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Aug 6, 2010 
Direct influence
Situations where we have influence come in two flavors: direct influence and indirect influence. Direct influence means that we can take specific steps to try to get the thing done. For instance, a person who wants a raise can usually go to his or her boss and request one, and someone who wants to be treated better by another person can confront that person.
Indirect influence
Indirect influence means that we can only take actions that encourage the results we want, but can’t control them or even push for a decision. Some examples of indirect influence are practicing more in order to have a better chance of winning a talent contest or writing letters to a representative to encourage a particular vote.
Social influence diagram by Bruce Dupree, via Anne Adrian.
4 Comments 
broken ideas, change, choices, control, help, influence, should statements, troubleshooting motivation, weight loss, willpower
4 Comments
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Good explanations on direct and indirect influence and those behaviors that one can control and can’t control.
I am glad you find the “circles of influences” graphic helpful.
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Quote: “Indirect influence means that we can only take actions that encourage the results we want but can’t control them or even push for a decision.”
But isn’t subconcious psychological manipulation from one mind to another a form of indirect influence as it is not percieved consciously by the subject yet still gives a degree of real control and influences the subjects decisions? -
Thanks for adding to the discussion, Jay. I think the key is in that word “control.” Granted that there are levels of influence that are very strong–for instance, taking the most extreme example, criminals, terrorists, or torturers forcing people to do things they would normally never do by threatening bodily harm or death, but even in those cases the person threatened has the choice of complying or not.
It’s a less conscious choice when someone is acting on our unrecognized fears or biases, but on some level our own behavior is always still our own. I think a person could reasonably argue that there’s a point at which manipulation is so effective that it’s pretty much the same thing as control, but it seems to me that a person’s own psychological makeup contributes so much to those kinds of situations that the control is illusory. Even hypnotists say that they can’t get people to do things that are against their true inclinations (though I don’t have enough data on hypnosis to know how effective it really is or isn’t, or how true this may be).
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This is an excellent example of indirect and direct influences..This really helps me to gain an better understanding of myself.
