Social influence processes explaining social change

• Drawing attention to an issue


  Minorities can bring about social change by drawing the attention of the majority to an issue.
• Cognitive conflict


  Minorities challenge the majority’s cognitions, so they think more deeply about the issue being challenged.
• Consistency of the position


  Moscovici’s research showed that minorities expressing a consistent argument, both between themselves and over time have more influence over the majority.
• Augmentation principle


  If the minority is willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as more committed and will be taken more seriously by the majority.
• Snowball effect


  Minorities gather support gradually over time and their influence converts more and more until

  it reaches the tipping point where social change occurs.
• Social change occurs


  At this stage social cryptoamnesia may exist, whereby society ‘knows’ social change has occurred but forgets the origins of it and so the

  majority does not give credit to the minority for the change taking place.
• Other explanation (ISI)


  Social change can come about through informational social influence and providing arguments and information in favour of

  views. Social change is encouraged by the attempt to gain information.
• Other explanation (models)


  A disobedient individual can act as a role model to demonstrate to others in society about how to resist the pressure to obey and instigate social change
• Social change strength


  Validity - One limitation of using social influence processes to explain historical social changes is temporal validity. The social changes that are cited and discussed in relation to social influence are historical, with some occurring many years ago
• Social change limitation


  Methodological Weaknesses of underpinning Social Influence Research – the methodology used in these pieces of research, were artificial and did not reflect real life behaviour (they lack mundane realism) therefore, its usefulness in explaining social change is under scrutiny.