ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a multidimensional view of social influence. The interaction between source, message, and target is viewed from the vantage point of complexity theory. Psychological theory and research has viewed the concept of "complexity" in a number of ways. To some, the term refers to the modality, irrelevance, order, or frequency of stimuli received by a subject who may be engaged in a signal detection, concept formation, decision-making, or choice preference task. Considerable research has been concerned with the effects of environmental complexity on signal detection, concept formation, preferences, attitudes, decision making, and so forth. These research approaches have been widely divergent. An attempt to relate environmental complexity and complexity in personality structure was made by M. J. Driver, S. Streufert, and H. M. Schroder. The chapter discusses differences between differentiative and integrative complexity.
