10 - Social Influence + Social Change Flashcards
What is social change?
When whole societies, not just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs + behaviours
What are the three aspects of social change?
- Minority influence
- Conformity
- Obedience
How can minority influence be used to explain social change?
If minority influence happens on a large scale it can cause social change
Outline the process of minority influence causing social change
1) Drawing attention (to problem + need for change)
2) Consistency (synchronic + diachronic to increase interest)
3) Deeper processing (consistently presented need for change causes individuals to question own beliefs)
4) Augmentation principle (commitment shown by overcoming personal challenges, making opinion more notable)
5) Snowball effect (more + more people convert, so minority becomes majority)
6) Social cryptomnesia (people have memory of change occurring but don’t remember how it happened)
Give an example of social change occurring due to minority influence
Civil Rights Movement
How can conformity be used to explain social change?
- Dissenters increase likelihood for social change
- Campaigns appeal to NSI to cause social change
How can disobedient models increase likelihood for social change? Give an example
Milgram found that adding a disobedient model gave ppts confidence to not obey authority, therefore disobedient models in real life give individuals confidence to not obey instructions on social behaviour + when many people do this it is social change
- E.g. Rosa Parks - disobeyed segregation laws, giving others confidence to do the same during Civil Rights Movement
How can obedience be used to explain social change?
- Disobedient models increase likelihood for social change
- Small steps of obedience increase likelihood for obedience to more large instructions, causing social change
How can small steps of obedience increase likelihood for larger steps of obedience in future, causing social change? Give an example
Zimbardo (2007) found once a small instruction is obeyed, people find it harder to resist obeyed a larger one. In real life, people gradually ‘drift’ into obeying an authority’s instruction, causing gradual social change.
E.g. Nazis - officers obeyed small instructions and then found it harder to resist morally injust larger instructions, which became the social norm to follow
Give 2 positive evaluation points for social change
Research support
- Schultz et al (2008)
- Field experiment to support how conformity due to NSI can cause social change
- 132 hotel guests over 1 week randomly allocated into 2 conditions
- Experimental condition: message on door ‘75% guests reuse towels’
- Control condition: message on door ‘benefits to reusing towels’
- Experimental condition reduced need for towels by 25% due to NSI
Practical applications
- Can see social change occurring constantly
- Minority influence: Suffragettes/Civil Rights Movement
- Conformity: Greta Thunberg = dissenting confederate
- Obedience: Rosa Parks = disobedient model
Give 2 negative evaluation points for social change
Minority influence causes social change slowly + indirectly
- Nemeth (1986)
- Said minority influence is slow: takes decades to shift public opinion
- Said minority influence is indirect: people only influenced on things they experience first hand
- Minority influence is a limited explanation for social change
Identification/ignoring negative stereotypes is important for minority influence (but often overlooked)
- Bashir et al (2013) found evidence that minorities often have negative stereotypes, e.g. environmentalist ‘tree huggers’ + feminist ‘man haters’
- Argued that people must identify with minority influenced, as they are able to overlook threat of negative stereotype
- So minority influence is limited explanation, as minorities don’t have power to influence whole population
Methodology is artificial
- Milgram, Asch + Moscovici all did research that supports social change occurring as result of various processes
- They all did lab studies
- These lab studies lack mundane realism, as there aren’t potential consequences of social change that are present in real life
- So research may not represent real social change - not generalisable
How can dissenters increase likelihood for social change? Give an example
Asch found that adding a dissenting confederate gave ppts the confidence to not conform to the majority, therefore dissenters in real life give individuals confidence to convert opinions + when many people do this it is social change
E.g. Greta Thunberg - acts as dissenter so others feel able to make environmental changes
How do campaigns appeal to NSI to cause social change? Give an example
Provide info about what others are doing, so people convert their opinions because they believe this will help them fit in
E.g. ‘Bin it-others do’ - more people bin litter due to NSI
