social change

• social change


  whole societies rather than just individuals adopt new attitudes and behaviours - most started by individuals or small groups (minorities) aim to persuade majority in society to support their cause through using different methods
• minority influence - drawing attention to the issue


  begin process of social change by drawing the majority's attention to an issue - if views expressed by minority are different to majority conflict is created that they're motivated to reduce - e.g. suffragettes protested to draw attention to women not being able to vote - modern day, media can be used to draw attention to an issue (adverts or leaflets)
• minority influence - consistency


  minorities most likely to achieve social change if they're consistent - could be agreement between people in minority group (synchronic consistency - all saying the same thing) - consistency over time (diachronic consistency - same thing for some time) - leads to majority to doubt themselves which can lead to behaviour change - e.g. suffragettes all consistently made same argument over time
• minority influence - snowball effect

  minority influence initially has small effect but then grows and grows as more people in society consider issues until it reaches a tipping point which leads to wide scale social change - can then be cemented with the passing of laws to ensure everybody obeys society's new accepted approach to issue (e.g. anti-discrimination laws)
• MINORITY INFLUENCE EVALUATION - Moscovici


  found that when minority of confederates consistently said blue slides were green (incorrect) had a larger influence over majority group of participants (8.42%) than when confederates were inconsistent (1.25%) - suggests minorities in society have more chance of social change when consistent
• MINORITY INFLUENCE EVALUATION - low ecological validity


  controlled laboratory setting artificial as it doesn't represent real life - e.g. real-life minority groups are usually in favour of important social issues rather than more trivial tasks like colour judgement - findings may not generalise to real life minority influence social situations
• MINORITY INFLUENCE EVALUATION - minority groups more complicated


  more involved in difference between minority and majority than just numbers - e.g. majorities in society usually have much more power and status than minorities whilst minorities can be more tight-knit groups whose members know each other well and turn to each other for support - may over simplify process involved in social change
• Majority influence - conformity


  conformity can play a key role in social change - many attitudes and behaviours of individuals in society are shaped by what they perceive to be social norms - normative social influence explanation of conformity suggests we'll often change our behaviour out of a desire to be liked and accepted by the majority and to gain social approval - if individuals in society are led to believe that majority are behaving differently to the way they behave - change behaviour to avoid being seen as socially deviant
• CONFORMITY EVALUATION - Nolan

  hung messages on front doors of houses in San Diego every week for a month saying most residents were trying to reduce energy consumption - control group asked to save energy but didn't refer to other people's behaviour - found significant decreases in energy usage in the first group - supports view that conformity can lead to social change through NSI
• CONFORMITY EVALUATION - benefits economy

  based off psychological research government set up Behavioural Insight Team to help them run the country more effectively - e.g. used normative social influence messages to help encourage people to pay car tax, reduce drink driving and junk food consumption by informing people this isn't the social norm - helps reduce waste and improve efficiency in the system