AS SOCIAL INFLUENCE - SOCIAL PROCESSES IN SOCIAL CHANGE Flashcards
Describe stages of min inflence in social change
1) Drawing attention w/ protest marches etc
2) Consistency; display same message in each process
3) Deeper processing; ppl start to think more about the message
4) Augmentation principle; min put themselves at risk to show commitment to the cause
5) Snowball effect; more and more ppl join min and they slowly become the maj
6) Social cryptoamnesia; ppl know that social change has happened but don’t remember how
Describe lessons from conformity research
Asch showed that the presence of a dissenter broke conformity; health and environmental campaigns target this NSI by saying things like “Bin it - others do” or telling young ppl not to smoke as most others don’t - +ve changes made through dissent and NSI
Describe lessons from obedience research
Milgram showed that a disobedient confederate refusing to administer shocks made obedience in naive ppts plummet.
Zimbardo said social change happens via gradual commitment; once you say yes to a small thing it becomes much harder to say no to a big thing; ppl “drift” into new attitudes
Evaluate social processes in social change
(+) Nolan et al (2008) found that by telling ppl in a neighbourhood that everyone else was reducing their energy consumption, the subjects reduced their own sig more than a control group who were told nothing; therefore NSI leads to social change
(-) Methodology issues; most of the evidence for this is based on lab exps eg Milgram, Asch etc; can’t really generalise to real life
(-) Nemeth (1986) says that social change takes a long time and its effects are fragile; it is only indirectly effective
