About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about social situations that can increase or decrease social influence, focusing in particular on: (i) the impact of the closeness of the influencer to the person being influenced, as well as their physical setting – both factors explored in Milgram’s studies; (ii) the role of social time period and context, highlighted by considering that American’s in the 60’s (during Milgram’s experiment) might be more likely to conform than Americans now; (iii) the role that different cultural norms can play in deciding obedience and conformity levels; (iv) the impact that someone you know requesting compliance or demanding obedience has on influence levels; (v) other factors impacting social influence, including group size, literacy with the context and situation, and group identification.

About the lecturer

Dr Ayoub Bouguettaya is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. Dr Bouguettaya’s research interests are in social psychology and how knowledge from that field can be applied to others, particularly health, including how we can apply social identity theory to societal problems, as well as investigating the different perspectives one might take on those issues. Some of Dr Bouguettaya’s recent publications include 'The relationship between gambling advertising and gambling attitudes, intentions and behaviours: a critical and meta-analytic review' (2020) and 'The Effect of a Food Addiction Explanation Model for Weight Control and Obesity on Weight Stigma' (2020).