social influence and social change

Drawing attention

- segregation in 1950s America in places like schools etc were exclusive to whites.
- drawing attention to such issues by providing social proof to the problem is effective.

Consistency

- people take part in marches of long scale, sticking to this consistently makes you seem more committed.

Deeper processing

- people who accepted status quo think deeper about it and what it acc means

Augmentation principle

- where a group of people perform am action they known to be constraints two strengthen e.g. freedom fighters were both white and black in order to fight against separation and many were beat and hit.
- this personal risk strengthens their message

Snowball effect

- gradually the minority becoming majority over time growing like a snowball

Social crypto-amnesia

- social change came about but some people don't have memory of events leading to the change

Lessons from research - dissenter

- dissenters make social change more likely
- Asch's research variations where one confederate always gave correct answers broke the power of the majority encouraging others to dissent.

Lessons from research - NSI

- environmental and health campaigns exploit conformity by appealing to NSI.
- they provide info about what others do 'bin it, others do'.

Lessons from research - disobedient models

- disobedience models make change more likely.
- milgrams research with disobedient models in variations where congederates refused to give shots and the rate of obedience fell

Lessons from research - gradual commitment and drift

- gradual commitment leads to drifts.
- Zimbardo - once a small instruction is obeyed it becomes more difficult to resits a bigger one. People drift into a new kind of behaviour.

Strength (1)

• One strength is that minority influence explains social change.

• Nemeth says that minority arguments cause people to engage in divergent thinking. This thinking leads to better decisions and creative solutions to social problems.

• Shows why minority influence is valuable to real life.

Limitation

• one limitation is deeper processing may apply to majority influence.

• Mackie disagrees with the view that minority influence causes individuals in majority to deeply think about it.

• Majority influence creates deeper processing as we believe others think as we do.

• When a majority thinks differently this creates pressures to think about their views.

• Therefore a central element of minority influence has been challenge casting a doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change.

Strength (2)

• Support from NSI in social change.

• Nolan hung messages in front doors of houses. The key messages was most residents are trying to reduce energy usage.

• Significant decreases in energy use compared to control group who saw messages to save energy with no reference to people.

• This shows conformity can leave to social change via NSI.

• HOWEVER exposing people to social norms may not change their behaviour. Foxcroft reviewed 70 studies of programmes using social normals to reduce alcohol intake. Only small effect on drinking quantity and no effect on frequency. Showing NSI is not always long term social change.