Social influence and Social change Flashcards
What is social change?
This occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things.
E.g. gay rights and environmental issues.
What are the 6 lessons from minority influence?
- Drawing attention
- Consistency
- Deeper processing
- The augmentation principle
- The snowball effect
- Social cryptomnesia
What is 1) drawing attention?
In the 1950s, black and white segregation applied to all parts of America.
There were black neighbourhoods, in the southern states of America, certain schools, restaurants were exclusive to whites.
The civil rights marches of this period drew attention to this situation, providing social proof of the problem.
What is 2) Consistency?
Civil rights activists represented a minority of the American population, but their position remained consistent.
Millions of people took part in many marches over several years, always presenting the same non-aggressive messages.
What is 3) Deeper processing of the issue?
The activism meant that many people who had simply accepted the status quo began to think deeply about the unjustness of it.
What is 4) the augmentation principle?
Individuals risked their lives numerous times.
For example the
‘freedom riders’ were mixed ethnic groups who boarded buses in the south, challenging racial segregation of transport. Many freedom riders were beaten.
This personal risk indicates a strong beliet and reinforces (or augments) their message.
What is 5) the snowball effect?
Activists (e.g. Martin Luther King) gradually got the attention of the US government. More and more people backed the minority position.
In 1964 the US Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination, marking a change from minority to majority support for civil rights.
What is 6) social cryptomnesia?
(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.
What lessons did conformity research teach?
Unanimity/dissent of a minority has the potential to ultimately lead to social change.
What approach to environmental and healthcare campaigns use?
- They exploit NSI, by providing examples of what other people are doing.
- Environmental: reducing litter by writing “bin the litter, others do” on bins.
- Healthcare: Prevent young people from smoking by telling them most other people do not smoke.
In other words social change is encouraged by what the majority is actually doing.
What lessons did we learn from Obedience research?
- Milgram clearly demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models.
- in the variation where a confederate teacher refused to shock the learner, the rate of obedience in the real participants decreases.
What did Zimbardo say about how obedience can be used to create social change?
Through the process of gradual commitment.
Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes harder to resist a bigger one.
People essentially drift into a new kind of behaviour.
One strength is that research has shown that social influence processes based on NSI do work.
Jessica Nolan (2008) aimed to see if they could change peoples energy-use habits. The researchers hung messages on the front doors of houses in San Diego, California every week for one month.
The key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. 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. There were significant decreases in energy usage in the first group compared to the second.
This shows that conformity (majority influence) can lead to social change through the operation of normative social influence, i.e. it is a valid explanation.
COUNTERPOINT : However some studies show that people’s behaviour is not always changed through exposing them to social norms.
David Foxcroft (2015) reviewed social norms interventions as part of the gold standard’ Cochrane Collaboration. 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 it seems that using normative influence does not always
produce long-term social change.
Another strength is that psychologists can explain how minority influence brings about social change.
Charlan Nemeth (2009) 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, in which 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.
This shows why dissenting minorities are valuable - they stimulate new
ideas and open minds in a way that majorities cannot.
One limitation is that deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change.
Some people are supposedly converted because they think more deeply about the minority’s views. Diane 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 ways as us. When we find that a majority believes something different, then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning.
This means that a central element of minority influence has been challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change.
