“Social power [is the] potential influence, the ability of a person or group to induce or prevent change in another. Social control [is] the process by which members of a social entity are influenced to adhere to values and principles of proper behavior deemed appropriate for that social entity.”

— Bertram Raven

Source: "Influence, Power, Religion, and the Mechanisms of Social Control," 1999, p. 161

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Social power [is the] potential influence, the ability of a person or group to induce or prevent change in another. Soc…" by Bertram Raven?

Bertram Raven photo

Bertram Raven 9

American psychologist 1926

Related quotes

“By the time the Church had gained sufficient power to exercise a controlling influence, the process of social decay”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 146
Context: Christianity was rising when the ancient world was breaking down. By the time the Church had gained sufficient power to exercise a controlling influence, the process of social decay, like the breakdown of a physical organism in a wasting disease, was beyond remedy.

“A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political, legal, and customary uniformity over an extended period, and which confers on its members the benefits of socially accumulated knowledge.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"What is Culture?" (p. 2)
Culture Counts (2007)

“The concepts of social power and social control are closely interrelated, since the process of social control involves the exercise of the bases and resources of power. But both terms also have their negative and even threatening connotations. All of us, or at least most of us, like to think that we are independent agents, and being subjected to social power restricts that sense of independence. The thought of being "socially controlled" also brings forth strong negative feelings. Yet, when we consider it more carefully, power and influence are part of our everyday interaction and contribute to individual and collective benefit. Similarly for social control.”

Bertram Raven (1926) American psychologist

Source: "Influence, Power, Religion, and the Mechanisms of Social Control," 1999, p. 161

“Tension between two or several social entities (individual, group or organizations) which arises from incompatibility of actual or desired responses.”

Arie W. Kruglanski (1939) American psychologist

Source: "Conflict and power." 1970, p. 70

“Tension between two or several social entities (individual, group or organizations) which arises from incompatibility of actual or desired responses.”

Bertram Raven (1926) American psychologist

Source: "Conflict and power." 1970, p. 70

“Accordingly one finds in political science, in sociology, and in social psychology a variety of distinctions among different types of social power or among qualitatively different processes of social influence… Our main purpose is to identify the major types of power and to define them systematically so that we may compare them according to the changes which they produce and the other effects which accompany the use of power.”

John R. P. French (1913–1995) American psychologist

Source: "The bases of social power." 1959, p. 150

“Ideas appropriate to a past social order have a strange power of influencing thought and action within a later institutional frame work.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Introduction, p. 17
A History of Economic Thought (1939)

“Any Organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.”

Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968) American sociologist

Pitirim Sorokin (1927) Social Mobility, p. 12

“By social structure is meant that organized set of social relationships in which members of the society or group are variously implicated.”

Robert K. Merton book Social Theory and Social Structure

Source: Social Theory and Social Structure (1949), p. 162 (1957 edition)

“Social psychology is especially interested in the effect which the social group has in the determination of the experience and conduct of the individual member.”

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: Mind, Self, and Society. 1934, p. 1

Related topics