Social influence and social change

Question 1

What is social change?

Answer 1

The process by which minorities change the attitudes of whole societies so that new social norms are created.

Question 2

What are the steps of social change?

Answer 2

1) drawing attention
2) consistency
3) Deeper processing
4) augumentation principle
5) snowball effect- slow conversion of a few people who then influence others, ( conversion happens at a faster rate)
6) social cryptomesia - forgetting how new social norms were adopted and who they came from

Question 3

Lessons from conformity research

Answer 3

Asch’s research- dissent has potential to lead to social change

environmental & health campaigns exploit conformity processes by appealing to NSI
» provide information about what other people are doing (majority)
-those who go against norm risk rejection

Question 4

Lessons from obedience research

Answer 4

Milgram - importance of disobedient role models e.g. C refuses to give shock obedience levels in naïve p’s decreased

Zimbardo- obedience can create social change through the process of gradual commitment
small instruction obeyed= difficult to resist bigger one ‘drift’ into new behaviour

Question 5

What research support is there for normative influences?

Answer 5

Nolan- aimed to see if they could change peoples energy habits
-hung messages on front doors of houses
-key message was that most residents were trying to reduce energy levels
Control- had messages that asked them to just save energy
-Significant decrease in energy from first group than control group

Question 6

What is a limitation of minority influence bringing about social change?

Answer 6

• deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change
• Mackie disagrees & presents evidence that it is majority influence that creates deeper processing if you do not share their views
• When we find a majority believes something different we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning
• central element of MI challenged > casts doubt on its validity

Question 7

What can you also use to evaluate how social influence leads to social change?

Answer 7

Methodological issues of Milgram, Asch and Moscovici study

Question 8

What is the limitation that people still resist social change?

Answer 8

• Bashir et al- found that p’s were less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways as they did not want to be associated with stereotypical & minority
  ‘environmentalists’
• described them in negative ways (tree-huggers)
• MI not always positive