Social influence and social change

• Social change

  This occurs when societies adopt new beliefs, attitudes and ways of doing things.
• Social influence

  The processes by which individuals and groups change each others attitudes and behaviours.
• Process of social change by minority influence

  1. Drawing attention to an issue
  2. Consistency
  3. Deeper processing
  4. Social cryptoamnesia
  5. Snowball effect
  6. Augmentation principle
• How does minority draw attention to the issues?

  • If their views are different to majority this creates conflict and creates attention.
• How does minority’s consistency influence majority?

  • There needs to be agreement between the minority members e.g synchronic or diachronic consistency.
  • This will make people rethink their own views.
• How does minority influence deeper processing?

  • Because you have heard something new, it makes you think more deeply about the topic, especially due to the consistency and passion of minority groups.
• How does the augmentation principle influence majority?

  • If the minority appear to be willing to suffer for their views they are seen as more committed and taken seriously.
• How does the snowball effect occur?

  • Minority influence initially has a small effect and this then spreads more widely and more and more people consider the issues being promoted until it reaches a tipping point- leading to wide scale change
• Social cryptoamnesia

  • This is where people have a memory that a change has occurred but does not remember how it happened
• Suffragettes

  • Attention: Used educational, political and military tactics to draw attention to the fact women were denied the same voting rights as men.
  • Consistency: Consistent in their views regardless of the attitudes around them. Continued for years.
  • Augmentation principle: Women were willing to risk imprisonment and death
  • Deeper processing: Created a conflict with majority group members.
  • Snowball effect: Universal suffrage was finally accepted by the majority of people in the UK
  • Social cryptoamnesia: Many people in the present day have forgotten where the change originated from.
• How does social support influence minority influence?

  Breaks the power and influence of the majority group and encourages others to break this agreement and go against majority.
• How is social change encouraged?

  Social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are doing.
• How is normative social influence used by minority?

  • Campaigners often use normative social influence to promote desired behaviours
  • They do this by saying that other people are doing this, so they are expected to do the same, especially if something is seen as a norm.
  • E.g bin your litter, others are doing the same.
  • This may reinforce this idea of binning litter
• How does minority influence obedience?

  • Disobedient role models provide social support.
  • This gives other individuals confidence to disobey
  • The rate of obedience in the genuine Particiapnts dropped from 65% to 10%
• How did Zimbardo use gradual commitment to create social change?

  • One a small instruction is obeyed e.g going up 15v, it is much more difficult to resist a bigger one e.g up 300v
  • People essentially drift into a new kind of behaviour
  • Milgram’s study supports this theory as participants may have found it difficult to back away from the experiment as the shocks were increasing in small amounts. As a result they found it harder to withdraw themselves when it came to more serious requests.
• Research support for normative influence causing social change

  • Nolan et al, hung messages on front doors of houses in San Diego every week for a month. Key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy but made no reference to other peoples behaviour.
  • Results found significant decreases in energy use for the first group. So people understand what behaviour is normal and typical for a social group and conform to that behaviour
• Minority influence explains social change

  • Nemeth argues social change is due to the type of thinking minorities encourage. When the majority begin to consider minority arguments it encourages people to engage in divergent thinking.
  • Divergent thinking is broad rather than narrow, which makes the thinker actively search for information and weigh up more options. Nemeth argues this leads to better decisions and solutions for social issues.
• Deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change

  • Argued that some people change because they think more deeply about minorities view. Mackie disagrees with this claim and suggests that the majority influence creates more deeper processing if you do not share the same view.
  • Mackie’s opposing arguments suggests we like to belive that other people share our views and think the same way as us. When we find that majority believes something different we are forced to think about their arguments.
• Barriers to social change

  • Bashir et al, investigated why people so often resist change. The researchers found that their Particiapnts were less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways because they did not want to be associated with stereotypical and minority ‘environmentalists’. They rate environmental activists and feminists in negative ways.
  • Negative stereotypes of the minority view can be off-putting, this means their message will not be considered, which is crucial in minority influence.
  • Crucial to address obstacles minority influence face when wanting to promote social change