Social Influence & Social Change

• Define 'social change'

  Social change occurs when whole societies, not just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and behaviours.
• Define 'social influence'

  The process by which individuals and groups change each other's attitudes and behaviours. Social influence includes conformity, obedience and minority and majority influence.
• Lessons from minority influence research

  1. Drawing attention through social proof - the minority alert the majority to certain issues affecting them. This could be through marches and protests, which draw attention to the issue and provide social proof of the problem.

  2. Consistency - the minority continues to be consistent in their beliefs; through portraying the same consistent message.

  3. Deeper processing - the activism and call for change makes the majority rethink their beliefs.

  4. Augmentation principle - individuals in the minority are willing to make personal sacrifices for the cause. This personal risk indicates a strong belief and reinforces their message.

  5. Snowball effect - protesters and activists slowly get the attention of those in power. The minority's message spreads as people change their views to fit with the minority. The minority become the majority.

  6. Social cryptomnesia - people have a memory that change occurred but do not know how it was brought about.
• Lessons from conformity research

  - Environmental and health campaigns exploit conformity processes by appealing to NSI. They do this by providing information about what other people are doing. For example, reducing litter by printing messages like 'Bin it - others do' on bins. Another is stopping young people smoking by saying that most young people do not smoke.

  - Social change is brought about by drawing attention to what the majority are doing.
• Lessons from obedience research

  - Milgram's research demonstrates the role of disobedient role models. The obedience rate plummeted in the variation where the confederate Teacher refused to give a shock.

  - Zimbardo (2007) suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through gradual commitment. Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes harder to resist a bigger one. People essentially 'drift' into this new behaviour.
• Evaluating social change: Research support for normative influences (with counterpoint)


  - Nolan et al. (2008) aimed to see if they could change people's energy use habits.

  - The researchers hung messages on the front doors of houses in San Diego, California for a week. The key message was that majority of the residents in the area were reducing their energy usage.

  - As a control, some doors had messages just asking them to reduce their energy use, without referencing what others were doing.

  - There were significant decreases in energy usage in the first group compared to the control.

  - This shows that conformity can lead to social change through the utilisation of NSI.

  
  

  - Counterpoint: However, some studies show that people do not always change their behaviour when exposing them to a social norm.

  - Foxcroft et al. (2015) reviewed social norms interventions as part of the gold-standard Cochrane Collaboration.

  - This review included 70 studies where the social norms approach was used to reduce students drinking and using alcohol. The researchers found only a small reduction in drinking quantity and no effect on drinking frequency.

  - Therefore, it seems that NSI doesn't always produce long term change, i.e. compliance
• Evaluating social change: Minority influence explains change

  - Nemeth (2009) claims that social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire.

  - When people think about the minority's arguments, they engage in divergent thinking, thinking that opposes the norm.

  - This type of thinking is broad rather than narrow, in which the thinker actively searches for information and weighs up the options.

  - Nemeth argues that this leads to better decisions being made and more creative solutions to social issues.

  - This shows why dissenting minorities are valuable, they stimulate new ideas and open minds in a way that majorities are unable to do.
• Evaluating social change: Role of deeper processing


  - A limitation is a difference of opinion in how deeper processing is involved in minority influence.

  - Mackie (1987) disagrees with the belief that people are converted because they think about the minority's views.

  - She thinks that it is majority influence which causes deeper processing if you don't share the same views.

  - This is because we like to believe that other people share our views and think in the same ways as us.

  - When we find that a majority believes different, we are forced to think about their arguments and reasoning.

  - This means that a central element of minority influence has been challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change.
• Evaluating social change: Barriers to social change

  - Bashir et al. (2013) found that participants were less likely to behave in an environmentally-friendly way because they didn't want to be associated with the stereotypical environmentalists. They see this minority negatively e.g. tree-huggers.

  - Despite this resistance, the researchers were still able to suggest ways in which minorities can overcome these barriers to social change.