Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Social Influence

Today's class we discussed social influence and how we adopt characteristics of those we spend the most time with. So I decided to try to find some truth to this in my life. It didn't take me long to find examples of this just in a few texts my friends from my primary group would send me, or logging into Facebook and noticing posts by my friends sharing similar thoughts that I have.
We intentionally seek people with similar qualities as ourselves, and that goes for when you are looking for friends or even a boss looking to hire a new employee. If anything, social media has increased the speed that we start to become more like our friends. We can instantly share videos or thoughts to a larger number of friends that previously we would have to their number to call or see them face to face. Now all we need is a name to find someone.
It comforting to know you have people in your life that are going to agree with you when you have thoughts, but I think from now on I am going to try to learn what makes my friends different from me. It will be interesting to find out about things we don't share, thoughts or opinions, and I think that will only make friendships stronger. So I'm glad to learn about social influence and begin improving tie strength with my buds.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with this and I think it is easy to see how we change to fit into other groups as well. I did not really fit into the group of people that I worked with until after I started changing the way I spoke and even acted around them. They are very laid back people, and I am more serious and all about business. They taught me how to relax, and I even started hanging out with them outside of work sometimes because I became more like them. Although, it might be weird to hang out with them and my original group of friends at the same time.

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