Social Change

Question 1

What is social change?

Answer 1

• The power that persuasive groups possess in order to bring about social change is their ability to organise, educate and mobilise support for their cause.
• When individuals band together and form an organisation to focus their collective power, social change can be the result.
  E.g. the suffragettes.

Question 2

When a majority changes their views to match a minority, they must go through a conversion process. According to Moscovici, what are the steps of this?

Answer 2

1.) Drawing attention to an issue
2.) Consistency of position
3.) Deeper processing
4.) The augmentation principle
5.) The snowball effect
6.) Social cryptomnesia

Question 3

What is the strengths in the evaluation of the role of social influence processes in making social change occur?

Answer 3

Strengths:
- Nolan et al —> hung messages on the front door of houses every week for a month for the key message that the residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. Some residents had different messages that told them to just save energy usage as a control. They found significant decreases in energy usage in the first group compared to second.
- Nemeth —> claims that social change is due to the type of thinking minorities inspire. When people consider minority arguments, they engage in divergent thinking which is a broader way of thinking in which the thinker actively searches for information and weighs up their options, leading to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues ( deeper processing) .

Question 4

What is the limitations in the evaluation of the role of social influence processes in making social change occur?

Answer 4

• Foxcroft et al —> 70 studies where the social norms approach was used to reduce students alcohol use, found only a small reduction in drinking quality and no effect on the frequency of—> so using normative influence does not always produce long term social change.
• Mackies study