Social change

• Social change

  The process by which whole societies adopt new beliefs, attitudes and behaviours

  • main driving force behind social change is minority influence
  • social change can be positive as shown by suffaragetes BUT can be negative as shown by mass extermination performed by the Nazis
• • Drawing attention- minorities can bring out change
  • Consistence - consistent message will lead to change
  • Cognitive conflict - a difference in opinion makes the majority think deeper about their own opinion
  • Commitment- more committed and taken more seriously by others, especially where a personal risk is see, as it reinforces the message
  • Flexibility- adaptation of point of view enables them to be persuasive
  • Snowball - the gradual process where minority view becomes a majority view (pace picks up)
  • Social cryptoamnesia - people have a memory change that occured but cannot remember how it happened
• Majority influence

  • helps maintain social order and keeps things the way that they are
  • Asch's research shows the power of a dissenter- broke the majority view. Such dissent can lead to social change
• Obedience research and social change

  • shows us the power of disobedient role models
  • Milgram dropped from 62.5% to 10% obedience when a disobedient role model was shown
  • idea of gradual commitment can be used to create social change
• A03- methodological criticisms

  • studied by Asch, Moscovici, Milgram can be evaluated by their methods and the fact that they lack mundane realism
  • Barriers to social change - some people resist social change due to stereotypes and opinions that have been formed before
  • Application - real life application to the world - companies use the idea of majority influence