Social Change

• social change

  when whole societies adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things
• drawing attention to an issue

  if the views of the minority are different to those held by the majority, this creates a conflict that they are motivated to reduce
• cognitive conflict

  minority creates a conflict between what majority group members believe currently and the position advocated by the minority, making the majority think more deeply about the issues being challenged
• consistency of position

  are more influential at bringing about change when they express their arguments consistently overtime and with each other
• augmentation principle

  if the minority appears willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as more committed and so are taken more seriously by others
• the snowball effect

  minority influence initially has a relatively small effect but this then spreads more widely as more and more people consider the issues being promoted until it reaches a tipping point, which leads to wide scale social change
• social cryptomnesia

  failure to remember change and the way it came about but know that it happened
• social change through majority influence

  • research has shown that behavioural choices are often related to group norms (normative influence)
  • the social norms approach states that if people perceive something to be the norms, they tend to alter their behaviour to fit that norm
  • Perkins and Berkowitz (1986) - conformity behaviour is based on what we think others do (perceived norm), often a misperception
  • this is the basis for an approach to social change - social norms intervention (correcting misperception)
  • boomerang affects - when someone was doing the right thing hears other behaving poorly, they may stop doing the positive behaviour, undermining the intention of putting out the message and a barrier to social norm interventions
• social norms intervention

  • identify a widespread misperception relating to risky behaviour
  • use perception correction strategies in media campaigns, promotional material and other routes
  • the aim was to communicate to the target population the actual norm
• evaluation of social norms intervention

  • self reports are often unreliable - makes poeple fell guilty
  • conclusions may be premature - additional research needed