Social Influence- Process In Social Change

Question 1

Social change through minority influence-

Stages of social change  through minority influence: 
1️⃣-🔥🔥🔥👀👀👀
2️⃣-💭⚔ 
3️⃣-🕸🕸
4️⃣-💉☠
5️⃣-❄️☃

Answer 1

1️⃣-drawing attention to the issue
(Difference in view creates a conflict that majority are motivated to reduce)

2️⃣-Cognitive Conflict
(Makes majority group members think more deeply about issues being challenged)

3️⃣-Consistency of position

4️⃣-Augmentation Principle
(if a minority is willing to suffer for views = viewed more committed = taken more seriously)

5️⃣-Snowball effect
(Initial relatively small effect from minority which then spreads more widely with more people until reaching a tipping point leading to wide-scale social change

Question 2

Social change through majority influence

What did Perkins and Berkowitz 1986 suggest?

Answer 2

If people perceive something to be the norm, they tend to alter their behaviour to for that norm

Question 3

Social norms intervention definition?

How is this achieved?

Answer 3

Attempt to correct misperceptions of the normative behaviour of peers in an attempt to change the risky behaviour of the target population

By advertising actual norms in order to get people to make their behaviour more in line with the behaviour of their peers.

Question 4

“Most of us don’t drink and drive”

An intitial survey found that while only 20.4% of Montana young adults reported driving within 1 hour of alcohol consumption
However 92% of respondent thought majority of their peers had done so.

What did the ad saying “4 out of 5 Montana young adults don’t drink and drive”?

Answer 4

Assumptions fell by 13.7%

Question 5

Evaluation-
Social change through minority influence was very gradual

Why is this case?

Answer 5

Human beings have a strong tendency to conform to majority position

Question 6

Influence of minority creates

Answer 6

The potential for change rather than actual change

Question 7

Evaluation-
Being perceived as “deviant” limits the influence of minorities

Why does minority’s have little impact?

Answer 7

The focus of the majority attention would be in the source of the message (deviant minority) rather than the message itself.

Question 8

Evaluation-
Limitations of the social norms approach

Dejong et al. (2009) found that that students from the 14 different college sits did not show lower perceptions of student drinking levels and never showed lower self-reported alcohol consumption

Answer 8

Dejong et al. (2009)