Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1966. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1963. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [34]-36).

Thesis (B.A. (Hons.)) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1972. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-148). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Mass., 1999. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [193]-196).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC, 2004. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-206).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-196).

The present thesis offers a synthetic, discursive psychological investigation into social influence, as manifested in an everyday context - a livery yard in the south-west of England. Drawing on insights from Conversation Analysis, Discursive Psychology and Critical Discursive Psychology, the thesis demonstrates the limitations of traditional social psychological approaches to social influence, especially in terms of our understanding of how influence manifests itself in everyday life. The thesis argues that in order to understand social influence in practice it is important to study language in action, that is, the discursive and interactional practices through which influence is produced and through which people orient towards the possibility of influence. Also, the thesis examines how influence is mediated by other social actions including the demonstration of competence, exercise of leadership or the production of identity. The research presented in the thesis is based on the analysis of over 200 hours of audio and video data collected over eleven months of ethnographic work in a livery yard. The livery yard was chosen as the appropriate setting because social influence, in terms of giving, accepting or resisting advice, is a frequent concern both for the owners and the users of the livery yard. Also, the nature of the interactions in a livery yard, and the complexity of the social relationships between the management, staff and the customers meant that different forms of advice giving and orientations to influence could be readily observed, recorded and analysed. By examining how social influence is produced, oriented to and resisted in an everyday context, and by promoting a synthetic discursive approach to this quintessential social psychological topic, the thesis offers a timely critique of traditional research into social influence and contributes to the broader project of re-specifying social psychology in discursive, social constructionist terms.

This research project was designed to test, directly, the effects of perceived professional authority on producing attitude change among high school sophomores. The study utilized a social psychological theoretical orientation to examine a specific aspect of socially mediated information, namely, persuasive communication as it is influenced by the source or communicator of the persuasive message, “Authority, as it has been defined in this study, includes two factors: (1) the prestige and (2) the credibility of the source. The two professions selected were that of a physician and a social worker. It was expected that the physician, by virtue of his “higher perceived ,” authority as evidenced by previous research would be more effective in producing attitude change than would the social worker. Data was obtained by means of a modified version of the tradition pretest-posttest with control group design. Alcohol usage and abusage was selected as the topic of the persuasive communication. The dependent variable selected for study was the students’ attitude toward alcohol usage, as measured by the scores they received on an attitude instrument. The independent variable was the perceived authority of the source or communicator. The experiment utilized 140 students randomly selected from a total population of approximately 600 sophomore students. The 140 students were matched by triplets into six different experimental conditions from the scores each student received on an alcohol knowledge questionnaire. The experiment was conducted on two different days. On the first day, the students received the alcohol knowledge questionnaire; on the second day, the pretest, stimulus, and posttest were administered. A single actor, assuming both the physician and the social worker roles, delivered an identical message concerning the detrimental physical and psychological effects of alcohol usage. Statistical analyses utilized an analysis of covariance. The results showed that the experimental manipulation of perceived authority had no significant effect upon the students’ attitudes toward the use and abuse of alcohol. In other words, the physician failed to be more successful in producing attitude change than the social worker. Implications for the field of social work are mainly speculative. Social work directly involves the process of communication. However, the social work profession has infrequently dealt directly with the issue of influence (persuasion) as it is related to attitude change. The question of authority as it related to the effectiveness of the social worker still remains unanswered.