social influence & social change

Question 1

social change

Answer 1

• occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things e.g., women’s suffrage, gay rights

Question 2

social change - lesson from conformity research

Answer 2

• Asch’s research highlighted the importance of dissent in a variation, where the confederates gave the correct answer.
• this broke the power of the majority encouraging others to dissent
• such dissent has the power to lead to social change
• environmental & health campaigns exploit conformity process by appealing to NSI e.g., reducing litter by printing messages such as ‘bin it-others do’
• social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing

Question 3

social change - lessons from obedience research

Answer 3

• Milgram’s research demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models
• in the variation where the confederate teacher refused to give the learner shocks, obedience rates in real ppts. reduced
• Zimbardo (2007) suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through ‘gradual commitment’ (once a small instruction is obeyed, resisting bigger ones becomes harder. people ‘drift’ into a new kind of behaviour)

Question 4

social change - special role of minority influence

Answer 4

African-American civil rights movement 1950’s and 1960’s
1. drawing attention through social proof - civil rights marches of this period drew attention to the situation by providing social proof on the problem (black separation)
2. consistency - many marches & many people partaking. they were a minority of the American pop. but displayed consistency of message & intent
3. deeper processing of the issue - this attention meant that many people who had simply accepted the status quo began to think of the unjustness

Question 5

continued

Answer 5

4. augmentation principle - individuals risked their lives in a n. of situations e.g. ‘freedom riders’
5. snowball effect - in 1964 the US Civil Rights Act was passed which presented a change from majority to minority
6. social cryptomnesia - people have a memory that change occurred but cannot recall how. the change is not doubted (south is now a diff. place) but some have no memory of the events above which led to that change