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

Research support for normative influences

Answer 5

Nolan- aimed to see if they could change peoples energy habits
-hung messages on front doors of house
-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 2nd

Question 6

Limitation is that deeper processing may not play a role in how minority bring about social change . why?

Answer 6

Mackie - majority influence 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

Explain 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
-did not want to be associated with stereotypical & minority
‘environmentalists’
-describe them in negative ways ( tree-huggers)
-MI not always positive