social change

Question 1

what is meant by social change?

Answer 1

when whole societies change. this means societies adopt new attitudes, beliefs or behaviours

e.g. suffragettes

Question 2

who starts social change?

Answer 2

• someone who is disobedient, not conforming and resists social influence
• don’t have authoritarian personality
• less compliant (no desire to fit in, less influence by NSI)
• have HILOC

Question 3

what is meant by a campaigner?

Answer 3

someone who promotes a specific course, issue or change, often through organised efforts

e.g. rosa parks

Question 4

what does this minority do to get change?

Answer 4

• draw attention e.g. protesting
• need to be consistent over time
  :- deeper processing/ thinking

Question 5

what is meant by the snowball effect?

Answer 5

minority influence leads to the snowball effect. minority slowly changes majority opinion, gathers momentum and increases support

Question 6

how does majority influence leads to social change?

Answer 6

conformity > social change
through:
- NSI : people want to be accepted
- ISI : people genuinely change their minds

Question 7

five processes in social influence

Answer 7

• consistency
• flexibility
• NSI
• ISI
• commitment

Question 8

disobedience as part of social change

Answer 8

• easier when social support is true (evidence from Milgram) links to both minority and majority influence
  minority - campaigners have supporters
  majority - campaigners act to break unanimity

Question 9

people being obedient influences social change

Answer 9

when social change occurs, rules/laws change. people obey new rules/laws -> further social change

e.g. smoking ban

Question 10

one strength

Answer 10

P: moscovici’s findings support the idea that consistency is a crucial factor. E: he researched to explore minority influence as a mechanism of social change. when minority consistently mislabelled the slides green, 8% of pts agreed. when minority responses were inconsistent agreement fell to 1.25%. T: this suggests that there’s value in understanding minority influence as part of social change.

Question 11

one limitation

Answer 11

P: research into minority influence lacks real world applications. E: the artificial nature of the tasks like colour identification makes it challenging to generalise these findings to real life scenarios. Also, actual instances of minority influence often involves disparities in power and status between groups. T: this means that the external validity of minority influence studies is decreased because it is difficult to replicate in lab conditions therefore making them less useful in understanding real life social change

Question 12

one strength

Answer 12

P: Nolan’s study provides evidence supporting NSI as a catalyst for social change. E: he found that the group exposed to the social comparison message used less energy over a month as they showed they wanted to fit in/be accepted. T: this shows that conformity through NSI can contribute to social change.