social change

• when societies adopt new attitudes, beliefs or behaviours,
• minority groups are successful when showing consistency, commitment and flexibility,
• consistency- sychronic consistency (when members of the minority group all give the same message), diachronic consistency- (if the members of the minority group repeat the same message over time)
• commitment- when members of the minority group are willing to suffer for their views but still hold them, members of the majority will take the minority and their ideas seriously, as people consider the causes of behaviour
• augmentation principle within commitment- suggests that if someone performs an action despite costs and risks, the underlying motive or attribute driving that action is particularly strong
• while flexibility and consistency seem to contradict each other, a balance between these two is needed to appear reasonable and open-minded, as well as having a clear, thought-out, stable opinion
• moscovici- (1969) using a consistent minority, perception test for pps, showed pps 36 different slides all of blue shades to groups of 4 real participants and 2 confederates, if the confederate minority consistently claimed every slide was green, participants agreed on 8% of the trials but only on 1% when the minority group were inconsistent. However, even in the consistent condition, 68% of participants never conformed to the minority, this may mean fewer people are receptive to the influence of a consistent minority group
• flexibility- nemeth asked three real participants and one confederate to act as a mock jury and decide on the level of compensation for the victim of an (imaginary) ski lift accident. When the confederate was inflexible, arguing for a low level of compensation of 50k dollars, and not changing position during negotiations, they were less able to convince members of the majority to lower their offers, than when they showed flexibility by increasing their offer to 100k dollars during the negotiation
• lab based studies on factors affecting minority influence, eg nemeth and moscovici are highly artificial and may not be valid when generalised to real-world minority influence. in real life, those trying to convince us are often friends and family, and the topics are more likely to be important social issues, not meaningless tasks like stating the colour of a slide.
• social change is where a view held by a minority group challenges the majority view and is eventually accepted by the majority, then, whole societies (not just individuals) adopt new attitudes, beliefs or behaviours.
• obedience- members of the government are a minority group that can enact dramatic social change by creating laws. when laws are created, societies change to avoid punishment, examples include making smoking in public places like pubs illegal, anti-discrimination laws, and regulating behaviour during a pandemic.
• conformity within social change- normative social influence/compliance- behaviours or views can become the norm within a minority group, such as recycling, vaping, or fitness in young people; those who go against this norm risk rejection. This norm can then spread to the broader society.
• conformity within social change- informational social influence/internalisation- members of a minority group can provide information to the majority, such as the effects of climate change. Wider society changes its behaviour as it accepts this new evidence.
• evaluation point of the role of social influence processes in social change - evaluations- leaders in civil rights movements in USA- demonstrated consistency and committment in their fight against racial segregation and for equality, they presented a consistently unified front through non-violent actions such as protests, sit-ins, and marches. in many cases they also suffered abuse at the hands of law enforcement. These committed actions led many white americans to reconsider their beliefs on segregation, and ultimately, this movement led to significant social change, including the passing of the civil rights act.
• evaluation point of social influence processes in social change- LGBTQ+ activists have used a combination of consistency in its core message of equality and rights, alongside flexibility to influence societal change. eg the gay community successfully campaigned for civil partnerships, a flexible compromise that led to the full legalisation of same sex marriage.
• social influence research has practical applications, such as helping governments understand how to change people's behaviour. eg persuading people to eat healthily or take sensible social distancing precautions during a pandemic. In these cases, understanding social change can help the economy by reducing society's healthcare costs.
• evaluation of social influence processes in social change- social change can often occur over extended periods, deals with highly sensitive topics, such as inequality, discrimination, or social unrest and this is the sum of the interactions of millions of societal members, for this reason, highly controlled lab experiments, on social change is not possible, meaning clear cause and effect relationships cant be established, instead, researchers depend on natural experiments, case studies and correlational studies to understand social change