Social influence and social change

• Steps in how minority influence creates social change:

  1. drawing attention
  2. consistency
  3. deeper processing
  4. augmentation principle
  5. snowball effect
  6. social cryptomnesia
• Social cryptomnesia = people have a memory that change has occurred but don't remember how it happened
• Zimbardo suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment. Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one.
• Environmental and health campaigns use normative social influence to create social change. They do this by providing information about what other people are doing. For example, reducing litter by printing messages like 'Bin it-others do'. In other words social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing.
• Nolan et al. investigated whether social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community. They hung messages on the front doors of houses every week for a month. The key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had a different message just asking them to save energy but making no reference to other's behaviour. Nolan found significant decreases in energy usage in the first group. This shows conformity can lead to social change through NSI.
• Nemeth argues the effects of minority influence are likely to be mostly indirect and delayed. They are indirect because the majority is influenced on matters only related to the issue at hand, and not the central issue itself. They are delayed because the effects may not be seen for some time. This could be considered a limitation of using minority influence to explain social change because it shows its effects are fragile and its role in social influence is very limited.
• Moscovici's conversion explanation of minority influence argues that minority and majority influence involved different cognitive processes. Minority influence causes individuals to think more deeply about an issue. Mackie disagrees and presents evidence that it is majority influence that creates deeper processing if you do not share their views. This is because we are likely to believe others share our views and think in the same way as us. When we find out a majority believes something different, then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments.
• This means that a central element of the process of minority influence has been challenged and may be incorrect, casting doubt on the validity of Moscovici's theory that minority influence and majority influence involve different cognitive processes.