social influence and social change

• social influence:

  the process by which individuals and groups change each other's attitudes and behaviours. includes conformity, obedience, and minority influence
• social change:

  this occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs, and ways of doing things
• how minority influence leads to social change:


  • drawing attention to the cause through social proof
  • consistency
  • deeper processing
  • augmentation principle reinforces the cause through commitment
  • snowball effect
  • social cryptomnesia - when people have a memory that change has occurred but don't remember how
• how conformity leads to social change:


  • in asch's study, the dissenting confederate broke the power of the majority which encouraged others to do so too. this dissent has the potential to lead to social change
  • campaigns exploit conformity processes by using normative social influence, which encourages social change by drawing attention to what the majority is actually doing
• how obedience leads to social change:


  • milgram's research shows the importance of disobedient role models as in the variation where a confederate refused to shock the learner the obedience rates decreased
  • zimbardo (2007) suggested obedience can be used to create social change through gradual commitment. this is because once a small instruction is obeyed it becomes more difficult to resist a bigger one
• evaluating social influence and social change; research support for normative influences:


  strength

  • research has shown that social influence processes based on psychological research do work
  • nolan (2008) wanted to see if they could change energy use habits in california. some people were told that others were also trying to reduce their energy usage whilst others were just told to save energy. the first group significantly decreased their energy usage compared to the other group
  • therefore conformity can lead to social change through normative social influence, making it a valid explanation
• evaluating social influence and social change; research support for normative influence:


  counterpoint

  • some studies show that people's behaviour is not always changed through exposure to social norms
  • foxcroft (2015) reviewed social norms interventions through 70 studies trying to reduce student alcohol use. researchers only found a small reduction in drinking quantity and no change in drinking frequency
  • therefore using normative social influence doesn't always produce long term social change
• evaluating social influence and social change; minority influence explains change:


  strength

  • psychologists can explain how minority influence leads to social change
  • nemeth (2009) claims that social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire - divergent thinking. this type of thinking is broad and is where the thinker actively searches for information
  • it's argued that this type of thinking leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues
  • therefore dissenting minorities are valuable as they stimulate new ideas and open minds
• evaluating social influence and social change; role of deeper processing:


  limitation

  • deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change
  • mackie (1987) argues that majority influence creates deeper processing if you don't share their views as we like to believe that others share our views so when we find out a majority disagrees with us we are forced to think deeper about why
  • therefore the central element of minority influence can be challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change
• evaluating social influence and social change; barriers to social change:


  extra

  • bashir (2013) says that the fact is that people still resist social change
  • bashir found that participants were less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways as they didn't want to be associated with stereotypical environmentalists. they described these environmentalists in negative ways
  • despite this, researchers were still able to suggest ways in which minorities can overcome barriers to social change