The Role Of Social Influence Processes In Social Change

Question 1

Social change

Answer 1

This occurs when whole societies adopt new attitudes and behaviours.

Question 2

What are the different ways to achieve social change?

Answer 2

• drawing attention to an issue
• consistency
• flexibility
• snowball effect

Question 3

Drawing attention to an issue

Answer 3

Drawing the majorities attention to the issue. If the views are different to the majority then it creates conflict that they are motivated to reduce.

Question 4

What is an example of drawing attention to an issue?

Answer 4

The suffragettes protested to draw attention to the fact that women were denied the same voting rights as men.

Question 5

Consistency

Answer 5

Minorities are most likely to achieve social change if they are consistent. This may be an agreement between all the people in the minority (synchronic consistency - all saying the same thing or consistency over time diachronic consistency). This leads to the majority to doubt themselves which can lead to behaviour change.

Question 6

What is an example of consistency?

Answer 6

The suffragettes all consistently made the same argument over time.

Question 7

Flexibility

Answer 7

Nemeth argues that members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their POV and accept reasonable counter arguments. A minority may be more likely to show social change if they show flexibility and a willingness to compromise.

Question 8

What is an example of flexibility?

Answer 8

Most women’s suffrage organisations chose to suspend their activities during WW1 to support the war effort.

Question 9

The snowball effect

Answer 9

Minority influence has a relatively small effect but this grows and grows it reaches a tipping point at which it leads to a wide scale social change.

Question 10

Support for the role of consistency in social change comes from Moscovici (1969)

Answer 10

E: when a minority of confederates consistently said blue slides were green (the incorrect answer) they had a larger influence over the majority group of participants (8.42%) than when the confederates were inconsistent (1.25%)
L: suggests minorities in society have more chance of social change when they are consistent.

Question 11

One problem with understanding the role of minority influence in social change is that our understanding is based on research that is low in ecological validity

Answer 11

E: viewed as an artificial setting because it doesn’t represent real life.
E: real minority groups are usually arguing in favour for important social issues rather than more trivial tasks such as colour judgement
L: findings may not generalise to real life minority influence social situations.