social change Flashcards
what are the six stages of social change through minority influence
- attention - through social proof
- consistency
- deep processing
- augmentation principle
- snowball effect - spread message widely to as many people as they can
- social cryptoamnesia
strength of social change
P - minority influence explains social change
E - nemeth 2009 explained that deeper thinking caused by minorities plays an important role. people who consider the minority view engage in boarder thinking and search for information and weigh up their options. nemeth suggests this leads to more creative solutions to social problems
E - this means that dissenting minorities are valuable as they stimulate new ideas and open minds
L- it can be argued that social influence processes play an important role in social change
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P - support for normative social influence in social change
E - nolan et al 2008 places messages on doors in californian town for a month. the message suggested either that most residents were trying to reduce energy usage or asked residents to save energy without reference to what other people were doing. the greatest decrease in energy usage was seen in households receiving the message referring to the behaviour of majority
E- this shows that majority influence can led to social change through normative social influence
L- therefore, it can be argued that social influence processes play a vital role in social change
describe social change ao1
Social change, where societies adopt new attitudes, beliefs and behaviour, is brought about by a range of social influence processes. Minority influence contributes to social change through several stages as seen exemplified by the American Civil Rights and Suffragette Movements. Research shows that the minority must first draw attention to their cause to provide social proof that there is a need to change. Having done this, the minority needs to present a consistent message in a way that makes the majority think more deeply about the issue. Individuals in the minority augment and strengthen the message by putting themselves at risk which demonstrates their commitment. One by one, the minority converts people from the majority to the minority view. The rate of conversion snowballs so that eventually, the minority becomes the new majority view and eventually the majority does not recall the events that led to this change. This is known as cryptoamnesia.
limitation to social change
P - deeper processing may not be specific to minority influence
E- mackie argues that when individuals hold a minority view, they not the majority process information more deeply. this is bc individuals in the minority try to weigh up why so many others hold an alternative view
E - this means that the role of deeper processing in social change is not specific to minority influence
L- therefore, weakens the role of social influence processes in social change
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P - done using artifical task
E- e.g. moscovici used a simple colour identification task to investigate consistency as a factor of minority influence
E - this is an important limitation as the task does not do justice to minorities attempting to change the behaviour of the majority in real life, with the outcomes being vastly more important. this means that these studies lack external validity and are consequently limited in explaining real life minority influence
P - social influence processes may be complicated by people’es resistance to social change
E - bashir et al 2013 showed how difficult it is for the minority to change the views of the majority. e.g. the researchers found that ppl often fail to behave in environmentally-friendly ways because they view ‘environmentalists’ in negative ways and do not want to be associated with such groups
E - this means that there are additional factors which affect the success of minority influence
L- therefore, the role of social, influence processes in social change is more complicated than research suggests
