social influence and social change

Question 1

what is social influence?

Answer 1

• the process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours
• this includes conformity, obedience and minority influence

Question 2

what is social change?

Answer 2

• when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes and way of doing things
• examples include accepting that the earth orbits the sun, women’s suffrage, gay rights and environmental issues

Question 3

what is the 6-step process of how minority social influence creates social change?

Answer 3

1. drawing attention through social proof
2. consistency
3. deeper processing of the issue
4. the augmentation principle
5. the snowball effect
6. social cryptomnesia

Question 4

what is an example of drawing attention through social proof?

Answer 4

• in the 1950s, black and white segregation applied to all parts of america
• there were black neighbourhoods, and, in southern states of america, places such as schools were exclusive to white people
• the civil rights marches of this period drew attention to this situation, providing social proof of the situation

Question 5

what is an example consistency in social change?

Answer 5

• civil rights activists who represented a minority of the american population remained consistent in their position
• millions of people took part in many marches over several years, always presenting the same non-aggressive messages

Question 6

what does deeper processing of the issue mean?

Answer 6

the activism meant that many people who had simply accepted the status quo began to think deeply about the unjustness of it

Question 7

what is an example of the augmentation principle in social change?

Answer 7

• individuals risked their lives numerous times
• ‘freedom riders’ were mixed ethnic groups who boarded buses in the south, challenging racial segregation of transport
• many freedom riders were beaten
• this person risk indicates a strong belief and reinforces their message

Question 8

what is an example of the snowball effect in social change?

Answer 8

• activists (eg. martin luther king) gradually got the attention of the US government
• more and more people began to back the minority position
• in 1964, the US civil rights act prohibited discrimination, marking a change from minority to majority support for civil rights

Question 9

what is social cryptomnesia?

Answer 9

• people have a memory that change has occurred but don’t remember how it happened
• social change clearly did come about so the south is quite a different place now, but some people have no memory (cryptoamnesia) of the events that led to that change

Question 10

what lessons can be learnt from asch’s conformity research?

Answer 10

• asch highlighted the importance of dissent in one of his variations in which one confederate gave correct answers throughout the procedure
• this broke the power of the majority, encouraging others to do likewise
• such dissent has the potential to lead to social change

Question 11

how does NSI affect environmental and health campaigns?

Answer 11

• they provide information about what other people are doing
  > eg. reducing litter by printing ‘bin it - others do’ on bins, preventing young people from taking up smoking by telling them that most other young people do not smoke
• therefore, social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing

Question 12

what lessons can be learnt from milgram’s obedience research

Answer 12

• milgram’s research demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models
• in a variation where a confederate Teacher refuses to give shocks to the Learner, the rate of obedient in the genuine participants plummeted

Question 13

what did zimbardo (2007) suggest about obedience and social change

Answer 13

• he suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment
• once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one
• people essentially ‘drift’ into a new kind of behaviour

Question 14

evaluation: research support for normative influences - nolan et al. (2008)

Answer 14

• aimed to see if they could change people’s energy use habits
• they hung messages on the front doors of houses in san diego, california every week for a month, where the key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage
• as a control, some residents had a different message that asked them to save energy but made no reference to other people’s behaviour
• there was a significant decrease in energy usage in the first group compared to the second
• this shows how conformity can lead to social change through NSI

Question 15

evaluation: people’s behaviour is not always changed through exposing them to social norms (foxcroft et al. 2015)

Answer 15

• reviewed social norms interventions
• this review included 70 studies where the social norms approach was used to reduce student alcohol use
• the researchers found only a small reduction in drinking quantity and no effect on drinking frequency
• therefore, NSI may not always produce long-term social change

Question 16

evaluation: explanation for how minority influence brings about social change (nemeth 2009)

Answer 16

• claims social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire
• when people consider minority arguments, they engage in divergent thinking
• this type of thinking is broad rather than narrow; the thinker actively searches for information and weighs up more options
• nemeth argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues
• therefore, dissenting minorities are valuable because they stimulate new ideas and open minds a way that majorities cannot

Question 17

evaluation: deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change (mackie 1987)

Answer 17

• majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their views
• this is because we like to believe that other people share our views and think in the same way as us
• when we find that a majority believes something different, we are forced to think about their arguments and reasoning
• this means that a central element of minority research has been challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change

Question 18

evaluation: barriers to social change (basir et al. 2013)

Answer 18

• ps were less likely to behave in an environmentally-friendly way because they did not want to be associated with stereotypical and minority ‘environmentalists’
• they described environmental activists in negative ways (eg. ‘tree-huggers’)
• despite this resistance, the researchers were still able to suggest ways in which minorities can overcome barriers to social change
• while there is a lot of practical advice useful to a minority wanting to influence majority opinion or behaviour, the truth is that people still resist social change