Social Change

• Social change


  occurs when whole societies adopt new attitudes beliefs and ways of doing thing.

  example include women's suffrage, gay rights and environmental issues
• real-life example

  Rosa Parks

  - refused to give up her seat on a bus -> arrested for violating US law

  - helped trigger the civil rights movement to end racial segregation laws in America

  - demonstrates that people who are willing to make a sacrifice to show their commitment and as a result are more influential in bringing about a social change
• Lessons from obedience


  Milgram's research demonstrates importance of disobedient role models

  in variation, where confederate teacher refuses to give shocks to learner, rate of obedience in genuine ppts plummeted
• Lessons from conformity


  Asch highlighted importance of dissent in one of his variations, which confederates gave correct answers throughout the procedure.

  broke the power of the majority, encouraging other to dissent

  dissent -> potential to ultimately lead to social change.

  environmental campaigns increasingly exploit conformity processes by appealing to NSI -> done by providing info about what other people are doing e.g. reducing litter by printing normative messages on little bins

  social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what that majority are actually doing.
• Drawing attention

  in order for a social change to occur, the majority must all be made aware of the need for the change
• Consistency


  displaying consistency of viewpoint and intended outcome is beneficial in bringing about social change
• Deeper processing


  more people think about the issue at hand, rather than blindingly accepting it, the more they will be able to challenge the existing social norms to bring about change.
• Augmentation principle


  when majority pays attention to selfless and risky actions being taken by minority group, is more likely to integrate the group's opinion, augmenting its importance into their personal viewpoints due to personal sacrifice made by minority
• Snowball effect


  once minority viewpoint has got attention of some of majority group, more and more people begin paying attention and minority viewpoint gather momentum
• Social cryptoamnesia


  majority knows a social change has occurred but source of change and message itself have become disassociated through process of social cryptoamnesia and they don't recall how it's happened.
• Strength - support for normative influences


  Nolan et al investigated whether social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community

  hung message on front doors of houses in San Diego, every week for 1 month.

  key message was most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage.

  some residents had a different message -> save energy but no reference to other people's behaviour.

  Nolan et al found significant decreases in energy usage in first group.
• Strength - minority influence explains change


  Nemeth claims social change is due to type of thinking that minorities inspire. when people consider minority arguments they engage in divergent thinking.

  type of thinking is broad rather than narrow, which the thinker actively searchers for info and weighs up more options.

  Nemeth argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues.

  Strength - shows why dissenting minorities are valuable, they stimulate new ideas and open minds in a way that majorities can't
• Weakness - role of deeper processing


  e.g. some people are supposedly converted as they think more about minority's views.

  Mackie disagrees and presents evidence that it's majority influence that may create deeper processing if you don't share their views.

  because we like to believe other people share the same views as use and when find the majority don't, we're forced to think about their arguments and reasoning.

  Weakness - means a central element of minority influence has been challenged, casting doubt on validity as explanation of social change
• Strength - idiographic vs nomothetic approach


  reports of social change within society can involve concepts that haven't been tested empirically, meaning they lack scientific credibility

  many examples of social change rest on isolated case studies therefore an idiographic approach is often taken.

  there's a large amount of subjective interpretation involved in explaining the occurrences of social norms and such evidence should be treated with caution.

  However, there's also a large quantity of research supporting processes involved in social change, such as Asch, Milgram and Moscovici which take a nomothetic approach, as they've created universal laws to explain human behaviour under certain social circumstances

  Together, these case studies and larger scale studies provide credibility to the underlying processes involved in social change.