Social Impact Theory

Social Impact theory was created by Bibb Latané in 1981 and consists of three basic rules. The first rule is that social impact is the result of social forces including the strength of the source of impact, the immediacy of the event, and the number of sources exerting the impact. The second rule is the psychosocial rule that says the amount of impact tends to increase as the number of sources increases. However, the most significant difference in impact exists between having 0 sources and having 1 source. The third rule is that the number of targets also affects social impact. The more targets of impact that exist, the less impact each individual target feels.

Read more about Social Impact Theory:  Original Research, Subsequent Development, Contemporary Research, Further Reading

Famous quotes containing the words social, impact and/or theory:

    The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.
    John Fiske (b. 1939)

    The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.
    Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)

    every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.
    Thomas Nagel (b. 1938)