AO1

• Consistency, sacrifices, and group membership are factors that determine the success of a minority in facilitating social change.
• Similarity in terms of group membership increases the likelihood of minority influence.
• Minority groups play an important role in facilitating social change by influencing an entire society to change their attitude, behaviours and beliefs.
• When a minority has influence to start a movement of others, they make a change to become a majority. Martin Luther King spoke as a minority but soon challenged the American government and created a snowball effect.
• • Consistent minorities are more likely to convince a majority to change their attitudes or beliefs.
  • Examples of social change, such as the civil rights movement and the suffragette movement, demonstrate the importance of consistency, sacrifices, and group membership in facilitating social change.
• • Minorities that make sacrifices, such as imprisonment or death, are more influential in driving social change.
  • Personal risk indicates a strong belief and reinforces (augments) that person's message. This may include making life threatening sacrifices.
  • During the civil rights movement in America, 'freedom riders' were mixed ethnic groups who boarded buses in the south, challenging racial segregation.
• • As the minority influence increases and more of the population conform to the minority belief, it can become the majority belief. This often picks up pace, converting more and more people to the minority belief in a shorter and shorter space of time; this is known as the Snowball effect.
  • Snowball effect is when the minority view grows over time, by picking up momentum.