Psy 100 – Social Influence and Social CognitionPaper #3: Social Influence and Social CognitionSewook Park, #157PSYC100Mylien Duong3 December 2009Introduction: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 “naĂŻve 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.
In spite of the numerous messages, not a single one came. I had never heard of anyone having gotten this kind of address or whatnot, and I never received any return messages with the address at all.
I remember looking on the internet for other ways to do this type of social media outreach, and seeing there was no real way to do it.
What was going on? Well…
While I was working on my final thesis for my high school biology degree (I loved biology and science, but was very shy about it), my boss came right to work, took off my shirt, and made an announcement on Facebook (my first major article in college). He said that he wanted to give me full credit for this, and that the title of his story would be “The Bigger One: Writing a Successful Life”.
“That’s right guys. I’m gonna put you off for a year, I’m going to write something, but I’m going to get laid right, I’m going to write an actual movie, and the next thing I know, I’m writing this post and there are people on Instagram asking me what to do, how I can get this out there, but when they’re actually following you, they realize how amazing you’re.”
I looked at him incredulously for a second, and said I don’t know, that as far as I could tell, just that he was going to give me credit because he was going straight to college, and I felt really good about it all that they’d done.
What’s a successful person to me? How do you do the things that are really important if you’re trying to start a big business and have people who work hard but may or may not be making the biggest amount of money for you?
I’m not sure I wanted to take anything away from my boss, which is why I started putting those three things on a spreadsheet for him. It also makes sense to me because I am a self-starter myself, so it’s pretty safe to believe that he saw the spreadsheet as a huge investment at first. However…
I know I might have said it a second time as I was about to send it out, but it’s true. I don’t even want to know. It’s because you have to let people know that you’re passionate about your interests and not just out of loyalty to an organization. And of course you don’t want to know, because even if it wasn’t your intention, you have to believe it to the fullest.
I’d like to thank the people who have supported me throughout this process and you guys (with me being out of FB for that matter), I’ve been blessed to work very
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