Social Influence : The Role of Social Influence Processes in Social Change Flashcards
what are The steps in how minority influence creates social change
- Drawing attention to the issue.
Highlighting a concern - Consistency of position
Displaying a unswerving message and intent - Deeper processing
Many people who simply accept the status quo start thinking further - The augmentation principle
Minorities take risks to further the cause - The snowball effect
People switch from a majority position to a minority one - Social cryptomnesia occurs
People have a memory that change has occurred but some people have no memory of the events leading to that change
What does it mean to draw attention ?
Drawing attention through
social proof – the civil rights marches drew attention to the social problem by providing social proof.
What is consistency?
the motive and message transmitted from these
minority groups was resolute, certain and coherent.
What is deeper processing?
The attention meant that
people who have simply accepted the status quo began to think about the injustice of it. There was a realisation that the situation was unfair.
What is the augmentation principle ?
there were many circumstances where people risked their lives for this cause.
E.G. The ‘Freedom Riders’ (mixed racial groups) would sit on buses (anywhere) to challenge the segregation. Many were beaten and there were incidents of mob violence following these campaigns.
What is snowballing effect?
the civil rights reform can be divided
into several phases, each beginning with isolated, small-scale protests and ultimately resulting in the emergence of new, more militant movements, leaders, and organizations.
What is social cryptomenisa ?
people have changed their opinion, but they cannot remember how or when it happened.
What are lessons from conformity ? By Asch?
have found that a dissenter in the majority group will likely lead to a drop in conformity.
Lessons from conformity research
Dissenters make social change more likely
• Asch’s research demonstrated that when one confederate always gave the correct answer, this broke the power of the majority – this enabled others to dissent. This demonstrates the potential for social change
AND
Majority influence and normative social influence
• Environmental and health campaigners exploit conformity by appealing to NSI. They provide information about what others are doing. Social change is encouraged by drawing attention to the majority’s behaviour
Lessons from obedience research
Disobedient models make social change more likely
• Milgram’s research demonstrated the importance of disobedient role models. In his variation. When one confederate refused to give shocks, the rate of obedience in genuine pps dropped significantly
AND
Gradual commitment leads to ‘drift’
• Zimbardo (2007) suggested how obedience can be used to create social change – once a smaller commitment has been made it becomes more difficult to resist a bigger one. People ‘drift’ into a new kind of behaviour
1 Evaluation of Social Change
The theory of the snowball effect helps us to understand how minority and majority influence work together to bring about social change. According to Moscovici, minority and majority influences are thought to work through different processes. Minority influence involves individuals being persuaded away from the majority, and therefore is more likely to result in internalisation, whereas majority influence is more
associated with normative social influence and compliance, in other words, changing your behaviour and attitudes to fit in. This means that in the early stages of social change we can expect to see true conversion as members of the majority are genuinely persuaded away from their former view or behaviour.
2 Evaluation of Social Change
There is research evidence to support the view that an unwillingness to associate with the negative minority can slow down
the process of social change. Bashir et al
(2013) found that participants were less
likely to behave in environmentally friendly
ways because they did not want to be associated
with stereotypical and minority ‘environmentalists’.
What is meant by social change?
Social change refers to the ways in which a society (rather than an individual) develops over time to replace beliefs, attitudes and behaviour with new norms and expectations.
