Social change notes
Social influence- the process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours. Includes conformity, obedience and minority influence
Social change- occurs when whole societies rather than just individuals adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things
Real world example of how minority social influence creates social change- the African-American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s
Drawing attention through social proof- the civil rights marches of the period drew attention to the issue of segregation, providing social proof of the problem
Consistency- millions of people took part in many marches over several years, always presenting the same non-aggressive messages
Deeper processing of the issue- the activism encouraged people to think about the issue
Augmentation principle- individuals risked their lives numerous times- many freedom riders were beaten. This personal risk indicated a strong belief and reinforces their message
The snowball effect- activists gradually got the attention of the US government, leading to more and more people backing their position, and eventually the US civil rights act in 1964
Social cryptoamnesia- social change has clearly happened, however some people have no memory (cryptoamnesia) of events that led to that change
Conformity research in social change
In Asch’s research, when one confederate gave correct answers, this broke the unanimity of the majority, and encouraged others to do the same
Social change can occur due to normative social influence- an example of this would be reducing litter by printing normative messages on litter bins
Obedience research in social change
Milgram’s research demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models- in a variation where a confederate refused to give the learner shocks, the rate of obedience decreased
Zimbardo suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment. Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one. People essentially ‘drift’ into a new kind of behaviour
Evaluation
+ Research support- Nolan et al (2008)
Hung messages on the front doors of houses to see if they could change energy usage
Experimental condition- messages talking about how others were reducing energy usage
Control condition- messages that asked to save energy but made no reference to other people’s behaviour
Significant decreases in energy usage in the first group compared to the second
- Contradicting research- Foxcroft et al (2015)
Reviewed 70 studies where the social norms approach was used to reduce student alcohol usage
Found only a small reduction in drinking quantity and no effect on drinking frequency
+ Supporting evidence- Nemeth (2009)
Claims social change is due to the type of thinking minorities inspire
The divergent thinking is more broad, in which the thinker actively searches for information and weighs up more options
Argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues
- Role of deeper processing
Deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change
Majority influence may create deeper processing if you do not share their views, because we like to believe that other people share our views and think in the same ways as us
When we find that a majority believed something different, we are forced to think about their arguments and reasoning