SI- Social Change

Question 1

What is minority influence?

Answer 1

• Minority influence is a type of social influence that motivates individuals to reject established majority group norms.
• This is achieved through the process of conversion, where majorities become gradually won over to a minority viewpoint.

Question 2

What are the behavioural characteristics of the minority?

Answer 2

1) Consistency: Minority influence will be persuasive if the minority is consistent with its opinion/behaviour, show confidence in its beliefs, and appears unbiased. If the majority are consistent, others come to reassess situation and consider issue more carefully. For example: has had the same viewpoint for years
2) Committed: Commitment contributes to social change when a minority show they are willing to sacrifice for their belief so the majority take their argument more seriously/ pays more attention (augmentation principle)
3) Flexibility: nemeth et al argued that there should be a balance between consistency and flexibility as being dogmatic is ineffective and off putting, hence members of minority groups should adapt viewpoints and provide good counter arguments in order for social change to occur.

Question 3

What is the snowball effect?

Answer 3

• Minority influence initially has a small effect but then spreads as more and more people consider the issue being raised and are converted to the minority viewpoint.
• Eventually it reaches a tipping point, where the minority becomes the majority.

Question 4

What is social crypto-amnesia?

Answer 4

• Minority influence is a slow process and may even be unconscious.
• Sometimes the individual is not even aware of where the new idea originated from, this is called social crypto-amnesia

Question 5

Evaluate minority influence. (ADVANTAGES)

Answer 5

1) Moscovici (1969) told 172 female participants that they were taking part in a colour perception task.
- The naïve participants were placed in groups of six and were shown 36 slides, which were varying shades of blue.
- Two of the six participants were confederates.The participants had to state out loud the colour of each slide.
- In the consistent condition the confederates said the slide was green in all 36 trials.
- In the inconsistent condition the confederates said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue.
- In the consistent condition participants were swayed by the minority 8.2% of the time.
- In the inconsistent condition the participants only went along with the minority 1.25% of the time.
- This shows that a consistent minority is more effective than an inconsistent minority.
THE

Question 6

Evaluate minority influence. (DISADVANTAGES)

Answer 6

1) The samples of studies into minority influence are gender biased.
- For example, Moscovici (1969)only used women(beta biased).
- As a result, we are unable to generalise the results to other populations and we cannot conclude that male participants would respond to minority influence in the same way.
- Research often suggests that women are more likely to conform than men, therefore further research is needed to determine the effect of minority influence on male participants.

2) The samples of studies into minority influence are also culturally biased because all of the participants were from America.
- As a result, the findings cannot be generalised to other populations.
- We cannot conclude that participants from other cultures would respond to minority influence in the same way.

3) Studies into minority influence have been criticised for deceiving participants.
- In Moscovici’s (1969) study participants were told that they were taking part in a colour perception test.
- This also means that Moscovici did not gain participants informed consent.
- Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Moscovici’s experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results.
- If participants were aware of the true aim of the experiment, they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently

4) Artificial task - lacks mundane realism , low external validity.

Question 7

What does social change mean?

Answer 7

Social change refers to the change that occurs in a society and not at an individual level.

Question 8

How do minority groups bring about social change?

Answer 8

By being committed, consistent and flexible

Question 9

Describe the steps towards social change.

Answer 9

1) Drawing attention to the issue
2) Consistency of the position
3) Deeper processing
4) The Augmentation Principle: If a minority appears willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as more committed and are taken more seriously.
5) Snowball effect
6) Social Cryptoamnesia

Question 10

nemeth et al 1986 - flexibility

Answer 10

aim- examine the idea of flexibility as a characteristic of minority influence

method - ppts in groups of 4 with one confederate had to agree on a compensation they would get as a victim of a ski-lift accident. there were two conditions :

1) minority argued for low rate and refused to change their position (inflexible)
2) minority argued for low compensation rate but compromised offering slightly higher rate (flexible)

found - in the inflexible condition the minority had little or no effect on majority however in flexible condition the majority members were more likely to compromise

conclude - that there needs to a balance between consistency and flexibility to adopt minority view.