Psy 100 - Social Influence and Social Cognition

Paper #3: Social Influence and Social Cognition

Sewook Park, #157

PSYC100

Mylien Duong

3 December 2009

Introduction:

From the very instant a child leaves its mother’s womb and takes its first gasp of air, gazing in bewilderment and fear of the reality it has just entered, to the moment a grumbling septuagenarian reluctantly follows his son to a nursery home, we all seek to be in the company of others who care for us, who give us attention. This is because there is an intrinsic desire to be accepted in all of us. We as humans are social creatures, and much of our behavior and thought process stems from this desire to be accepted by others and the interactions with those around us. The study of this phenomenon is called social psychology, a field pioneered by Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider in the late 1950s. Heider conjectured that humans are innately interested in evaluating the personality and attitude characteristics of those around them, and are what he called “naïve psychologists” (Gray, 2007). Since then, social psychology has expanded to be one of the most prominent branches of psychology, including such topics as social influence and social cognition. Social influence refers to the way social situations affect our thoughts and behavior while social cognition refers to how people process different social situations (Gray, 2007). The purpose of this paper is to explore the topics of social influence (via persuasion) and social cognition (via cognitive dissonance) through the analysis of specific examples of each from my own personal experiences.

Social Influence (Persuasion) Experience:

Nearing the end of my sophomore year, while nonchalantly watching reruns of SportsCenter on ESPN as I counted the minutes until dinner, my state of relative nirvana was broken as my mother barked at me to go get the mail. I unenthusiastically got up, and walked towards the mail box, and came back with an assortment of envelopes of all sizes and colors. I noticed a few from the stack were addressed for me. In the past I probably would have gotten excited about receiving mail, but I had now become so accustom to the usual 5 or 6 letters from various colleges that had little substance to them other than telling me to apply, that I did not even bother opening them anymore.

However, this time, I came back with a letter that I knew instantly that was different. It was heavier than usual, almost as if it had some sort of worth. The parchment of the envelope was not of your standard envelope, but more resembling the paper the paper used for a high school diploma. My name was not printed with the standard