SOC 19 - Social change 1

Question 1

What is social influence?

Answer 1

• The process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours. Includes conformity, obedience and minority influence

Question 2

What is social change?

Answer 2

• This occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things
• Examples include accepting that the Earth orbits the Sun, women’s suffrage, gay rights and environmental issues

Question 3

What is the process of how minority social influence creates social change?

Answer 3

• Drawing attention through social proof
• Consistency
• Deeper processing
• Augmentation principle
• Snowball effect
• Social cryptomnesia

Question 4

What is ‘drawing attention through social proof’?

Answer 4

• This involves alerting society to the groups’ views and beleif system
• Seeing other people do something about the situation (e.g. marches)
• Drawing attention to the situation by providing proof of the situation

Question 5

What is ‘consistency’ in terms of the process of social change?

Answer 5

A group wanting social change must be consistent in their approach e.g. always pushing the same unwavering message

Question 6

What is ‘deeper processing’?

Answer 6

• Attention being drawn to a situation/new idea causes those who had simply accepted the status quo to begin questioning their own views and beliefs, by thinking about it more deeply
• Thinking is a cognitive process and deeper processing could lead to internalisation

Question 7

What is the ‘augmentation principle’ in terms of the process of social change?

Answer 7

• This is linked to ‘commitment’ which is the idea that a personal risk or self sacrifice reinforces the message
• A group member performs an action when there are known contraints (suffer for a cause)

Question 8

What is the ‘snowball effect’ in terms of the process of social change?

Answer 8

• Minority view gathers momentum and reachers more people leading to large scale social change and new social norms
• This is when people begin to adopt the beliefs of the social change group as their own

Question 9

What is ‘social cryptomnesia’?

Answer 9

• People forget how the change happened i.e. the minority group and their intial idea become more dissociated
• We remember that change occured but forget about the events that led up to that change

Question 10

What is one strength of normative social influence, and how does research support its effectiveness in changing behavior?

Answer 10

• One strength is that research has shown that social influence processes based on psychological research do work
• Jessica Nolan et al. (2008) aimed to see if they could change people’s energy- use habits
• The researchers hung messages on the front doors of houses in San
  Diego, California every week for one month. The key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage
• As a control, some residents
  had a different message that just asked them to save energy but made no reference to other people’s behaviour
• There were significant decreases in energy usage in the first group compared to the second
• This shows that conformity (majority influence) can lead to social change
  through the operation of normative social influence, i.e. it is a valid explanation

Question 11

What are some limitations of using normative influence to change behavior, and what does research suggest about its effectiveness?

Answer 11

• Some studies show that people’s behaviour is not always changed through exposing them to social norms
• David Foxcroft et al. (2015) reviewed social norms interventions as part of the ‘gold standard’ Cochrane Collaboration
• This review included 70 studies where the social norms approach was used to reduce student alcohol use
• The researchers found only a small reduction in drinking quantity and no effect on drinking frequency
• Therefore it seems that using normative influence does not always
  produce long-term social change.

Question 12

What is one strength of minority influence in promoting social change, and how does it affect people’s thinking?

Answer 12

• One strength is that psychologists can explain how minority influence
  brings about social change
• Charlan Nemeth (2009) claims social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire
• When people consider minority arguments, they engage in
  divergent thinking
• This type of thinking is broad rather than narrow, in which the
  thinker actively searches for information and weighs up more options
• Nemeth argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues
• This shows why dissenting minorities are valuable - they stimulate new ideas and open minds in a way that majorities cannot

Question 13

What is one limitation of minority influence in bringing about social change, and how does research challenge the role of deeper processing?

Answer 13

• One limitation is that deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change
• Some people are supposedly converted because they think more deeply about the minority’s views
• Diane Mackie (1987) disagrees and presents evidence that it is majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their views
• This is because we like to believe that other people share our views and think in the same ways as us
• When we find that a majority believes something different, then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning
• This means that a central element of minority influence has been
  challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change

Question 14

What practical advice does research on minority influence offer for achieving social change, and what challenges do minorities face in overcoming resistance?

Answer 14

• The research on this spread provides a lot of practical advice useful to a minority wanting to influence majority opinion or behaviour (e.g. the importance of consistency)
• However, according to Nadia Bashir et al. (2013), the fact is that people still resist social change
• For example, Bashir et al. found that
  their participants were less likely to behave in environmentally-friendly
  ways because they did not want to be associated with stereotypical and
  minority ‘environmentalists’
• They described environmental activists in negative ways (e.g. ‘tree-huggers’)
• Despite this resistance, the
  researchers were still able to suggest ways in which minorities can
  overcome barriers to social change