Identity and entitlement in accounts of (morally) normative and informational social influence for sustainability

Abstract

Recent discursive psychology research has sought to respecify social influence as a discursive accomplishment and has also begun to identify how the psychological thesaurus is used to portray social influence in situated talk. The present paper contributes to this project by examining how social influence is depicted in accounts of influencing others in professional settings. Product designers' portrayals of influencing decision-makers to prioritize environmental sustainability, collected through semi-structured research interviews and from conference panel discussions, are analysed. Two recurring ways of constructing social influence are found—morally normative influence involving effort and force against resistance (‘pushing’) and informational influence through educating. The analysis shows how these depictions of influencing represent situated identity work. Two contributions are made to understanding ways of depicting social influence in professional settings. First, whether people claim entitlement to influence others at work is highlighted as a key element in how an influencer's identity is portrayed. Second, the participants' orientation to moral norms, not just social norms, is offered to extend to the concept of normative social influence in the context of sustainability. Implications for understanding how people relate to the shared moral challenge of environmental sustainability in different interactional contexts are discussed.