Social Change Flashcards
What is social change?
When whole societies adopt new attitudes and beliefs.
What is drawing attention?
Behaving in a way that does not follow social norms to get others to notice you.
What is consistency?
Holding the same viewpoint for a long time to reinforce the importance of it.
What is deeper processing?
Societies as a whole start to consider the minorities viewpoint and try to understand it.
What is the augmentation principle?
Engaging in extreme viewpoints to try and reinforce the importance of your viewpoint.
What is the snowball effect?
Gradually getting more people to join and follow the minority.
What is social cryptomnesia?
Having memory that social change has happened but you don’t remember how it happened.
How does a dissenter of conformity lead to social change?
We notice those who are not following social norms. If we agree with them, it frees us to also not adhere to social norms.
How can normative social influence lead to social change?
We see that others are changing their behaviour, so we do the same because we want to be liked and accepted by them.
How can disobedient people lead to social change?
Seeing people be disobedient frees us to also be disobedient. People then notice and follow the disobedience, so more people start to join the minority.
Explain the strength that there is research support for normative influence.
Use the example of Nolan’s energy study.
Describe the difference between the control group and independent variable.
Explain the findings.
Nolan aimed to see if she could change people’s energy use habits. Researchers hung messages on the front door of houses every week for a month. The key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy use. As a control, some residents had a different message on their door saying just to save energy but made no reference to other people’s behaviour. There were significant decreases in energy use for the first group than the second, demonstrating that conformity can lead to social influence.
Explain the strength that psychologists can explain how minority influence brings about social change.
Nemeth said that social change is a result of what type of thinking?
How does this lead to social change in ways that majorities cannot do?
Nemeth claims that 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 ways that majorities cannot.
Explain the limitation that deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change.
Why are most people converted to the minority?
Why might it actually be majority influence that leads to deeper processing?
How does this affect the validity of social change theory?
Some people are converted because they think deeply about the minorities views. But some researchers disagree and say that it is majority influence that creates 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 way that we do. When we find that a majority believes something different, then we are forced to think about their arguments and reasoning. This means a central element of minority influence has been challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change.
Explain the limitation of there being barriers to social change.
Give an example of what some people do in todays society to avoid being labelled stereotypically.
One limitation is that there are barriers to social change. According to Bashir, people still resist social change. For example, she found that PPTs were less likely to behave in an environmentally friendly way because there didn’t want to be associated with stereotypical ‘environmentalists’. Therefore, this means that we cannot always explain why some people conform to social change.
