Social Change

Question 1

What is social change?

Answer 1

Occurs when whole societies rather than individuals adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things

Question 2

What is the process of social change?

Answer 2

Drawing attention
Consistency
Deeper processing
Augmentation principle
Snowball effect
Social cryptoamnesia

Question 3

What is the snowball effect?

Answer 3

A term that explains how small actions at the beginning can cause bigger actions which ultimately results in a huge change

Question 4

What is social cryptoamnesia?

Answer 4

When people are aware that social change has occurred in a society, but have no memory of the origin of the change

Question 5

How did Asch’s study highlight social change?

Answer 5

• Dissenter variation
• The dissenter broke the power of majority, which encouraged others to do likewise
• A different approach is where environmental and health campaigns use NSI to appeal to the general public

Question 6

Real world application - AO3 ✅

Answer 6

• Nolan et al. (2008) hung messages on front doors of houses in San Diego, California
• The experimental condition made a message with reference to other people saving energy, the control condition made a message to save energy but made no reference to other people
• A significant decrease is energy was seen in the experimental condition, showing that social change can occur through NSI

Question 7

Social change is a slow process - AO3 ❌

Answer 7

• It had taken decades for attitudes against drink driving and smoking to shift
• Groups are more likely to maintain the status quo rather than engage in social change
• The potential for minority to change views is limited as they are often seen as deviant by the majority
• The focus of the majority would be on the source of the message, rather than the message itself
• Minority influence is therefore more latent than direct

Question 8

Resisting social change even when necessary - AO3 ❌

Answer 8

• Bashir et al. (2013) investigated why people resist social change so often, even when it’s recognised as necessary
  -Participants less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways because they didn’t want to be associated with the negative stereotypes, as the same was said for feminists
• Researchers advice is to avoid behaving in ways that might be off putting to the majority
• Limitation as it shows the effect of in group and out group, so they may not pay attention to the message that minorities actually want to achieve