social change

• what is social influence?

  the process by which individuals and groups change each others attitudes and behaviours.
• what is the legitimacy of authority?

  an explanation for obedience where we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us due to the position of power that they hold within society.
• What are the factors involved in social change?

  1. A attention
  2. C cognitive conflict
  3. C consistency
  4. T the augmentation principle
  5. S snowball effect
• what is the argumentation principle?

  People perform an action when there are known constraints and risks to them, so their motivation for acting must be stronger.
• what is social cryptomnesia?

  when minority ideas are assimilated into the majority viewpoint without those in the majority remembering where the ideas came from.
• strength. schultz et al. 2008 Normative social influence can change behaviour. They used 132 hotels where guests stayed for one week. rooms were randomly allocated into experimental or control conditions.

  the experimental condition received messages on the door about the benefits of reusing towels, as well as a message stating at 75% of guests choose to reuse their towels.

  the control condition received a message on the door about benefits of reusing towels.

  the results said that those experiencing normative influence reduce their need for fresh towels by 25%.
• a methodological critism of social change is that much of the research on social change used the work of acsh as a baseline, however, these studies have all been conducted in a lab setting meaning they require little moral reasoning or ethical thought. therefore, it is more difficult to apply these studies to everyday studies of social change as they lack validity.
• what is drawing attention?

  where you draw attention to the issue that you want other people to follow
• what is consistency?

  when you keep up with what your saying and keep consistent with it
• what is deeper processing?

  when you get people to think about it and actually process what your trying to tell them.
• what is the snowball effect?

  The snowball effect refers to a situation where something starts small and gradually grows larger and more significant over time.
• research supporting normative influence?

  Research has shown that social influence processes are based on psychological research. Nolan et al. aimed to see if they could change people's energy use habits. the researchers hung messages on the front doors of houses in Sandiego, California every week for one month. there was a significant decrease in energy usage in the first group compared to the second group. this shows that conformity can lead to social change through the power of normative social influence.
• minority influence explains the change

  a strength is that psychologists can explain how minority influence brings about social change. Nemeth 2009 claims that social change is due to thinking that minorities inspire. when people consider minority arguments, they engage in divergent thinking. he argued that this led to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues.
• role of deeper processing

  a limitation is that deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change. mackie 1987 disagrees and presents evidence that it is majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their views. this is to believe that other people share their views and think in the same ways as us.