social change and social influence

• Social Influence

  - Process by which individuals and groups change each others attitudes and behaviours. Includes conformity, obedience and minority influence.
• Social Change

  - Occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things.

  - E.g. gay rights, environmental issues
• Special Role of Minority Influence- Step 1

  - E.g. looking at how minority influence creates social change- African- American Civil Rights Movement in 50s and 60's

  1.- Drawing Attention- through social proof. In 50's America, segregation in all parts of USA. Black neighbourhoods and in southern states, places like schools and restaurants were exclusive to whites. The civil rights marches drew attention to the situation by providing social proof of the problem
• Special Role of Minority Influence- Step 2

  2.- Consistency- Many marches and many people taking part. Even though a minority, civil rights activists displayed consistency of message and intent
• Special Role of Minority Influence- Step 3

  3.- Deeper processing- of the issue. This attention meant that many people who had accepted the status quo began to think of the unjustness of it
• Special Role of Minority Influence- Step 4

  4.- The augmentation principle- no. of incidents where people risked their lives. E.g. the 'Freedom Riders' were mixed racial groups who got on buses in the south to challenge the segregation. Many were beaten and incidents of mob violence
• Special Role of Minority Influence- Step 5

  5.- Snowball effect- Civil rights activist like MLK continued to press for changes that gradually got the attention of the US government. In 1964, the US Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibited discrimination. Represented a change from minority to majority support for civil rights
• Special Role of Minority Influence- Step 6

  6.- Social Cryptomnesia- (people have a memory that change has occurred but don't remember how it happened). There is no doubt that social change did come about and the south is a different place now but some people have no memory of the events that led to change
• Lessons from Conformity Research

  - Asch highlighted that a dissenter breaks the power of the majority encouraging others to dissent. This dissent has the potential to lead to social change

  - Environmental and health campaigns expolit conformity processes by appealing to NSI. Do this by providing info about what others are doing. E.g. reducing litter by printing normative messages on litter bins ('Bin it-others do')

  - Basically, social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing
• Lessons from Obedience Research

  - Milgram's research demonstrates importance of disobedient role models. In variation where confederate teacher refuses to give shocks to the learner, rate of obedience in the genuine participants plummeted

  - Zimbardo (2007) suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment. Once a small instruction is obeyed, becomes more difficult to resist a bigger one. 'Drift' into new kind of behaviour
• Evaluation- Research Support for Normative Influences

  - Nolan et al (2008) investigated whether social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community. Hung messages onthe front doors of houses in San Diego, CAL every week for 1 month. Key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy but made no reference to other's behaviour

  - Nolan found significant decreases in energy usage in the 1st group.

  Strength as it shows that conformity can lead to social change through the operation of NSI
• Evaluation- Minority Influence is only Indirectly Effective


  - Social change happens slowly. E.g. taken decades for attitudes against smoking and drink-driving to change.

  - Charlan Nemeth (1986) argues that the effects of minority influence are likely to be mostly indirect and delayed. Are indirect because the majority is influenced on matters only related to the issue at hand, not the central issue itself. Delayed because effects may not be seen for a while

  - Considered a limitation of using the minority influence to explain social change as it shows that its effects are fragile and its role in social influence very limited
• Evaluation- Role of Deeper Processing

  - Moscovivi's conversion explanation of minority influence argues that minority and majority influence involve different cognitive processes. Minority influence causes people to think more deeply about the issue than majority influence (conformity).

  - Diane Mackie (1987) disagrees and presents evidence that it is majority influence that may create deeper processing if you don't share their views. We like to believe that others share our views and think in the same ways as us. When we find that a majority believes something different, forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning

  - Means that a central element of the process of minority influence has been challenged and may be incorrect, doubt on Moscovivi's theory
• Evaluation- Barriers to Social Change

  - Bashir et al (2013) investigated why people so often resist social change, even when they agree that it is necessary. E.g. found their parts were less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways because they did not want to be associated with stereotypical and minority 'environmentalists'. Rated them and feminists in negative ways- 'tree-huggers' and 'man-haters'.

  - Researchers advice to minorities hoping to create social change is to avoid behaving in ways that reinforce the stereotypes as this will always be off-putting to majority they want to influence.
• Evaluation- Methodological Issues


  - Explanations of how social influence leads to social change draw heavily upon studies of Asch, Milgram and Moscovivi.

  - All can be evaluated in terms of methodology. These criticisms applicable here, raise doubts about validity of explanations.