Cited by 2,864Psychology of Social InfluenceSocial and Intergroup PsychologyOpinion Dynamics and Social Influence

The psychology of social impact

Latané, Bibb·1981·American Psychologist

Abstract

The author proposes a theory of social im- pact specifying the effect of other persons on an in- dividual. According to the theory, when other people are the source of impact and the individual is the target, impact should be a multiplicative function of the strength, immediacy, and number of other people. Fur- thermore, impact should take the form of a power func- tion, with the marginal effect of the Nth other person being less than that of the (N — l)th. Finally, when other people stand with the individual as the target of forces from outside the group, impact should be divided such that the resultant is an inverse power function of the strength, immediacy, and number of persons stand- ing together. The author reviews relevant evidence from research on conformity and imitation, stage fright and embarrassment, news interest, bystander interven- tion, tipping, inquiring for Christ, productivity in groups, and crowding in rats. He also discusses the unresolved issues and desirable characteristics of the theory.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/0003-066x.36.4.343

Cites

21 of 21 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The asymptotic relation between group size and social contagion can be explained by dynamic regulation of the response threshold.

    “While this has typically been explained in terms of social cognitive processes (Bond, 2005;Latane, 1981;MacCoun, 2012), it can also be explained by dynamic regulation of the response threshold (Cracco & Brass, 2018d).”

    From Automatic imitation of multiple agents: A computational model (2019) · cites this paper as Latane, 1981

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Latané, B.
Affiliations
The Ohio State University (US)
Corresponding author
Latané, Bibb
Venue
American Psychologist
Published
1981-04
Volume
36
Issue
4
Pages
343-356
ISSN
  • 0003-066X (ISSN-L)
  • 1935-990X
OpenAlex
W2098940738
Cited by
2,864
References
21
Citations by year
2026: 97 · 2025: 123 · 2024: 161 · 2023: 125 · 2022: 130 · 2021: 139 · 2020: 150 · 2019: 128 · 2018: 153 · 2017: 133 · 2016: 115 · 2015: 112 · 2014: 103 · 2013: 125 · 2012: 144
FWCI
66.03
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
American Psychologist (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Psychology of Social Influence
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
Keywords
social impact theory, social influence, conformity, imitation, stage fright, embarrassment, news interest, bystander intervention, tipping, team productivity, crowding, power function

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review