Changes in social influence have to be understood in the context of enormous shifts across the globe: the rise of populist movement, the emergence of ‘strongman’ authoritarian leaders, and the increasing threat to democracy underway in our society. Research evidence suggests that when people experience uncertainty and threat, they are less inclined to support human rights and more inclined to support authoritarian leadership and punitive measures against minority…*
根據研究，當人們面對不確定性和威脅的時候，對人權的關注會變少，而會傾向於支持集權的領導和對少數族群進行懲罰。
這種社會影響力的改變，造成了民粹主義、強人專制領袖的堀起和對民主政治的威脅。
Globalization in the twenty-first century is leading to increase perceived threat because of a number of large-scale changes, the most visible being massive and rapid immigrations of human populations across national boarders and entire region. In addition to formal migration, hundreds of thousands of refugees(often deemed ‘illegal’) are on the move around the world at any one time…*
全球化的大規模跨境移民，被原來的住民視為威脅。再加上難民，那更是雪上加霜。
…In practice, instead of seeking new information and opinions that we might learn from but that might challenge our own worldviews, we tend to interact with people and sources that endorse our worldviews and legitimize our biases. This trend in internet communications is new in so far as the technology is concerned, but it is ‘old’ in the sense that is based on the principles of similarity-attraction well known to social psychologists…*
在互聯網興起的世界，在社群軟體中傾向形成意見相同的同溫層，人們又進一步加深了自己原有的偏見。
…the rise of authoritarian ‘strongmen’ around the world, backed by populist, ethnocentric populations intent on building walls around their societies, suggests that human groups are moving in a different direction, one that reflects the values of fascism in the 1930s…*
世界各地興起的獨裁強人，他們有民粹主義者或民族主義者的支持，要在他們的社會和世界之間建立壁壘，說明人類朝向一個不同的方向發展，反映的反而是1930年代法斯西主的價值觀。
*: Gordon Sammut Martin W. Bauer, The psychology of social influence, 2021, Cambridge University Press
2025/12/14 The psychology of social influence Damakey
