Influence

Looking up the phrase “influence on something or somebody” in a dictionary, it defined the effect that somebody or something has on the way a person thinks or behaves or on the way that something works or develops. Influence changes with mainly four elements: conformity, liking, authority and benefit. These four elements are totally different but they’re inseparable from each other.
There’s a idiom said: “Public clamor can confound right with wrong.” Human always think what the most people think is just the right thing. It’s a phenomenon called “conformity”. When a person was driving on a highway and saw all the other cars head an opposite direction to ours, the person would be confused and think if the direction is right. In addition, when watching a TV show, the show always add a lot of noise of laughing so the audience would feel the show is fun, too.
To a certain extent, everyone’s liking has something to do with influence, and that’s why the advertising companies usually ask those famous movie stars who are deeply loved by audience to be endorsers of their products in TV commercials. Customers always listen to what their idols’ recommendations. For example, Michael Jordan’s sports appliances are always hot and popular in the sports stores because he’s authoritative and widely loved by basketball fans.
Next, authority is a tremendous element which determines the influence. In the human society, even in a democratic country, there are still classes between each people. For example, parents to kids; teachers to students; bosses to employee. It’s an invariable rule that people listen to those who are in a higher position. Employees dare not disobey the bosses’ order and students dare not disobey their teachers because no one would like to be fired or flunked.
At last, how much benefit can be obtained also makes differences of how hard the influence is. The more benefit can be gotten, the more influential those things are and people would be more willing to go for it just like children love to go to 7-11 to buy Kinder Chocolate which contains interesting toys in it, and they buy Kinder chocolate mainly not for chocolate, but for the toys.
As long as more than two people are situated at the same space, there’s the existence of influence, and those who get the power to influent others, they’re in the advantageous position, so most people in the human society spend their whole life to be more affecting, but to be the affected. How to use influence well is important because it can be used in a good way but also in an evil way. With great power comes great responsibility. It’s also a duty to make others do things right.