Social Influence and Social Change

• What is social change?

  Occurs when a society or section of society adopts a new belief or way of behaving which then becomes widely accepted as the norm
• What are three types of social influence which could lead to social change?

  Conformity, obedience and minority influence
• What is conversion?

  When an individual who is exposed to a persuasive argument under certain conditions changes their view to match those of the minority = a prerequisite for minority influence leading to social change
• What are the stages in the conversion process?

  Drawing attention to issue, cognitive conflict, consistency, commitment (augmentation principle), the snowball effect
• What are two examples of social change happening through minority influence?

  1, Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement 2, Women’s right to vote and the Suffragettes
• What is a social norms approach?

  Behaviour is based on what people think others believe and do (the ‘perceived norm’) than on their real beliefs and actions (the ‘actual norm’). People will alter their behaviour to fit the perceived norm. - e.g. If university students think that heavy drinking is the norm, they’ll drink more.
• What is social norms intervention?

  An attempt to correct misperceptions of the normative behaviour of peers in order to change the risky behaviour of a target population
• What is a misperception?

  The gap between a person's perceived norm and the actual norm
• Describe the 'Most of us don't drink and drive' campaign as evidence for influence of social norms intervention

  x Carried out in Montana, USA x Found that the majority of young adults believed that their peers would drink and drive x Ran the campaign stating that 'MOST Montana young adults don't drink and drive' x Results = prevalence of reported driving after drinking reduced by 18.7%
• How can social change happen by challenging obedience?

  We need disobedient, positive role models to enable us to think independently and resist the gradual commitment to obey
• What is gradual commitment?

  Once a small instruction is obeyed it becomes more difficult to resist a bigger one- people 'drift' into a new kind of behaviour
• Which researcher revealed the importance of disobedient role models?

  Milgram - demonstrated importance of disobedient role models --> in the variation where a confederate teacher refuses to give shocks to the learner, the rate of obedience in the genuine participants plummeted.