Social Change

Question 1

what does social influence lead to?

Answer 1

social change

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

Question 3

what are the 6 steps to social change?

Answer 3

• drawing attention
• consistency
• deeper processing
• augmentation principle
• snowball effect
• social cryptomnesia

Question 4

what is drawing attention?

Answer 4

raising awareness and providing social proof

Question 5

what is consistency?

Answer 5

being persistent with the message and the intention of tackling the problem

Question 6

what is deeper processing?

Answer 6

people who simply accepted the status quo begin to question the intention

Question 7

what is augmentation principle?

Answer 7

engaging in extreme behaviour to actively challenge the issue and demonstrate commitment

Question 8

what is the snowball effect?

Answer 8

switching from the minority to the majority viewpoint (tipping point)

Question 9

what is social cryptomnesia?

Answer 9

people know that the social change has occurred but can’t remember how it happened

Question 10

what does zimbardo say about social change?

Answer 10

• obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment

Question 11

what is gradual commitment?

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

what is the conformity research that links to social change(Asch)?

Answer 12

• Asch - a dissenter in one of his variations, has potential to lead to social change

Question 13

what is the conformity research that links to social change?

Answer 13

• appealing to NSI
• providing info about what other people are doing (for environmental and health campaigns)
• social change can be encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing

Question 14

what is a strength of social change?

Answer 14

• social influence processes on social changes
• Nolan et al = wanted to change energy use patterns of people in San Diego, California
• they put up messages on the front of doors every week for a month, saying your residents are trying to reduce their energy usage, and the control group made no reference to the residents
• significant decrease in energy usage for first group

Question 15

what is another strength of social change?

Answer 15

• minorities cause social change due to their type of thinking
• divergent thinking = this is broad and not narrow, involves actively searching for information and weighing up the options
• leads to better decisions and more creative solutions

Question 16

what is a weakness of social change?

Answer 16

minorities may not have a role id deeper processing
- some people are supposedly converted by thinking more deeply about
- Mackie disagrees and says that it is the majority that causes deeper processing, when we find out the majority think differently to us we are forced to think long and hard about it