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Social Influence

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What I understand about social influence is that present of other people can strongly influence individual behavior in attitudes, beliefs decisions and actions. This influence can be seen in our conformity, compliance, and group behavior. According to Solomon Asch and others that under certain conditions people will conform to a group's judgment even when it is clearly incorrect. In Milgrams' famous experiments, people who were torn between obeying an experimenter and responding to another's please usually choose to obey orders, even though obedience appeared to involve harming another person. This classic experiments demonstrate the potency of social forces, and they highlight the fact that we conform either to gain social approval by adhering to social norms or because we depend on the information that others provide. Social relations can be understand as how can we related to one another. We will ponder the bad and the good: from prejudice, aggression, and conflict to attraction, altruism, and peacemaking. Prejudice is a mixture of beliefs (often stereotypes), emotions, and predispositions to action. Research reveals how our ways of processing information for example, by overestimating similarities when we categorize people or by noticing and remembering vivid cases work to create stereotypes. The good of social relations propose that our social behaviors even our helpful acts maximize our benefits, which may include our own good feelings and minimize our costs. Our desire to help is also affected by social norms, which prescribe reciprocating the help we have received and being socially responsible toward those in need.

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Dr. Boeree, C. G. (1897 - 1967) Personality Theories. Retrieved on Nov 16, 2015, from http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/allport.htmlgordon Myers, D. G. (1990 - 1999). Exploring Psychology. (4th. ed.). Holland,

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