ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the relationship between arousal and susceptibility to social influence. Consider the effects of incongruity and arousal on susceptibility to social influence, that is, imitation, conformity, and suggestibility. The "social drive" theorists consequently began to experiment with subjects by isolating them, withholding approval, and so on, and observing subsequent behavior. In summary, susceptibility to social influence, like stimulation-seeking, tends to increase following increases in the level of arousal, the latter of which results from incongruity. E. W. Bovard's argument is that the presence of another animal of the same species has a protective effect under stress, in that the social stimulus calls forth a competing or inhibitory response to the response elicited by the noxious stimulus. Individuals build cognitive maps of their physical and psychosocial environment that are stratified in terms of psychological salience and acquire self-maintaining properties.