance as there does not have to be a change in private opinion
AT&T social psychology guide … non-conformity
Not everyone conforms to social pressure. Indeed, there are many factors that contribute to an individual’s desire to remain independent of the group.
For example, Smith and Bond (1998) discovered cultural differences in conformity between western and eastern countries. People from Western cultures (such as America and the UK) are more likely to be individualistic and don’t want to be seen as being the same as everyone else.
This means that they value being independent and self-sufficient (the individual is more important than the group), and as such are more likely to participate in nonconformity.
In contrast, eastern cultures (such as Asian countries) are more likely to value the needs of the family and other social groups before their own. They are known as collectivist cultures and are more likely to conform.
The bottom line
There is considerable pressure to conform to social roles. Social roles provide an example of social influence in general and conformity in particular. Most of us, most of the time, conform to the guidelines provided by the roles we perform.
We conform to the expectations of others, we respond to their approval when we play our roles well, and to their disapproval when we play our roles badly. But how far will conformity go?
