social influence processes in social change

• 1. drawing attention to the issue, suffragettes used political tactics to draw attention to the fact women were denied the same voting rights. 2. consistency, protests continued for years. 3. deeper processing, creating conflict between current status quo and new beliefs
• 4. augmentation principle, minorities take risks to further the cause, suffragettes risked imprisonment. 5. snowball effect, people begin to adopt beliefs as new majority. 6. social cryptoamnesia, social change has happened but can't remember how the change happened.
• social norms interventions = attempt to correct misperceptions of the normative behaviour of peers in an attempt to change the risky behaviour to target population.
• • potential of minorities to influence social change is often limited because they are seen as 'deviant'. means others may avoid aligning themselves because they don't want to be perceived as 'deviant'.
• • Mackie suggests that the role of the minority influence is very limited because we are more likely to change our own views if the majority view is different.
• • Nemeth argued social change is a slow process and produced fragile effects. Argues that the majority are not exposed to the main issue at hand and would cause too drastic change in social norms if adressed.
• • Milgram said disobedient models make social change more likely. In his variation, when one confederate refused to give shocks, the rate of obedience in genuine participants dropped significantly.