social influence and social change Flashcards
define social influence
the process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours → includes conformity, obedience and minority influence
define social change
this occurs when whole societies, rather rather than just individuals adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things
→ examples include accepting that the Earth orbits the sun, women’s suffrage, gay rights and environmental issues
steps of social change
ADCASS
→ drawing Attention
→ Deeper processing
→ Consistency
→ Augmentation principal
→ Snowball effect
→ Social cryptomnesia
what is drawing attention (to an issue)
through social proof → protests or celebrity influence
→→ e.g. civil rights marches - in the 1950s in America, black separation applied to all parts of America. there were black neighbourhoods and, in the Southern states of America places such as schools and restaurants were exclusive to white. the civil right marches of this period drew attention to the situation by providing social proof of the problem
what is deeper processing
go against status quo and think about injustice
→ the activism / attention of it means that individuals who just accepted the status quo begin to think deeper about the unjustness of it
what is consistency of position
minorities tend to be more influential when consistent
→ same clear message and intent
→ e.g. even though they were a minority of the American population, the civil rights activists displayed consistency of message and intent
what is the Augmentation Principal
→ minority is willing to suffer / risk their lives
→ more committed to their cause
→ taken more seriously
→ e.g. ‘Freedom rider’ - mixed racial groups who got onto buses in Southern states of America to challenge the separate seating for black people → many were beaten and suffered mob violence
what is the snowball effect
→ more people consider the issue (it spreads)
→ e.g. Civil rights activists such as MLK gradually got the attention of the US government and in 1964 the US civil Right Act was passed, which prohibited discrimination → represents a change from minority to majority support for civil rights
what is social cryptomnesia
people have a memory that change occurred but don’t remember how it happened
→ the south is quite a different place now but some people have no memory of the events above that led to that change
→ forget it was ever an issue
lessons for conformity research
normative social influence can lead to social change by drawing attention to what the majority is doing
lessons from obedience research
disobedient role modeks
gradual commitment is how obedience can lead to change
AO3 - research support for normative influences
→ Nolan et al (2008) investigated whether social influence processes led to a reductio in nerge consumption in a community
→ they hung messages of the front doors of houses in San Diego every week for one moth
→ the key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage and as a control some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy but made no reference to other people’s behaviour
→ Nolan et al found significant decreases in energy usage in the first group
→→ this is a strength because it shows that conformity can lead to social change through the operation of normative social influence
minority influence is only indirectly effective
→ social change happens slowly when they happen at all
→ e.g. it has taken decade for attitudes against drink-driving and smoking to shift
→ Charles Nemeth (1986) argues that the effects of minority influence are likely to be mostly indirect and delayed
→ they are indirect because the majoirt is influenced on matters only reated to the issue at hand, and not the central issue itself - they are delayed because the effects may not be seen for some time
→ this is a limitation of using minority influence to explain social change because it shows that its effects are fragile and its role in social influence is very limited
role of deeper procession
→ Moscovici’s conversion explanation of minority influence argues that minority and majority influence involves different cognitive processes
→ minority influence causes individuals to think more deeply about an issues than majority influence (conformity)
→ Mackie (1987) disagrees and presents evidence that it is 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 the majority believes sometime different, then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning
→ this means that a central element of the process of minority influence has been challenged and may be incorrect, casting doubts on the validity of Moscovici’s theory
barriers to social change
→ Bashir et al (2013) investigated why people so often resist social change, even when they agree that it is necessary
→ for example the researcher found that their pps were less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways because they did not want to be associated with stereotypical and minority ‘environmentalists’
→ they rather environmnental activists and feminists in negative ways describe them as ‘tree huggers’ and ‘man haters’
→ the researchers’ advice to minorities hoping to create social change is to avoid behaving in ways that reinforce the stereotypes because they will always be off-putting to the majority they want to influence