AO1 Social Change

• What is social change?

  When whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things. (The transformation of societal norms)
• The steps in how minority influence creates social change:

  1. Drawing attention through social proof
  2. Consistency of Position
  3. Deeper processing
  4. The augmentation principle
  5. The snowball effect
  6. Social Cryptomnesia
• How is attention drawn through social proof?


  If majority and minority views are different, it creates a conflict that they are motivated to reduce
• Explain the role of deeper processing

  The majority will think more deeply about the issue being challenged. Attention drawn means that many who had simply accepted the status quo began to think about the unjustness of it
• What is the augmentation principle?


  Minorities who are willing to suffer for their cause are seen as more committed. This means that the majority value the importance of the cause more
• What is the snowball effect?


  As the minority begin to persuade expel round to their way of thinking, more and more people adopt these beliefs until gradually the minority becomes the majority

  
  

  At this point, the people who have not changed their opinion are the minority, and they will often conform to the majority view as a result of group pressures.
• What is social cryptomnesia?


  Once the minority opinion becomes the majority opinion, it has become the dominant position in society. And people often do not remember where the opinion originated from (people have a memory that change has occurred but don’t remember how it happened)
• When social cryptomnesia occurs, the content (the message) and the source (the minority) has become disassociated
• One may risk assuming the negative identity of the source if they were to adopt the minority ideas due to the strong association.

  (e.g. being associated with a radical group because you agree with the principle of their message)
• If the ideas can be disassociated from their source, the majority can resist overt identification with an out group while still drawing inspiration from their ideas
• What role does the majority have in social change?


  Environment and health campaigns significantly exploit conformity processes by appealing to normative social influence. They do this by providing information on what others are doing
• Social change in encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are doing wrong