Social Impact Theory was created by Bibb Latané in 1981 and uses three principles to describe how individuals can be "sources or targets of social influence". The three principles which determine how social forces create social impact are the strength of the source of impact, the immediacy of the event, and the number of sources exerting the impact. The more targets there are to impact, the less impact each target receives. Social impact theory has been applied to a variety of concepts in psychology including diffusion of responsibility, social loafing, stage fright, and persuasive communication.
Original research According to psychologist Bibb Latané, social impact is defined as any influence on individual feelings, thoughts, or behaviors that is created from the real, implied, or imagined presence or actions of others. In the original 1981 paper, Latané developed the social impact theory using three key variables:
Strength (S) is the importance of a person to the individual being influenced. It covers stable, trans-situational, intrapersonal factors - size, intellect, wealth - together with dynamic, situation-specific relational components, such as belonging to the same group. Immediacy (I) considers how recently the event occurred and whether or not there were other intervening factors. The number of sources (N) refers to the number of sources of influence. Based on these variables, Latané coined three mathematical principles to describe social impact: social forces, the psychosocial law, and the multiplication/division of impact.
Psychosocial law The psychosocial law posits that the impact of any individual sources of social influence decreases as the total number of sources increases. Going from one to two sources will increase the amount of social influence more than going from 99 sources to 100. most significant social impact on an individual will occur from 0 sources to 1 source. The equation Latané uses for this law is
I m p a c t = s ⋅ N t {\displaystyle Impact=s\cdot N^{t}} . That is, the impact of social influence (I) is determined by the number of sources of social influence (N) raised to some power (t) and multiplied by a scaling constant (s). Latané verified this relationship by applying to previous studies on conformity and embarrassment. Latané found mixed support applying this relation to research on conformity.Solomon Asch's famous conformity experiments among college students challenged this psychosocial law by demonstrating that the amount of social impact was not impacted by the number of sources after a certain point. In contrast, a subsequent study by Gerard, Wilhelmy, and Conolley examined conformity in high school students, who were considered more susceptible to social impact than college students. This study supported the psychosocial law, finding that the strength of social impact increased with the number of sources inline with the proposed equation. Latané further applied the psychosocial law to imitation, referencing an experiment in part conducted by Stanley Milgram in which varying numbers of confederates stood on a New York City street corner looking up at window on a nearby building. The results indicated that an increased number of confederates led to more passersby imitating the behavior, with the amount of increase reducing as additional confederates were added. Similarly, in a study on stage fright and embarrassment conducted by Latané and Harkins, the findings aligned with the psychosocial law, showing that an increase in audience size correlated with heightened anxiety, with the main impact occurring between no audience and a single audience member.
Multiplication/divisions of impact Latané's multiplication/divisions of impact states that the strength, immediacy, and number of targets of social influence has an inverse relation with social impact as the strength, immediacy, and number of source of social influence. As the strength, immediacy, and number of targets of social influence increase in a social situation, the impact of the social influence decreases. The equation that represents this division is
I m p a c t = s N − t {\displaystyle Impact=sN^{-t}} . ` This law comes from Latané's work on diffusion of responsibility, in which individuals feel less accountable as the number of people present increases. Latané argues that this law is in line with the Bystander effect in which, emergency situations, the impact of the emergency is reduced when more people are present. Latané argued that his model fit a variety of studies on the diffusion of responsibility.
Strengths and Weaknesses The social impact theory is both generalizable and specific. It is general because it uses one set of equations, which apply to many social situations. For example, the psychosocial law can predict conformity, imitation, and embarrassment. Yet, it is also specific because the predictions that it makes are specific and can be applied to and observed in the world. The theory is falsifiable in that it predicts specific, mathematically described predictions which can be tested. The original research found that social impact theory is able to fit a variety of preexisting results which adds to validity. While social impact theory explores social situations and can help predict their outcomes, it also has some shortcomings and unresolved questions. The rules guiding the theory depict people as recipients who passively accept social impact and do not take into account the social impact that people may actively seek. The model is also static and does not fully compensate for the dynamics involved in social interactions. The theory fails to address some pertinent issues. These issues include finding more accurate ways to measure social outcomes, understanding the "t" exponent in psychosocial law, taking susceptibility into account, understanding how short-term consequences can develop into chronic consequences, applying to group interactions, and understanding the model's nature (descriptive vs. explanatory, generalization of results vs. theory).
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