Social Change

• Minority Influence is needed for social change.

  Examples of social change:

  • Black Rights Movement - Martin Luther King
  • Gay Rights Movement
  • Use of Smart Phones, 35% in 2011, 81% in 2019 (Americans)
  • Laws, increase Obedience e.g. Gay rights
  • Normative SI, recycling, wearing masks during Covid
  • Informational SI, smoking guidance, wearing masks during Covid, listening to health experts.
• Social change occurs when a whole society adopts a new belief or behaviour which then becomes widely accepted as the 'norm' which was not before. Involves minority influence, high internal locus of control & disobedience to authority.
• Social change is usually a result of minority influence where a small group of people manage to persuade the majority to adopt their point of view.

  Also linked to independent behaviour as the minority resists pressures to conform/obey and the minority typically have an internal locus of control.

  Committed minorities risk themselves for their cause through an augmentation principle = majority value the importance of the cause as the minority are risking their lives for it.
• These processes convert more and more majority to the minority and ultimately cause a shift resulting in the snowball effect. Once this has happened social cryptoamnesia occurs which is when people remember a change but not how it came about.
• As the snowball effect occurs, the people who have not changed their opinion are the minority and they often conform the majority view as a result of group pressure. The majority opinion becomes law & people have to obey this law. Once this happens the minority opinion holds a dominant position in society & people do not remember where the opinion originated from - social crypto amnesia.