The Psychology of Social Influence

This volume provides an integrated view of different manifestations of social influence grounded in socio-political concerns. It brings together a range of modalities of influence - such as crowds, leadership, norm formation, conformity, obedience, resistance, and persuasion - in a unified diagnostic periodic table of social influences.

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This volume brings together the full range of modalities of social influence - from crowding, leadership, and norm formation to resistance and mass mediation - to set out a challenge-and-response 'cyclone' model. The authors use real-world examples to ground this model and review each modality of social influence in depth. A 'periodic table of social influence' is constructed that characterises and compares exercises of influence in practical terms. The wider implications of social influence are considered, such as how each exercise of a single modality stimulates responses from other modalities and how any everyday process is likely to arise from a mix of influences. The book demonstrates that different modalities of social influence are tactics that defend, question, and develop 'common sense' over time and offers advice to those studying in political and social movements, social change, and management.