social change

• social change is when whole societies, rather than an individual, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and behaviours.

  • an example would be the suffragettes.
• minorities cause social change in a 6 step process:

  1. drawing attention.
  2. consistency.
  3. deeper processing.
  4. the augmentation principle.
  5. the snowball effect.
  6. social cryptomnesia.
• drawing attention is to draw direct attention to the features of the problem at hand, clearly identify the point.
• consistency refers to remaining consistent through their efforts and in all situations saying the same messages.
• deeper processing refers to invoking people to start thinking about the problem and its factors, process more deeply.
• the augmentation principle refers to completing risky acts in order in order to draw more attention and show the severity of the situation.
• the snowball effect refers to more and more people beginning to adopt the opinion and the convertion from a minority to a majority view.
• social cryptomnesia refers to people remembering that change has occured and when it has occured, rather than how it happened.
• SOCIAL CHANGE & CONFORMITY RESEARCH

  • influence of a dissenter, could snowball.
  • normative social influence, say what others are doing.
  • social change draws attention to what the majority is actually doing.
• STRENGTH - THE ROLE OF DEEPER PROCESSING:

  • moscovici suugets that minority and majority influence have different cognitive processes - minority causes peoplle to think more deeply, through internalisation.
  • however, mackie disagrees and says that majority influences also does this.
  • we like to believe that others share our views and think the way we do - when we find the majority thinks something different, we are forced to think hard about the argument which is deeper processing.
• LIMITATION - RESEARCH:

  • foxcroft 2015.
  • show that behaviour can't be changed by exposing people to social norms.
  • review of 70 studies where social norms approach was used to reduce student alcohol consumption.
  • there was only a small reduction in drinking quantity and no reduction on drinking frequency.
  • normative social influence doesnt always lead to change.
  • age may play a role in how suceptible people are.
• LIMITATION - BARRIERS TO SOCIAL CHANGE:

  • bashir - looked at why people resist social change.
  • participants were less likely to behave in an environmentally friendly way because they didnt want to be labelled as stereotypical 'environmentalists'.
  • suggests minorities therefore have to avoid reinforcing stereotypes if they want to create social change.
• LIMITATION - METHOLOGICAL ISSUES:

  • explanations of how social influence leads to social change use concepts from social influence research, such as Asch.
  • why is this a problem?

  creates doubt about the validity of the explanations of how social change occurs.