Social Change

• How does social change occur according to minority influence? (1)

  1. Drawing attention through social proof - civil rights marches in 1950s America brought attention to unfair racial segregation
  2. Consistency - millions of civil rights activists took part in many marches over several years, always presenting the same non-aggressive messages
  3. Deeper processing of the issue - activism led to people thinking deeply about the unjustness of the status quo
• How does social change occur according to minority influence? (2)

  4. Augmentation principle - individuals risked their lives numerous times such as 'freedom riders' who were beaten for boarding white-only buses, indicating strong belief and reinforcing their messages

  5. Snowball effect - activists gradually got the attention of the US government with more and more people backing them, leading to the 1964 US Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination and marking the change from minority to majority support for civil rights

  6. Social cryptomnesia - some people have no memory of the events that led to the change but remember change occurred
• How does social change occur according to conformity research?

  • Asch highlighted the importance of one dissenter giving correct answers throughout the procedure, breaking the majority's power and encouraging others to do the same - has the potential to lead to social change
  • Appealing to normative social influence - providing information about what others are doing e.g. 'Bin it - others do' encourages social change by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing
• How does social change occur according to obedience research?

  • Milgram's research demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models - in his variation where a confederate refused to give shocks, obedience in genuine ppts. plummeted
  • Gradual commitment: Zimbardo (2007) said obedience can be used to create social change as once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes more difficult to resist a bigger one
  • People 'drift' into a new kind of behaviour
• What is one strength of social change?

  • Research support for normative influences: Nolan et al. (2006) hung messages on Californian houses every week for a month saying most residents were trying to reduce energy usage - a control's message had no reference to other people's behaviour
  • First group had significant decreases in energy usage compared to the control group
  • Shows conformity can lead to social change through the operation of normative social influence increasing the explanation's validity
• What is another strength of social change?

  • Valuable theory: Nemeth (2009) claims social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire - people engage in divergent thinking that is more broad rather than narrow, involving active searches for information and weighing up more options
  • Argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues
  • Shows why dissenting minorities are valuable as they stimulate new ideas and open minds in a way majorities cannot
• What is one limitation of social change?

  • Role of deeper processing: Mackie (1987) disagrees with the idea that people convert because they think more deeply about the minority's views
  • Because we like to believe others share our views and think the same way as us, we are forced to think long and hard about a majoritys' arguments and reasoning when they believe something different to us
  • Challenges the central element of minority influence, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change
• What is another limitation of social change?

  • Barriers to social change: Bashir et al. (2013) found that ppts. were less likely to behave in an environmentally friendly way as they did not want to be associated with stereotypical and minority 'environmentalists' - describing them in negative ways like 'tree-huggers'
  • Shows that people still resist social change due to negative stereotypes and complicated social politics that the theory does not account for