In this day and
age, online communication has never been so significant. I don’t know many
people my age who don’t log on to Facebook at least once a day. I’m part of the
Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Instagram generation; we seem to live our lives online
and what we say and do on the Internet is becoming more and more important. The
fact that I’m writing this blog, as part of my coursework to try and get a
decent degree, is testament to this.
So, it’s no
wonder that psychologists are researching how blogging, and other
computer-mediated communication (CMC), can influence attitude and behaviour
change. Guadagno, Muscanell, Rice and Roberts (2013), examined whether the two
influence principles of likeability and social validation (also called social
proof) were effective online. They also wanted to see if these two principles
would have an additive effect on compliance.
249 psychology
undergraduates, from a large football University, were randomly assigned to
read one of nine blog entries where the author (a fictitious student), asked
for volunteers for a university fundraiser. In the likable condition, the blog
contained pro-football statements and the University’s sports logo, while in
the unlikable condition these were not included and instead the author
indicated that the blog was a place to share information about campus events
unrelated to football. There was also a control condition where football was
not mentioned at all. Social validation was manipulated by the presence of
multiple comments from other fictitious students, either offering to volunteer
or refusing to help. In the control condition, no comments were seen.
This study found
that participants in the high social validation condition were willing to
volunteer more of their time than those in the low social validation condition
(See Table 1). Individuals were likely to go along with the comments they read
and then offer volunteering time accordingly, showing support for social
validation impacting on compliance.
Table 1
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However, likeability and the interaction between likeability and social validation did not seem to have an effect. Although likeability of the author was perceived in line with experimental condition, it did not impact on compliance rates (see Table 2). This supports previous research that likeability online does not have the same impact as face-to-face interactions, as the communicator is less salient (Guadagno & Cialdini, 2002, 2005, 2007).
Table 2
 |
So, although there is a great deal of research suggesting that likeability is an important factor in compliance, it hasn’t been shown to work online. This could be the case for many other compliance tactics and so this needs to be investigated in the future.
As the authors of this study pointed out, the use of social validation
is a very important issue to investigate, as Facebook advertisements often use
names of friends or the amount of people who have “liked” the certain product.
Different types of social influence on other social networking sites and CMC
needs to be explored, especially since the use of the Internet doesn’t show any
signs of stopping anytime soon.
References:
Guadagno, R. E., & Cialdini, R. B.
(2002). Online persuasion: An examination of gender differences in
computer-mediated interpersonal influence. Group Dynamics: Theory Research
and Practice Special Issue on Internet Research, 6, 38–51.
Guadagno, R. E., & Cialdini, R. B.
(2005). Online persuasion and compliance: Social influence on the Internet and
beyond. In Y. Amichai-Hamburger (Ed.), The Social Net: The social psychology
of the Internet (pp. 91–113). New York: Oxford University Press.
Guadagno, R. E., & Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Persuade him by email,
but see her in person: Online persuasion revisited. Computers in Human
Behavior, 23, 999–1015.
Guadagno, R. E., Muscanell, N. L., Rice, L. M., & Roberts, N.
(2013). Social influence online: The impact of social validation and likability
on compliance. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 2, 51-60.
Zara Heal (Blog 3)
Very interesting, thank you!
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