Research on social influence by psychologists (reality)

Resources used -found from :  Psychology World. 

Brief summary - The article focuses on psychologists views on social influence, and the changes and manipulation of peoples behaviours and opinion within a group . It focuses directly on how social groups or individuals change their ideas or opinion to fit society's ideals of this (social influence) .

What was I hoping to find out ? - Does social influence work in cases where negative views or ideals are copied as well as more positive things , for example if a group of friends were encouraging depression and sadistic views ; would an individual pick up these traits as well . If so where does this leave us as a society with such influential young people who can be influenced by a large quantity of things . 

Brief summary of what I've learned - One answer is that people behave differently because of perceived authority , or a minority within a group that has wielding influence , for example students will change their behaviour around a class teacher to please them. Which poses the question of whether individuals are able to disconnect from a certain group if their ideals become too extreme . We know now that society will influence people dependent on what 'trend' is considered popular at the minute . We therefore know that because of this social influencing people will act either good or bad dependent on what they are surrounded by . 

Reliability of source - 

Quotes from the website I may include : 

Internalization is a form of opinion conformity, whereby the opinions of a group, or minority within that group influence an individual’s own opinions. The person may not only express the views of the group publicly, but also adopts these new views and regards them as being his or her own - a form of private conformity.

American psychologist Stanley Milgram questioned how such people could obey the directions of others when such actions would lead to such atrocities. Milgram (1963)

Opposing view from the website to my dissertation - 

Another form of social influence - minority influence - has also been used historically for malign purposes. The followers of leaders such as Adolf Hitler accepted and often internalized the Nazi leader’s fascist views without question.

Following the Second World War, German officer Adolf Eichmann attempted to justify his participation in the Holocaust by claiming that he was merely ‘following the orders’ of perceived authority figures: in Eichmann’s case, his commanders.