Social influence and social change

6 aspects for social change:

Drawing attention, consistency, deeper processing, the augmentation principle, the snowball effect and social cryptomnesia

Social cryptomnesia:

People have a memory that change has occurred but they don't know how it happened

Lessons from conformity:

Campaigns against ill-advised behaviours. E.g. ‘bin it, others do’

Lessons from obedience:

Zimbardo argued gradual commitment, once a small action is obeyed, it can lead to bigger ones

Methodological issues in research

Moscovici, Asch and Milgram’s research was all done in a lab making it have low ecological validity

Alternative methods

In Asch’s research, increasing numbers are what convinced pps to change their answers. Majority is what is needed to convince others, challenges central aspect of minority influence, lowers validity.

Application to the real world

Social change about women rights and smoking. This is because people went to the extreme to show that these things needed to changed eg the augmentation principle HOWEVER these things take a long time to happen and some may not even happen at all.