Social influence processes in social change

Stage 1

Draw attention to issue - by being consistent, committed, flexible

Stage 2

• Cognitive Dissonance - people’s belife & behavior don’t align

• Doesn’t always result in a move to the minority, but makes them think about the issue more deeply

Stage 3

Consistency of position - maintaining beliefs & behavior, regardless of the attitudes of those around them

Stage 4

Augmentation principle - if a minority are willing to suffer for their views, they’re seen as more committed & more likely to be taken seriously than others

Stage 5

Snowball effect - starts off with small effect, then spreads more widely as more people consider the issue, reaching a tipping point, leading to wide scale change

Stage 6

Social cryptoamnesia - majority takes on board minority’s views, but forget where they cam efrom or deliberately dissociate themselves due to negative image the majority don’t want to be associated with

Social change definition

When a whole society adopts a new attitude or belief which becomes the norm which wasn’t before

AO3 No 1 - supporting research

• Supporting research for social cryptoamnesia

• Bashir et al found people weren’t environmentally friendly or feminists as they’re seen as ‘militant’, ‘man haters’ and ‘tree huggers’, reducing people’s willingness to adopt social change behaviors advocated by activists

• Explaining the recent shift to being environmentally friendly, social cryptoamnesia has occurred - society must’ve forgotten the source of where the message originally came from

AO3 No 2 - role of majority in social change

• Role of majority influence in social change

• Nolan et al hung messages outside peoples’ homes saying ‘most residents are reducing their energy usage’ or asked them to reduce it (no mention of other residents). Only difference seen in the 1st group only

• Shultz found 75% guests re-used their towels each day when seeing the message ‘most guests re-use’, implying people will change their habit if the majority are

• Showing majority influence can bring about social change

AO3 No 3 - useful applications

• Research can be applied to bring successful social change

• Bashir’s advice - behave in ways that don’t reinforce negative stereotypes as it’ll put off majority

• Communists were deemed as deviants, to avoid this issue they made it clear in their manifesto they’ve no interest in separating the proletariat from the majority - they were a part of them and the bourgeois were against them all

• Useful in changing most people views on them, showing usefulness of research into social change.