Social influence and social change

• Social influence and Social Change

  The special role of minority influence

  The African-American civil rights movement of the 1950s/60s

  1. Drawing attention - marches drew attention to situation, providing social proof of the problem of segregation.
  2. Consistency - Many marches (activists displayed consistency of message and intent)
  3. Deeper processing of issue - Attention meant that people who accepted status quo began to think about unjustness of it.
• Social influence and Social Change 2

  The special role of minority influence 2

  4) The augmentation principle - number of incidents where individuals risked their lives. 'Freedom riders' were mixed racial groups who got on buses in South to challenge fact that black people had to sit separately.

  5) The snowball effect - Activists such as Martin Luther King continued to press for changes that gradually got attention of the US gov. 1964- US civil rights act passed (represented a change from minority to majority support for civil rights).
• Social influence and Social Change 3

  The special role of minority influence 3

  6) Social cryptomnesia - people have memory that change occurred but can't remember how.
• Social influence and Social Change 4

  Lessons from conformity research

  Environmental campaigns increasingly exploit conformity processes by appealing to NSI. They do this by providing info about what other people are doing. E.g., reducing litter by printing normative messages on litter bins ('Bin it - others do'). Social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing.
• Social influence and Social Change 5

  Lessons from obedience research

  Milgram's research demonstrates importance of disobedient role models. In variation where confederate teacher refuses to give shock, rate of obedience plummeted. Zimbardo (2007) suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through process of gradual commitment. Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one. People 'drift' into a new kind of behaviour.
• Social influence and Social change- 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. They hung messages on front doors in San Diego each week for a month. Some had a key message that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some had a diff message that just asked them to save energy. Found sig decreases in energy usage in first group. Shows conformity can lead to social change through the operation of NSI.
• Social influence and Social change- evaluation 2

  Minority influence is only indirectly effective. Charlan Nemeth (1986) argues that the effects of minority influence are likely to be mostly indirect (majority is influenced on matters only related to issues at hand, not central issue) and delayed (effects may not be seen for some time). Shows that effects are fragile and role in social influence very limited.