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 as result of social influence, conformity, obedience & minority influence

Question 2

What are the steps of social change in minority influence?

Answer 2

1) drawing attention (marches, protest)
2) consistency (same message over years)
3) Deeper processing (people think deeply about the status quo)
4) augmentation principle (freedom riders beaten)
5) snowball effect- slow conversion of a few people who then influence others (MLK got attention of US government)
6) social cryptomnesia - forgetting how new social norms were adopted and who they came from (south is a different place but people have no memory of the change)

Question 3

What are the lessons from conformity research?

Answer 3

• Asch’s research- dissent has potential to lead to social change e.g. confederate gave correct answers which broke power of majority
• environmental & health campaigns exploit conformity processes by appealing to NSI e.g. normative messages such as ‘bin it others do it’
  » provide information about what other people are doing (majority)
• those who go against norm risk rejection

Question 4

What are the lessons from obedience research?

Answer 4

• Milgram - importance of disobedient role models e.g. confederate refused to give shock > obedience levels in naïve p’s decreased
• Zimbardo> obedience can create social change through the process of gradual commitment
  once a small instruction is obeyed= difficult to resist bigger one so people ‘drift’ into new behaviour

Question 5

What is a strength of social influence research?

Answer 5

• research support for normative influences
• Nolan et al > aimed to see if they could change peoples energy use habits
• researchers hung messages on front doors of houses in San Diego every week for a month
• 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
• shows conformity (majority influence) can lead to social change > increased validity

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 that people convert views because they think deeply about the minorities view
• 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 & hard about their arguments and reasoning
• central element of MI challenged > casts doubt on its validity as explanation for social change

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 another limitation of social influence research?

Answer 8

• people can still resist social change
• 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 as it can be off putting to outsider