Informational Social Influence

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In social psychology, informational social influence is a type of comformity. When a person is in a situation where they are unsure of the correct way to behave, they will often look to others for cues concerning the correct behavior. When "we conform because we believe that other's interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more accurate than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course of action"^[1] it is informational social influence. This is contrasted with normative social influence wherein a person conforms to be liked or accepted by others.

Informational social influence often leads not just to public compliance (conforming to the behavior of others publicly without necessarily believing it is correct) but private acceptance (conforming out of a genuine belief that others are correct). Informational social influence is more powerful when being accurate is more important and when others are perceived as especially knowledgeable.

[edit] Research

The most famous study of informational social influence is Muzafer Sherif's 1936 experiment. In this experiment subjects were placed in a dark room and asked to look at a dot of light about 15 feet away. They were then asked how much, in inches, the dot of light was moving. In reality it was not moving at all, but due to the autokinetic effect it appeared to move. The amount the light appears to move varies from person to person but is genearlly consistent over time for each individual. A few days later a second part of the experiment was conducted. Each subject was paired with two other subjects and asked to give their estimate of how much the light was moving out loud. It was found that even though the subjects had, on their own, given different estimates, the groups the groups would come to a common estimate. To rule out the possibility that the subjects were simply giving the group answer to avoid looking foolish while still believing their originial estimate was correct, Sherif had the subjects judge the lights again by themselves after doing so in the group. It was found that they maintained the group's judgment. Because the movement of the light is ambiguous the participants were relying on each other to define reality.

Another study looked at informational social influence in eyewitness identification. Subjects were shown a slide of the "perpetrator". They were then shown a slide of a line-up of four men one of which was the perpetrator they had seen and were asked to pick him out. The task was made difficult to the point of ambiguity by presenting the slides very quickly. The task was done in a group that consisted of one actual subject and three confederates (a person acting as a subject but actually working for the experimenter). The confederates answered first and all three gave the same wrong answer. In a high-importance condition of the experiment subjects were told that they were participating in a real test of eyewitness indetification ability that would be used by police departments and courts, and their scores would establish the norm for performance. In a low-importance condition subjects were told that the slide task was still being developed and that the experimenters had no idea what the norm for performance was--they were just looking for useful hints to improve the task. It was found that when subjects thought the task was of high importance they were more likely to conform, giving the confederate's wrong answer 51% of the time as opposed to 35% of the time in the low-importance condition.