Social Change

• Five stages of social change

  1. Drawing attention to the issue
  2. Cognitive conflict
  3. Consistency of position
  4. The augmentation principle
  5. The snowball effect
• The Augmentation Principle

  The idea that if a minority appears to be willing to suffer for their cause, they will be more influential.
• Social Cryptoamnesia

  A failure to remember the origin of change.
• Social Norms Intervention

  Identifying a widespread misconception in order to make people act accordingly to the true statistics.
• Perception correction strategies can be used in media campaigns, promotional material and other routes.
• The idea of Social Norms Intervention is that recipients will moderate their own behaviour to bring it in line with the behaviour of their peers.
• “Most of us don‘t drink drive”

  • Message was released in Montana USA that 4/5 young adults don’t drink dive.
  • Originally 92% of respondents believed the majority of their peers had done so.
  • After this campaign drink driving was reduced by 13.7%.
• Social change through minority influence is very gradual due to the strong tendency for human beings to conform.
• Social change can be limited due to individuals not wanting to be seen as deviant in the eyes of the majority.
• DeJong et al found that despite correcting students misconceptions on drink driving, three years later, self reposted alcohol consumption and perceptions of alcohol consumption did not change. However, surveys have low validity.
• Schultz et al suggests that social norms intervention can be damaging, as it influences those with the desirable behaviour to affirm to the norm. An example of this is a campaign that was effective in getting heavy energy users to use less electricity, but also caused those less than the norm to increase their usage.