Social Psychology - Essay Example

Persuasion is that aspect of social life which deals with influencing others to comply by a desired behavior. This involves influencing the attitudes, beliefs or even concepts of other people. Persuasion in turn is dependent on various other factors which includes the source where the message is coming from, the characteristic of the message as well the characteristic of the target. This implies that the credibility and influence of the source is very important to persuade another person, and equally important (depending on the situation) is the quality of the message being sent which should be altered according to the target where the message is being sent.

Also, the social psychologists identify the routes to persuasion which includes the central route processing unit for the highly motivated individuals, while the peripheral processing unit which results in poor attitude changes as the target was an unmotivated individual. (Myres 1993) Moreover, to understand the concept and process of persuasion, cognitions of individuals can`t be ignored as these form the links between behavior and attitudes. Cognitive dissonance is a condition where there is a contradiction between attitudes or thoughts, which should be identified in order to persuade the target.

In this context, various schemas which exist need to be addressed to understand how people form perceptions about others via cognitive processes. According to most of the social psychologists, attribution process takes place in two forms, i.e. via situational causes driven by the environment or the dispositional causes driven by the prior inclination of individuals towards an attribute. However, there may be errors in the attribution process, which results if a person associates positive traits with a person by identifying another positive one, or pre-assumes that the other person is similar to oneself, or in other case tends to exaggerate attributes about a person, which in turn affects the decisions and behavioral patterns of these individuals.

Furthermore, social psychologists are also interested in studying the social influence, i.e. the patterns on how the actions of a group or even an individual affect others. In this context, the concept of conformity is significant as that drives individuals to follow group behaviors as they feel that it is more of compulsion to follow the crowd (Aronson, Elliot, and Helmreich 1973). Thus, groupthink implies that in group individuals becomes so entangled in the group thinking that they fail to weight the alternatives without any bias, and keep taking decisions within a group.

Conformity, however, also results from the social norms or from direct orders by a person who holds authority. Social psychologists are also interested in studying the prejudices and biases prevalent in the minds of individuals which lead towards stereotyping where people judge others based on their perception about a group. Similarly, prejudice implies that individuals are judged based on the backgrounds they belong to. Also, based on their membership, individuals are discriminated against members of other groups.

Mass media is acclaimed as the most influential source in inflicting the biases amongst societies. In an effort to find out the basis of these prejudices amongst people, the