Social Influence - Social Change

Question 1

The process of minority influence on social change

Answer 1

1. Drawing attention to an issue e.g. marching, campaigning etc.
2. Consistency and flexibility – keeping the same message over time, but being willing to compromise so as to not appear dogmatic.
3. Deeper processing of the issue – people begin to think about the minority opinion more deeply.
4. Augmentation principle – the minority demonstrates commitment through sacrificing something e.g. freedom, reputation, their own property.
5. Snowball effect – more and more people become persuaded by the message.
6. Social cryptomnesia, conformity/obedience – people have a memory that change has occurred but not how it happened. People conform to the new majority position, or if a new law is put into place, they obey the new law.

Question 2

Example - Suffragettes

Answer 2

• A relatively small group of suffragettes argued strongly for the initially unpopular view that women should be allowed to vote. The hard work of the suffragettes, combined with the justice of their case, finally led the majority to accept their point of view.
• Criticisms of Moscovici - only used females and also lab experiments. Showed that minorities can influence majority but not all the time - depends on many factors (behaviour style etc)

Question 3

Definitions of Social Change Key Words

Answer 3

• Social Change - Any process in which the general structure or character of society is altered
• Consistency - a factor of minority influence in which a belief is shared and retained over time
• Flexibility - When an ideology accommodates for counterarguments and understands other perspectives
• Augmentation principle - The attributional tendency to assign greater influence to a particular cause or rationale of behaviour if there are other factors present that normally would produce a different outcome
• Drawing attention - when something is given time and is noticed
• Deeper processing - When a more meaningful analysis of events is conducted and they are linked to previous events
• Snowball effect - When something of small significance is built upon and grow into something bigger
• Social cryptomnesia - cognitive bias experienced by whole cultures following social change

Question 4

Social Change - Majority influence

Answer 4

• Conformity – campaigns are based on NSI. Social change occurs by drawing attention to what the majority is actually doing. This social change is similar to the dissent shown in Asch’s variation
• Obedience – campaigns are based on gradual commitment – getting people to agree to something small which builds up to something bigger. People therefore ‘drift’ into a new behaviour

Question 5

Evaluation of Social Change - Weaknesses

Answer 5

1. Social changes through minority influence happen slowly when they do happen; for example, it has taken decades for attitudes towards smoking to shift - some researchers argue that the effects of minority influence are likely to be indirect because the the majority is influenced only on matters related to an issue at hand, and not central to the issue itself, and delayed because the effects may not have seen for some time
   - This suggests that the effects are fragile and so minority influence’s role in social change is very limited
2. Moscovici argues that minority and majority influence involve different cognitive processes, with minority influence causing individuals to think more deeply about an issue than majority influence. But this may not be the case; other researchers have found evidence that majorities cause deeper processing, and this is because we like to believe that others share our views and think in the same ways as us, and when we find that a majority believes something different, then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning.
   - Therefore, a central element of the process of minority influence has been challenged and may be incorrect; consequently, this casts doubt on the validity of the explanation of social change

Question 6

Evaluation of Social Change - Weaknesses 2

Answer 6

3. The potential for minorities to influence social change is often limited because they are seen as ‘deviant’ in the eyes of the majority; members of the majority may avoid aligning themselves with the minority position because they do not want to seem deviant themselves, with researchers finding that participants were less likely to behave environmentally friendly because they did not want to be associated with stereotypical and minority ‘environmentalists’, rating them and feminists in negative ways such as calling them ‘tree huggers’ and ‘men haters’
   - The messages of the minority would then have very little impact because the focus of the majority’s attention would be the source of the messages (deviant minority) rather than the message itself, and so in trying to bring about social change, minorities face the double challenge of avoiding being portrayed as deviants and also making people directly embrace their position
   - This suggests the effects are fragile and minority influence’s role in social change is very limited, but also that flexibility is vitally important in social change
4. Explanations of how social influence leads to social change draws heavily on the studies of Moscovici, Asch and Milgram; there are however a range of limitations with these studies, most notably the use of artificial tasks for Moscovici and Asch, where demand characteristics may have played a role for Asch because participants could have guessed that the confederates weren’t true participants due to the repeated trials and therefore may have conformed more than they would in a real situation
   - This therefore casts doubt on the validity of the explanations and so suggest that from the research we can’t strongly support the role of these explanations on social change

Question 7

Evaluation of Social Change - Strengths and Applications

Answer 7

1. Research has supported the role of social influences processes in social change - some researchers investigated whether social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community, hanging notes on the doors of San Diego houses every week for a month, with the key message being most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had signs asking them to save energy, giving no reference to other people’s behaviour. They found a significant decrease in energy usage in the first group.
   - This suggests that conformity can lead to social change through normative social influence and therefore that the theory is valid
2. Social change campaigns based on NSI may have unintended consequences - the widespread nature of the approach means that those whose behaviour is more desirable than the norm will also receive the message, and for those individuals who already engage in constructive behaviour being advocated (e.g. drinking less than the norm), a normative message can be a spur to engaging in more destructive behaviour. Researchers have found evidence of that they refer to as the boomerang effect, where a campaign was effective in getting heavy energy users to use less electricity, but is also caused those who had used less than the norm to increase their usage
   - This suggests that the theory is valid in that NSI leads to social change, but that these processes should be used with caution because of the potential negative consequences