Structure of influence
The structure of socio-psychological influence or social influences can be presented as follows: Subject, object, means of influence, mechanism.
Subjects of social influence can be both individuals and communities. The more complex the social situation becomes, the more the type of people changes. For example, during a state of emergency, management of the social sphere is transferred to military authorities.
The object of social influence is a variety of socio-psychological phenomena: Individuals, communities, their way of life, stratification of society, conflicts, social tension of groups, crowds, etc. As for the methods of social influence, we can conditionally distinguish both violent administrative methods (use of military force) and non-violent ones (dismissal, system of punishments), as well as socio-psychological and psychotherapeutic ones.
Social and psychological methods of influence traditionally include suggestion, infection, imitation and persuasion. In fact, they also include rumors, blackmail, hostage-taking, acts of public terrorism, accidents, epidemics, rallies, demonstrations, hunger strikes, strikes, self-immolation, use of the media, behavior change, religion, fashion, advertising, psychotropic weapons . In this context, the means of influence can be legal and anti-legal, spontaneous and deliberate.
The question of the means and mechanisms of social influence goes beyond the scope of social psychology, as it is an interdisciplinary problem. It can be solved only by coordinating the efforts of psychologists, physicists, doctors, hygienists and other specialists. Psychotherapeutic intervention requires a positive change in personal and group roles through the use of training and psychodrama.
The psychological impact is
People who live together or are often in each other's company somehow exert an influence based on their own self-interest.
Psychological influence on a person can be called a set of ways that in a certain way influence the psyche of the interlocutor. These methods of influence involve several components:
- determining the character of the interlocutor;
- knowledge of reactions in stressful situations;
- behavioral features.
A person who uses influence techniques in communication can do it unconsciously or intentionally. People working in different fields may be interested in ensuring that consumers make a profitable decision.
Types of Social Influence
According to domestic and foreign scientists, psychological effects are divided into the following types: information-psychological, psychogenic, psychoanalytic, neurolinguistic, psychotronic, psychotropic.
The information-psychological effect (often called propaganda, ideological) is the effect of words, information.
The main goal of this type of psychological influence is the formation of certain ideological (social) ideas, views or beliefs. At the same time, it evokes positive or negative emotions, feelings and even violent mass reactions, forming stable figurative pictures.
Psychogenic effects are the result of:
- A physical effect on the human brain, resulting in a disruption of normal neuropsychic activity. For example, a person receives a brain injury, as a result of which he loses the ability to think rationally, loses memory, etc. Or he is exposed to such physical factors (sound, light, temperature, etc.) that change the state of his psyche under the influence of certain physiological reactions;
- The shock effect of environmental conditions or certain events (for example, images of mass destruction, numerous victims, etc.) on a person’s consciousness, as a result of which he can no longer act rationally, loses orientation in space, experiences affects or depression, and panics or numbness, etc.
Psychoanalytic (psychocorrective) influence is the influence on a person’s subconscious with therapeutic agents, especially in a state of hypnosis or deep sleep. There are also methods that exclude conscious resistance of an individual and a group in a waking state.
In particular, with sound control of the psyche and behavior of people, oral proposals (commands) are issued in encoded form on any medium of audio information (audio cassettes, radio or television programs, sound effects). Someone listens to music or the sound of surfing in the living room, follows the dialogue of the characters in the film and does not know that they contain commands that are not perceived by the conscious mind, but are always recorded by the subconscious, forcing it to do what is prescribed to it in the future. social influence
Neurolinguistic influence (NLP - Neurolinguistic Programming) is a type of psychological influence that changes people's motivation by introducing special linguistic programs into their minds.
The main object of influence is the neurophysiological activity of the brain and the resulting emotional and volitional states. The main means of influence are specially selected verbal (verbal) and non-verbal linguistic programs, the assimilation of their content allows you to change in a certain direction the beliefs, views and views of a person (both individual people and entire groups of people).
Specialist in neurolinguistic influence (lecturer). First, it reveals contradictory (conflicting) views and beliefs in the psyche, as well as the resulting negative emotional states (experiences, moods, feelings). At the next stage, the trainer uses special techniques to help them understand the unpleasantness of their real situation (socio-economic, cultural, physical and, therefore, psychological), and introduces changes in their consciousness, which lead to the fact that people perceive life situations differently and build relationships with other people.
It is interesting that, having “understood” what he “needs” under the influence of a teacher, a person begins to independently collect information about his daily activities, about his states and experiences (but under the influence of the stereotype of perception absorbed into his consciousness). Comparing his current, momentary state with the desired (possible), he determines which of his own resources he needs to mobilize and what specifically needs to be done to achieve the well-being of his feelings and moods.
Psychoanalytic and neurolinguistic methods are useful when used for humane purposes. When they are used to conquering and gaining power over others, they are a means of mental violence.
Psychotronic (parapsychological, extrasensory) influence is the influence of others through the transmission of information by extrasensory (unconscious) perception.
It should be noted that television and other mass sessions of supposed psychic influence are simple examples of the most common deception.
As for psychotronic effects, there is work on the creation of high- and low-frequency brain coding generators, dowsing devices, and the use of chemical and biological agents to stimulate certain psychological reactions.
Psychotronics concerns primarily methods associated with the use of technical means of influencing consciousness.
For example, the 25th frame phenomenon, which is a very powerful means of suggestion. “The phenomenon of the 25th frame is due to the fact that a person has not only a sensory (conscious) area of perception, but also a subsensory (unconscious) one, in which information is received by the psyche, bypassing the conscious mind. For example, while watching a movie, if you add another 25th frame of completely different information to 24 frames per second, the viewer may not notice it, but the movie will noticeably affect his emotional state and behavior.
Psychotropic influence is the manipulation of the human psyche with the help of drugs, chemical or biological agents.
For example, some smells have a strong impact on our psyche. American psychiatrist A. Hirsch noticed long ago that certain odors cause certain actions and behavior in people. He started a simple but very profitable business. He distributed his specially formulated essences to different sections of stores and found that product sales increased dramatically compared to sections where they were not diffused. He then recruited 3,193 overweight volunteers and lost an average of 12.7kg over six months. It was so simple - as soon as people felt hungry, Hirsch gave them something to eat, but gave them the opportunity to smell a special aroma. The more often the subjects sniffed it, the more weight they lost. Some lost so much weight that they had to be removed from the experiment. Finally, the researcher found that odors affected productivity.
He said that smells are a kind of remote control that controls human emotions and therefore human actions. Smells can raise or lower blood pressure, slow or speed up the heartbeat, stimulate people or put them to sleep. Certain scents have been found to relieve depression and improve the mood of our patients. Clinical experiments have shown that the scent of lavender, chamomile, lemon and sandalwood weakens brain activity faster than any depressant. And jasmine, rose, mint and cloves stimulate.
Means of communication.
Means of communication are ways of encoding, processing and decoding information transmitted during communication. All means of communication are divided into two groups: verbal (speech) and nonverbal (non-speech).
Verbal communication is carried out using words. Speech is the process of using language to communicate between people. Language is a system of signs that serves as a means of human communication, mental activity, and a way of expressing a person’s self-awareness. Speech can be monologue or dialogic. Of particular importance is the communicative function of speech, which has three sides:
- informational (legibility, understandability, meaningfulness of statements)
- expressive (emotional speech)
- effective (the speaker’s desire to subordinate the actions and actions of the person communicating with him to his desires and intentions).
Nonverbal communication - information is transmitted using non-verbal signs. A sign is any material object that acts as an indication and designation and is used to acquire, store, process and transmit information.
Nonverbal elements of communication:
1) Postures, gestures, facial expressions (general motor skills that reflect a person’s emotional reactions) 2) Paralinguistics or prosody (pronunciation features, voice timbre, pitch, volume, speech rate, pauses between words, etc.) 3) Proxemics (special area dealing with the norms of space and time for organizing communication) 4) Visual communication - eye contact (a specific sign system that takes place in visual communication) Classification of means of communication . 1. Speech: Monologue speech (story, report, commands, speech); dialogical speech (free dialogue, conversation) 2. Non-speech (gestures, facial expressions, actions, codes and symbols, objects)
Mechanisms of belief transformation
The effectiveness of psychological influence also depends on specific mechanisms for transforming people’s beliefs, stereotypes and attitudes.
The mechanism of faith transformation. Beliefs are significant, stable motives for people’s actions, which, as a rule, have an ideological basis and are manifested in their actions, deeds and behavior. Thus, each country cultivates so-called “eternal values”, such as love for one’s country and all its representatives, love of peace, trust in its leaders, pride in them, etc., supposedly without any political orientation. It bears fruit. Therefore, people's actions are often based mainly on the internal acceptance of these "eternal values", as well as on a sense of duty and responsibility, pride in their country, personal vanity and the desire to demonstrate their abilities as a representative of this state.
However, the reality of a country and the relationships between people in it can often change. At the same time, according to the laws of cognitive dissonance, established beliefs are subject to fluctuation. Therefore, targeted psychological influence from the outside helps to weaken, neutralize or replace them with the opposite.
The mechanism of transformation of stereotypes. Stereotypes are schematized representations of facts of reality, widespread in certain social and ethnic groups and thus leading to extremely simplified (as a rule, inadequate to reality) assessments and judgments of representatives of these groups. They are formed as a result of repeated semantic and emotional emphasis of people’s consciousness on certain phenomena and events, their repeated perception and imprinting in memory.
Stereotypes usually reflect not the essence (depth), but the appearance, the most striking, most characteristic phenomenon or event. Any assessment of the latter that corresponds to the stereotype is usually accepted without evidence and is considered the most correct, while any other is questioned. It is important to note that stereotypes in individual, group and social consciousness are formed not only by the surrounding reality, but also by the experiences, opinions and judgments of other people.
Therefore, stereotypes can become the object of psychological influence. Their transformation is both a condition for the effectiveness of such influence and a condition for changing people’s behavior. For example, the state forms a stereotype of people’s positive attitude towards the political leadership of their country. But the opposition forces within it are always trying to change it.
Mechanism of attitude change. Attitude is a state of internal readiness (inclination) of a person for a certain manifestation of feelings, intellectual, cognitive and volitional activity, dynamics and nature of communication, objective and practical activity, etc., which corresponds to his needs.
As a rule, the formation of an attitude is preceded by people's awareness of a certain need and the conditions under which this need can be satisfied. A targeted psychological effect creates a situation in which an existing need is satisfied by providing people with specific information presented in a certain way. Thanks to this, views are formed, fixed, replaced or changed in people's minds.
The criterion for the effectiveness of persuasive influence is persuasion. This is a deep confidence in the truth of assimilated ideas, terms, concepts, images. This allows you to make unambiguous decisions and implement them without hesitation, to take a firm position when assessing certain facts and phenomena. Through faith, we shape people's attitudes and determine their behavior in specific situations. An important feature of faith is its depth. This is directly related to people’s previous education, their consciousness, life experience and ability to analyze the phenomena of the surrounding reality.
Impact goals
Fear of people and society - what is this phobia called and what is it
Regardless of which group of people needs to be influenced, the goals of influence belong to one of the groups:
- indoctrination to other people to satisfy one's own benefit;
- assertion of authority among others;
- modeling standards of behavior and concepts;
- internalizing a sense of significance;
- self-realization.
Most often, the practice of manipulating other people is due to selfish views. When a person sees that his interlocutor is emotionally inferior to him, a desire arises to subjugate him to his will, albeit unconsciously. Some want to be listened to, others want some actions to be performed for them, others try to establish themselves with the opposite sex (especially among girls). Someone may use emotional influence with good intentions, but more often the reason lies in selfishness. In any case, the manipulator’s hidden motive in sum involves asserting his own importance in the eyes of people.
These goals are divided into intentional and unintentional. The first include those when the manipulator tries to assert himself, force someone to perform some actions for him, or pursues a selfish goal. A person can have an unintended influence simply by being in the room. Others begin to copy his behavior, succumb to his beliefs, and suddenly lean toward his point of view. Such an ability can manifest itself spontaneously without any malicious intent.
Most manipulators pursue their own interests
