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Social Impact Theory: Evaluation - Coggle Diagram
Social Impact Theory: Evaluation
Strength:
It's supported by research evidence.
Sedekides and Jackson (1990) conducted a field experiment at a New York zoo, where visitors were asked not to lean on the railling.
Researchers manipulated the strength of the source by dressing a confederate either as a zoo keeper (58% obedience) or in a t-shirt and shorts (35% obedience).
Obedience also declined when the visitors were further from the person making the request (61% when same room, 7% when in adjacent room).
This tested immediacy.
The divisional effect was also tested - obedience was greater in a smaller group of one or two visitors (60%) compared with a group of 5 or 6 (14%).
Strength:
It can be easily applied to understand how people enhance their social justice.
For example, political leaders may increase their influence by adopting a strong and persuasive style of communication to connect with their target votes, they must aim to reach voters by talking face-to-face rather than through the TV or radio along with also addressing people in smaller groups rather than larger ones, where the divisional effect may reduce the impact.
This shows how psychological knowledge can be applied t society and and how people's behaviour could be influenced through a strategic campaign.
Weakness:
Supporting research relies on the field experiment method.
The researchers were not able to manipulate the number of people in each group which is a threat to internal validity.
For example, people who choose to go around in larger groups may have less obedient personalities (a confounding variable).
It may not be group size alone that determined the level of defiance observed.
Weakness:
Agency Theory explains some things better than Social Impact Theory.
For example, in Variation #10, obedience was lower in a run-down office compared to Yale University. Milgram explains this through the prestige of the setting adding to the authority figure’s status, but this is hard for Latané to give a mathematical value to.
Similarly, Milgram has an explanation for the shaking and weeping his participants engaged in – moral strain. There’s no discussion of moral strain in Social Impact Theory, which views people as either obeying or disobeying and nothing in between.
Strength:
There’s a growing body of research supporting Social Impact Theory.
The theory also makes sense of a lot of Classic studies from the 60's and 70's that used to seem unrelated
Latane & Darley (1968) into diffusion of responsibility, Tajfel (1970) into inter-group discrimination and Milgram (1963) into obedience.
All of these studies can be seen as looking at different aspects of Social Impact.
Weakness:
The role of immediacy may not be a key ingredient in social impact.
Hofling et al. (1966) arranged for an unknown doctor to telephone 22 nurses and ask each of them to administer an overdose of a drug that was not on their ward list.
95% of the nurses started to administer the drug (they were prevented from doing so).
Although the doctor was not immediately present, the nurses obeyed without question. This challenged social impact theory because the source being absent should have reduced the effect but it didn’t.
Or at least it didn’t appear to make a difference – we actually have no comparison with the source being present so we can’t be certain about this.