Social Psychology: topic 11 ‘the role of social influence processes in social change’

Question 1

What is social change?

Answer 1

• this occurs when whole societies, rather than just individual, adopt new attitudes and behaviours
• most major social movements are started by individuals or small groups (minorities) who aim to persuade the majority in society to support their cause through using a number of different methods

Question 2

What is drawing attention to an issue?

Answer 2

• minorities might behind the process of social change by drawing the majority’s attention to an issue
• if the views are expressed by the minority are different to those of the minority, this creates a conflict that they are motivated to reduce
• for example the suffragettes protested to draw attention to the fact that woman are denied the same voting rights as men
• in the modern day, the media can be used to draw attention to an issue (eg adverts, leaflets or online campaigns)

Question 3

What is consistency?

Answer 3

• it is argued that minorities are most likely to achieve social change if they are consistent
• this might be agreement between people in the minority group (synchronic consistency: saying the same thing for some time)
• this leads the majority group to doubt themselves which can lead to behaviour change
• for example the suffragettes all consistently made the same argument over time

Question 4

What is the snowball effect?

Answer 4

• minority influence initially has a relatively small effect but this then grows and grows as more people in society consider the issues being promoted, until it reaches a ‘tipping point’ at which point it leads to a wide scale social change
• this can then be cemented with the passing of laws to ensure everyone obeys society’s new approach to the issues