Social Interaction and Influence – we are more powerful than we think, regrettably!

We exert more influence socially than we realise, and vice versa. However, we’re not quite aware of how much influence we actually do exert (even when we’re not trying) or how much we are influenced (even when those we interact with are not trying). It can merely be a word here, or there, an idea, a comment, or whether it’s the news we catch, films on the small and large screen, a book we read, or a song we hear which reminds you of someone, the level of reciprocal influence we exert is much more than we can possibly imagine.

We often minimise the level of other people’s influence or we make assumptions about their influence. For example, we all have good values or the ‘right’ values but when we discover differences in the values with people we meet, or even people we know and know well, we don’t think of their values per se but we judge them in accordance with our values.

We might be wholeheartedly against drugs but if you discover your friend smokes weed and holds the view that the taking even soft drugs should be decriminalised then you judge them and their values against yours. Because they’re your friend and you don’t want to lose that friendship, difficult as it is for you to accept that they are ok with drugs, you might be at least willing to consider their viewpoint.

Later when they’re not about you’ll reflect on it, still make arguments in your head as to why you’re right because you have the better values but console yourself by knowing at least where you stand with them, but when push comes to shove you’re still right!

We’re subjected to so many influences, it’s hard to comprehend how much exactly – parents, teachers, peers, neighbours, friends, media, social medial, corporations, businesses, colleagues, text messages, ‘pop-ups,’ bargains, articles, books, etc.

There are various elements of social influence that we don’t appreciate enough, for example, research has shown that peers have more influence on your children than parents. If some people join you in creating a movement or campaign you go from a lone voice or crazy to belonging to a collective. We’re wired from birth to look for patterns, so if we see two people not far from us laughing we might be inclined to think they’re laughing at us.

We’re fundamentally irrational creatures, we are what I call ‘Bandwagers,’ where we like to be associated with good stuff or we don’t like to be left out so we jump on the bandwagon. Research has shown that if you belong to a group(s) your life expectancy will increase, it has also shown that up until recently hugging has been completely underestimated, and it has discovered that there are three key elements to the success of your relationship. That’s for another blog ;-)

We are at heart social animals but to fully understand how important that is to us or the level of influence it exerts we need to take time to understand exactly how. This section should help to reveal how. The problem is, we tend not to make the time and underestimate how influential we actually are, a bit like when a footballer doesn’t like discovering he’s a role model, a teacher who denies stereotyping a child early on or a parent who absolves himself from causing a row in the family!

Rather than understand, we retreat to the safety of our on understanding.