social change

• Social change occurs through 6 steps:

  • 1: Drawing attention
  • 2: Consistency
  • 3: Deeper processing
  • 4: The augmentation principle
  • 5: The snowball effect
  • 6: Social cryptoamnesia
• Social change is when a whole society adopts a new belief or behaviour which then becomes widely accepted as the norm.
• The augmentation principle suggests that when a minority appears willing to suffer for their beliefs, they are perceived to be more committed and so are taken more seriously by the majority.
• The snowball effect is when a minority first has a small effect, which then spreads as more people adopt the minority's beliefs over time, until it reaches a tipping point where social change has occured.
• Social cryptoamnesia is when people have a memory that social change has occured but cannot remember details about how it happened.
• A strength of conformity and normative social influence as an explanation for social change comes from research support from Nolan. Researchers hung messages on doors in a neighbourhood, asking them to save energy. Those that received a message referring to the majority's behaviour saved the most energy.
• A strength of minority influence as an explanation for social change comes from research support from Moscovici. However this evidence is limited as only 8 % of the majority was influenced by the minority, and the research lacks external validity because the task was artificial.