social change

• minority influence is a form of social influences in which a minority of people (sometimes just a person) persuades others to adapt either belief, attitudes or behaviours. leading to internalisation
• there are three steps in minority for minority influence to persuade other people into their views:

  -consistency

  -commitment

  -flexibility
• consistency is when attitudes, actions and beliefs are the same across time and across members
• commitment is to keep view/movements more powerful members need to integrate and internalise
• flexibility is when members adapt their movement to other counterpoints to avoid being seen as rigid/dogmatic (inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true
• from minority to majority:

  1.drawing attention

  2.consistency

  3.deeper processing

  4.the augmentation principle

  5.the snowball effect

  6.social cryptomnesia
• drawing attention is when the minority act in ways to draw majorities attention e.g protesting
• consistency is when minority members repeats the same simple message
• deeper processing is when the attention drawn to the issue gets those who have accepted the status quo to think more about it and it’s unjustness
• the augmentation principle is when the minority are willing to suffer for their cause
• the snowball effect is once members of majority start to convert more and more people begin to adopt the minority view
• social cryptomnesia is when people have memory that change has occurred but don’t remember how it happened
• nolan et al 2008 researched role of social normal intervention by hanging passages on doors in san diego trying to get resident to reduce energy consumption. he found residents significantly did which supports social change
• nemeth 2009: claims change comes from the type of thinking memories inspire. he says people engage in divergent thinking when presented with a minority view which leads to better decision making. this supports deeper processing
• mackie 1987: presents evidence that it is majority influence that may create social change if you do not share the majority view. this is beacsue we like to belive other people share our views. this limits social change explanation
• social change occurs when whole societies, rather then just individuals adopt a new behaviour, belief and way of doing things