The psychology of social impact. He seeks to set forth a very general, but very powerful, theory about how individuals react to social situations. By strength Latane refers to the power, importance, or intensity of the source person, and such factors as status, age, or authority could all influence strength. Immediacy refers to the closeness of the source in time and space to the target person.
Number usually refers to the number of individuals present.
The law doesn't define the precise nature of the relationships among these three key variables, nor does it explain the mediating factors that link strength, immediacy, and number to impact. Rather, the principle suggests that influence will increase when people are important, psychological close by, and numerous. The impact of one individual on several other people is a negative power function of their strength, number, and immediacy. This principle combines, and reverses, the prior two functions to explain how social impact is diffused when many targets are present. A single person seeking to persuade others, for example, will have less impact as the size of the audience increases, and the extent to which this loss occurs will accelerate as the audience grows larger.