Minority influence, resistance to social influence and social change.

Question 1

What is resistance to social influence?

Answer 1

=The ability to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or obey authority.

Question 2

What is social support?

Answer 2

the presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others to do the same by acting as models.

Question 3

What is a dissenter?

Answer 3

holding owns own opinions despite what’s commonly held.

Question 4

Asch’s dissenter variation:

Answer 4

When one confederate was instructed to dissent in Asch’s experiments, conformity dropped to 5.5% percent when giving the correct answer.
Even when the dissenter gave a different wrong answer, it still dropped to 9%.

Question 5

Why do dissenters decrease conformity?

Answer 5

Dissenter is a model to the participant to be freed of the social influence and follow their own conscience.
Shows the importance of social support.

Question 6

Milgram’s disobedience variation:

Answer 6

In one of Milgram’s variations, the teacher was joined by a dissenter, and the rate of obedience dropped from 65% to 10%.

Question 7

Why do dissenters decrease obedience?

Answer 7

The participant may not follow the disenter but they allow the participant to be freed of their own conscience and challenge the legitimacy of the authority.

Question 8

Strengths of social support: Albrecht?

Answer 8

Albrecht (2006) evaluated a programme helping pregnant teenagers to resist smoking. When paired with a buddy, they were significantly less likely to smoke compared to those who did not have one. Social support can help younger people choose healthier habits.

Question 9

Strengths of social support: Gamson?

Answer 9

Gamson (1982) told participants to produce evidence to aid an oil company in running a smear campaign. The group had an opportunity to discuss. 88% rebelled and resisted.

Question 10

Who proposed a locus of control?

Answer 10

Julia Rotter 1966.

Question 11

What is a locus of control?

Answer 11

Refers to a sense that we each have about what directs events in our lives.
Internals believe we are mostly responsible for events and externals believe that outside forces or luck is responsible.

Question 12

How do loci of control link to resistance to social influence?

Answer 12

People with a high internal LOC are more able to resist pressure, because they take personal responsibility for actions and experiences and tend to base decisions on beliefs and morals.
They also tend to be more self confident, more achievement-oriented and have higher intelligence. These traits link to higher resistance to social influence.

Question 13

Strengths of locus of control: Holland?

Answer 13

Holland (1967)- repeated Milgram’s baseline study and measured whether participants with internals or externals. 37% of internals did not continue to the highest level compared with only 23% externals. So internals showed greater resistance.

Question 14

Weaknesses of locus of control: Twenge?

Answer 14

analysed data from American locus of control studies conducted over a 40 year period. Over time, people have become more resistant but also more external, suggesting locus of control is now not a valid explanation and lacks temporal validity.

Question 15

What is minority influence?

Answer 15

=Refers to situations where a small group of people influence the beliefs and behaviours of other people. Most likely leading to internalisation as both public and private behaviours change.

Question 16

What are the three components of minority influence?

Answer 16

Consistency, commitment, fleixbility.

Question 17

Consistency:

Answer 17

The minority must be consistent with their views.
Increases the interest of others.

Question 18

What is syn-chronic consistency?

Answer 18

lots of people saying the same message.

Question 19

What is diachronic consistency?

Answer 19

repetition overtime.

Question 20

Commitment:

Answer 20

Must demonstrate commitment to their views.
Extreme activities to help get viewpoints across and it is important that these actions risk the minority.
Majorities are then likely to pay attention.
The augmentation principle.

Question 21

Flexibility:

Answer 21

Being too rigid and dogmatic is off-putting to the majority.
Minorities should adapt their review and accept counter arguments.

Question 22

What is the process of changes?

Answer 22

1. A new opinion is heard and considered especially if the minority is consistent/committed/flexible.
2. This leads to deeper processing which is important in the process of conversion.
3. As they switch positions there is a snowball effect where others join, making the minority view the majority view.

Question 23

Moscovici 1969 procedure?

Answer 23

-Two groups of 6 women were shown 36 slides of varying intensity of blue and asked to state whether the slides were blue or green.
-Within each group there were two confederates in either condition. 1) Consistently stating the wrong colour. 2) Inconsistency (24/36 slides).

Question 24

Moscovici 1969 findings:

Answer 24

Findings: consistent minority 8.42% gave the same wrong answer. Inconsistent minority 1.25%. In a control group the figure was 0.25%.

Question 25

Strengths of minority influence:

Answer 25

–Wood et al (1994) conducted a meta analysis of nearly 100 similar studies to Moscovici. Found consistency is a major factor in how effective and influential a minority is.

–Support for deeper processing- Martin et al (2003)- presented a minority message to participants. Those who heard it from a minority group were less likely to agree than when hearing a majority group agree with it too.

Question 26

Weaknesses of minority influence.

Answer 26

Studies make a clear distinction between minority groups and majority groups. However real life is more complicated and this can’t be replicated in an experiment. Lacks external validity.
Tasks involved often lack mundane realism and therefore lack internal validity.
Independent groups in Moscovici’s study. Also demand characteristics because the task was so obvious.

Question 27

What is social change?

Answer 27

When whole societies adopt new attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Examples: women’s suffrage, gay rights, civil rights movement.

Question 28

What is the process of social change?

Answer 28

1. Drawing attention- social proof of problems. Individuals make the majority notice the social issues.
2. Consistency- keeping the presentation of the issue the same in terms of message and intent.
3. Deeper processing- ensuring people consider the change rather than dismissing it.
4. Augmentation principle- demonstrating commitment through risk of personal self.
5. The snowball effect- The minority growing due to individuals changing.
6. Social cryptomnesia- people changing behaviour/attitude without the ability to remember when the change occurred.

Question 29

Lessons from conformity for social change?

Answer 29

The importance of dissent in conformity situations.
NSI- messages that draw attention that others from the majority are already adopting, encourages others to comply. People with presented normative messages were more likely to reuse a towel (Schultz et al).

Question 30

Lessons from obedience for social change?

Answer 30

Zimbardo suggested gradual commitment. Once we have committed to a small change it is harder to resist a bigger one.
People essentially drift into a new behaviour.

Question 31

Strengths of social change: Nolan et al?

Answer 31

aimed to change people’s energy habits. They hung messages on the front doors of houses saying that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some had messages asking them to reduce. They reduce their usage significantly less than the experimental condition.

Question 32

Strengths of social change: Nemath et al?

Answer 32

claims social change is due to a type of thinking that minorities inspired called divergent thinking. The thinker actively searches for information and weighs up more options. Argues that this leads to better decision and creative thinking.

Question 33

Weaknesses of social change: Mackie?

Answer 33

Mackie (1987)- deeper process may not play a role. Presented evidence that it is the majority influence that encourages deeper processing if you have not already accepted views. This is because we like to believe that people share our views and think the same way. So when a majority thinks something different, we are forced to think about our own opinion.

Question 34

Weaknesses of social change: Foxcroft?

Answer 34

David Foxcroft et al (2015)- some studies show that people’s behaviour is not always changed when exposed to social norms. Review of social norms of investigations, including 70 studies when the social norm was used to reduce student alcohol consumption. Researchers only found a small reduction in alcohol use.