evaluation

• strength - research support for NSI pt 1

  one strength of NSI as an explanation for social change is that research has shown that social influence processes based on psychological research do work.

  Nolan et al, aimed to see if they could change people's energy use habits. the researchers hung messages on the front doors of houses in San Diego, California every week for one more month. the key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage.
• strength - research support for NSI pt 2

  as a control, some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy but made no reference to other peoples behaviours.

  there were significant decreases in energy usage in the first group compared to the second

  this shows that conformity can lead to social change through the operation of normative social influence, therefore adding to the validity of the explanation.