Social change

• Social change

  = occurs when whole societies rather than just individuals adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things.
• How minority social influence creates social change

  1. drawing attention
  2. consistency
  3. deeper processing
  4. augmentation principle
  5. snowball effect
  6. social cryptomnesia= people have memory of change that’s occurred but don’t remember how)
• Lessons from conformity research

  =Asch highlighted the importance of dissent in one of his variations- this broke the power of the majority, encouraging others to do likewise- such dissent has the potential to ultimately lead to social change

  • different approach= environmental and health campaigns which exploit conformity processes by appealing to normative social influence- by providing information about what other people are doing
  • social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are doing
• Lessons from obedience research

  =Milgram‘s research demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models- in variation where a confederate teacher refuses to shock learner the rate of obedience in real participant dropped

  • Zimbardo= suggested obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment- once small instruction is obeyed it becomes more difficult to resist a bigger one
• Evaluation- research support for normative influences

  = social influence processes based on psychological research do work.

  • Nolan aimed to see if they could change people’s energy- use habits.
  • 1st group key message= most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. Control= some residents had a different message that asked them to save energy but had no reference to others behaviour.
  • = significant decrease in energy usage in 1st group compared to control group.
  • shows that conformity can lead to social change through the operation of normative social influence
• Evaluation- counterpoint

  =some studies show that people’s behaviour is not always changed through exposing them to social norms.

  • Foxcroft reviewed studies where the social norms approach was used to reduce student alcohol use.
  • found only a small reduction in drinking quantity and no effect on drinking frequency.
  • so it seems that using normative influence doesn’t always produce long term social change.
• Evaluation- minority influence explains change

  =Nemeth claims social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire

  • when people consider minority arguments, they engage in divergent thinking. This type of thinking is broad rather than narrow in which the thinker actively searches for information and weighs up more options
  • Nemeth argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues.
  • shows why dissenting minorities are valuable- they stimulate new ideas and open minds in a way that majorities can’t.
• Evaluation- role of deeper processing

  = deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change

  • Mackie says that majority influence (not minority) may create deeper processing if you don’t share the same views. - because we like to believe that others share our views and think the same way as us.
  • when we find a majority believes something different then we’re forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning
  • means that central element of minority influence has been challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change