The effects of social context, source fairness, and perceived self-source similarity on social influence

Abstract

Based upon a self-categorisation analysis of social influence (Turner, 1991), we predicted that individuals who self-categorise with the source of a communication would align their own private attitudes more closely with the source when that source was distributively fair rather than unfair in an intragroup context. We expected this pattern to reverse in an intergroup context when the unfairness was ingroup favouring. These expectations were confirmed in a laboratory experiment (N = 101). The data suggest that neither source similarity nor source fairness serve simply as persuasion cues to which individuals thoughtlessly conform. We argue, instead that, once self-categorised, individuals: (1) actively attend to an ingroup member's behaviours and the context in which they occur, and (2) are influenced only by a source who provides some form of social identity enhancement, either by being fair in an intragroup context (Lind & Tyler, 1988) or ingroup favouring in an intergroup context (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Show more