SI - Social influence processes in social change Flashcards
Give an example of social change through minority influence
The suffragettes.
What are the 2 methods of social change?
Through minority influence and through majority influence (conformity).
What are the stages of social change through minority influence?
- Drawing attention to an issue.
- Cognitive conflict.
- Consistency of the position.
- The augmentation principle.
- The snowball effect.
What does it mean in social change by ‘drawing attention to an issue’?
Minorities draw the majority’s attention to an issue. If their views are different to the views held by the majority, this creates a conflict that the minority are motivated to reduce.
How did the suffragettes use minority influence to bring about social change?
The used educational, political and militant tactics to draw attention to the fact that women were denied the same voting rights as men.
They then created a conflict for majority group members between the existing status quo (only men allowed to vote) and the position advocated by the suffragettes (votes for women). Some people dealt with this conflict by moving towards the position advocated by the suffragettes, others simply dismissed it.
The suffragettes were consistent in their views, regardless of the attitudes of those around them. Protests and political lobbying that continued for years, plus the fact that women played a conspicuous role in WW1, eventually convinced society that some women were ready to vote.
Because the suffragettes were willing to risk imprisonment or even death from hunger strike, their influence became more powerful (i.e. it was augmented).
Finally, universal suffrage (all adult citizens having the vote) was finally accepted by the majority of people in the UK.
What does it mean in social change by ‘cognitive conflict’?
The minority creates a conflict between what majority group members currently believe and the position advocated by the minority. This doesn’t necessarily result in a move towards the minority position, but it does mean that the majority group members think more deeply about the issues being challenged - deeper processing.
What does it mean in social change by ‘consistency of position’?
Research on minority influence has established that minorities tend to be more influential in bringing about social change when they express their arguments consistently (over time and with each other).
What does it mean in social change by ‘the augmentation principle’?
If a minority appears willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as more committed and so taken more seriously by others.
What does it mean in social change by ‘the snowball effect’?
Minority influence initially has a relatively small effect but this then spread more widely as more and more people consider the issues being promoted, until it reaches a ‘tipping point’, at which point it leads to wide-scale social change.
What is meant by social change through majority influence?
Behavioural choices are often related to groups norms so if people perceive something to be the norm then they are likely to alter their behaviour to fit that norm/they’ll conform to the norm. (Perkins and Berkowitz, 1986).
What is the gap between the perceived and actual norm referred to as?
A misperception.
How is social change brought about through majority influence?
Correcting the misperception (the gap between the perceived and actual norm) is the basis for an approach to social change known as social norms interventions.
How do social norms interventions work?
By correcting the misperception (the gap between the perceived and actual norm).
How do social norms interventions work to bring about social change through majority infleunce?
They typically start by identifying a widespread misperception relating to a specified risky behaviour within a target population (e.g. alcohol consumption in peers).
Perception correction strategies can then be used in media campaigns, promotional material and through other routes.
The aim of these strategies is to communicate to the target population the actual norm concerning that particular behaviour.
By advertising these norms, researchers hope that recipients will moderate their own behaviour to bring it more in line with the behaviour of their peers.
Give an example of a social norms intervention and what it is trying to do?
‘Most of Us don’t drink and drive’.
It was designed to reduce drinking and driving among young adults in the US as 21-34 year olds had been over-represented in alcohol-related crashes statewide in Montana. Most people thought their peers drove under the influence of alcohol but this wasn’t the case so they tried to correct this misperception.
They found that after this simple message was put out, there was a reduction in the number of cases of drink driving by 13.7% compared to countries that didn’t run this campaign.
The correction of misperceptions about the ‘norm’ of driving after drinking led to positive changes in personal attitudes among the target population and a reduction in their reported frequency of risky behaviours.
