social change OFF SPEC

AO1

• Social change refers to how whole societies adopt new attitudes, beliefs, or behaviours.

• Psychologists argue that minority influence can lead to social change if the minority is consistent, committed, and flexible in their message.

• The process starts with drawing attention to an issue.

• The minority must then show consistency over time and among its members.

• Deeper processing occurs when people start to question their own views because the minority presents a new way of thinking.

• When the minority demonstrates commitment like taking risks or making sacrifices which it boosts their credibility this is known as the augmentation principle.

• Eventually, the majority begins to accept the message, and the change becomes snowballed, spreading more widely until it becomes the new norm this is called the snowball effect.

• Over time, the change becomes internalised, leading to permanent shifts in attitudes where people forget the source of the change but accept the new norm

• One example is the civil rights movement in the US, where a consistent, committed minority led to massive legal and societal changes through the exact processes described above.

AO3

• One strength is that there’s experimental evidence that supports the idea that a consistent minority can influence the majority.

• in a study, a consistent minority who said blue slides were green led 32% of participants to conform at least once.

• Inconsistent minorities were way less effective.

• This shows that consistency is a key factor in changing majority views which is exactly what the theory says is needed for social change.

• So this research gives solid support to how minority influence can be a starting point for large-scale change.

AO3

• Another strength of social change is that there are real-world examples of minority influence leading to actual social change.

• Movements like the civil rights movement, suffragette movement, all started with consistent, committed minorities challenging the mainstream and eventually achieving massive legal and social shifts.

• These cases reflect the exact processes described in social change theory: drawing attention, deeper processing, augmentation principle, and the snowball effect.

• This boosts the external validity of the theory, showing it can apply outside the lab in real-world, large-scale changes.

  
  

AO3

• However, most research into minority influence uses artificial tasks, which reduces how much we can generalise.

• For example, judging slide colours isn’t the same as adopting radical political or moral beliefs as it lacks emotional, cultural, or societal context.

• This means the findings might lack ecological validity, as people may not behave the same way in real, high-stakes social movements.

• So while the theory sounds nice, it might oversimplify how complicated real-life social change actually is.