social influence and social change

• the power that persuasive groups possess in order to bring about social change is their ability to organise, educate and mobilise support for their cause
• when individuals band together and form an organisation to focus their collective power, social change can be the result
• if an individual is exposed to a persuasive argument under certain conditions, they may change their views to math those of the minority
• there are 5 stages to this conversion - which are:

  • drawing attention to an issue
  • cognitive conflict
  • consistency
  • the augmentation principle
  • the snowball effect
• drawing attention to an issue: a minority can bring about a social change by drawing attention to an issue e.g. suffragettes and the lack of votes for women
• cognitive conflict: a minority creates a conflict in the minds of the majority between what is currently believed and what the minority believes e.g. only men being allowed to vote
• consistency: social change is more likely when the minority is consistent in its position e.g. suffragettes were consistent in their views regardless of other peoples attitudes
• the augmentation principle: if a minority suffers for its views, it is taken more seriously e.g. suffragettes risked imprisonment, force feeding or even death
• the snowball effect: minority influence initially has a small effect, but this spreads more widely until it eventually leads to large-social change e.g. after the suffragettes’ actions the idea finally spread to the majority
• nemeth (2009) says that minority arguments cause people to engage in divergent thinking. this thinking leads to better decision and creative solutions to social problems.
• social-crypto amnesia - not having a memory of where the change had started - we don’t know how the change had happened
• young adults misperceive the frequency with which a behaviour (e.g. binge drinking) occurs among their peers
• social norms interventions communicate to a target population the actual norm concerning such behaviour, in the hope the recipients will change their behaviour to bring it in line with the norm i.e. telling young adults that most people are not binge drinking (NSI)
• the role played by minority influence may be limited since minorities rarely bring about social change quickly because there is a tendency for human beings to conform to the majority position
• people are more likely to maintain the status quo rather than engage in social change
• this suggests that the influence of a minority creates the potential for change rather than bringing about actual social change
• support for normative social influence in social change:

  • nolan et al. (2008) hung messages on front doors of houses
  • the key message was most residents are trying to reduce energy usage
  • significant decreases in energy use compared to control group who saw messages to save energy with no reference to other people’s behaviour