Social change

• Social change - ways in which a society (rather than individual) develops over time to replace beliefs, attitudes and behaviour with new norms and expectations
• MLK and Nelson Mandela led civil rights movement and were consistent in their views against apartheid for many years, helped bring about social change
• Number of processes that can explain social change:

  Consistency- consistent message appears more credible and can help to convince a majority

  Deeper processing- think rather than blindly accept, be able to challenge existing social norms to bring about change

  Drawing attention- majority must be aware of need to change

  Augmentation principle- majority pays attention to selfless and risky actions being taken by minority and is more likely to integrate groups opinion into their own personal viewpoint due to personal sacrifice
• Number of processes that can explain social change (2):

  Snowball effect- more and more people begin paying attention and minority viewpoint gathers momentum

  Social cryptoamnesia- source of change and message become disassociated through process and cant recall how it happened

  NSI- social change can be encouraged by reporting behaviour or attitudes of majority, urge others to follow suit for normative reasons

  Gradual commitment- small instructions followed, larger requests are harder to reject. Referred to as “foot in the door technique“ people adopt new way of behaving gradually
• Evaluation of social change: minority influence acts as barrier to social change. Bashir et al. Interested why people resists social change even when they believe it to be needed. Found that some minority groups, often live up to the stereotype associated with that group. Majority doesnt want to be associated with minority for fear of being stereotypically labelled
• Evaluation of social change: Research support for role of NSI as process of social change. Nolan et al. conducted study over one month in California and involved hanging messages on front doors of people’s houses in San Diego encouraging them to reduce energy consumption by indicating most other residents in neighbourhood were already doing this. As a control, some houses received about energy usage with no reference to others. Experimental group significantly lowered their energy consumption, conformity lead to positive social change
• Evaluation of social change: Minority and majority influence involve different levels of cognitive processing. Moscovici believes minority viewpoint forces individuals to think more deeply about issue. Macklemore counters suggesting opposite is true. Suggest that when majority is thinking in way that is different from ourselves we are forced to think more deeply about their reasons. Cast doubt on validity of Moscovici minority influence theory, it may be incorrect