SOC 21 - Social change 2 Flashcards
1
Q
What is gradual commitment?
A
- The process by which individuals or groups are progressively persuaded or motivated to adopt new beliefs, behaviours, or attitudes through small, incremental steps
- This concept is often rooted in psychological theories, such as foot-in-the-door techniques, where agreeing to a small initial request makes people more likely to comply with larger requests later
- People obey instructions one step at a time
2
Q
What are the lessons learnt from conformity research?
A
- Solomon Asch highlighted the importance of dissent in one of his variations in which one confederate gave correct answers throughout the procedure
- This broke the power of the majority, encouraging others to do likewise
- Such dissent has the potential to ultimately lead to social change
- A different approach is one used by environmental and health campaigns which exploit conformity processes by appealing to normative social influence
- They do this by providing information about what other people are doing (e.g. reducing litter by printing ‘bin it, others do’ on posters)
- Social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are doing
3
Q
What are the lessons learnt from obedience research?
A
- Stanley Milgram’s research demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models
- In the variation where a confederate Teacher refuses to give shocks to the Learner, the rate of obedience in the genuine participants plummeted
- Philip Zimbardo suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment
- Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one
- People essentially ‘drift’ into a new kind of behaviour
4
Q
What are the strengths of social influence and social change?
A
- Evidence from research on normative influence
- Psychologists can explain how minority influence brings about social change
5
Q
What are the limitations of social influence and social change?
A
- Counterpoint on evidence from research on normative influence
- Deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change
- There are barriers to social change
6
Q
How is evidence from research on normative influence a strength of social influence and social change?
A
- 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
7
Q
How is minority influence a strength of social influence and social change?
A
- Another 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
8
Q
What is the counterpoint to the research evidence on normative influence?
A
- 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
9
Q
How might deeper processing be a limitation of social influence and social change?
A
- 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
10
Q
How might there be barriers to social change?
A
- 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
