Milestones in the Psychological Analysis of Social Influence

Social influence research has been, and remains, the defining hallmark of social psychology. The history of this preoccupation is reviewed selectively, and important contributions to social influence and persuasion are discussed. The central thesis of the presentation is that a return to a consideration of the social group, a critical source of identity and individuality, pays major dividends in understanding the processes of social influence. Moscovici's insistence on the importance of minority influence processes is seen as a harbinger of the return of the group to social influence. Finally, the leniency contract is proposed as a model that integrates these insights with important features of social identity, the elaboration likelihood model, and considerations of structural attitude theory in developing a predictive device that accounts for immediate and persistent majority attitude change as well as indirect and delayed focal change attributable to minority persuasion.

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