Social Influence

Social influence theory is when a person’s emotions, opinions, and behaviors are influenced by others. The informational social influence theory is the phenomenon when people assume that the behavior of others is the correct way to behave. People watch other people to make decisions about how they should behave. They can look to other sources of information to help them make decisions as well like experts; or conform to what other people are doing. The informational social influence occurs most often when the situation is ambiguous meaning that the situation can have many different possible meanings. It occurs when there is a crisis and when others are considered to be experts of a particular subject. When there is a crisis they don’t have anytime to think or experiment. The decision is required right away. Choices are there for people everyday to choose but sometimes they are unsure of what to choose. When other people are experts on something they will accept the authority of others and think that they must know more than us. For example if someone is in a fancy restaurant and they don’t know what spoon or fork to use they will look to other people in the restaurant to know what utensil to use, displaying the correct behavior in this type of situation.