Knowledge of Social Influence Forces

In addition to being able to perform the Situational Analysis on any situation, in order to be Situationally Aware, an individual also needs to be knowledgeable regarding the specific forms of social influence that can lead them into making bad decisions in the moment. These are things like conformity, discrimination, and the bystander effect.

Fortunately, over the last several decades, psychological research has shown that there is actually a great deal that people can do to resist these unwanted influences. For any specific influence, we can:

1)     Understand the causal mechanisms at play
-These are the fundamental human psychological processes involved.

2)     Know how the social influence tends to affect people in general
-This is how they can distort your judgment.

3)     Learn specific strategies for how to resist them
-These are the lessons from research about how to counteract each form of unwanted influence.

When individuals understand these three things about any form of social influence, they should become less affected by them as long as they are paying attention to the situation at hand and we provide this information to individuals in each of our lessons and workshops.

Specific forms of social influence covered in the Situational Awareness model include:

–Situation blindness
–Peer pressure and conformity
–The bystander effect
–Obedience to authority
–Outgroup prejudice and discrimination
–Social roles and expectations