Social Influence: Social Change Flashcards
When does Social Change occur?
Occurs when significant sections of society, rather than just individuals, adopt new ways of thinking and behaving.
How does resisting Social Influence play an important role in initiating social change?
Because social change cannot begin unless one or more individuals within a society can resist the majorities way of thinking or behaving. If this resistance doesn’t occur, no one will ever advocate for social change.
What type of Locus of control is more likely to initiate social change?
Internal Locus of control are more likely to resist social influence.
Why does Minority Influence play an important role in social change?
Social change can only occur when the minority persuade the majority. Minorities can be affected in driving social change as they can produce a powerful & long lasting change in thinking or behaviour called conversion (driven by minority influences & drive social change through the snowball effect).
What are the THREE techniques the minorities use to persuade the majority that social change should occur?
- Commitment - demonstrate their own belief in the social change.
- Consistency - shows they truly believe in the message.
- Flexibility - means social influence has a better chance of occurring if the minority group advocating can listen and show willingness to adopt the majority position.
Why does Conformity initially act as an obstacle to social change?
Because of people continue to behave and think like the majority, society won’t change.
Why does Conformity encourage social change?
Because eventually the new viewpoint behaviour will be accepted by the majority. After this, social change can be driven by NSI , pressuring those now in the minority to change their private views.
How can Obedience help social change?
Because it depends on who the relevant authority figures are. It may be that the authority figure delivers orders that obstruct social change.
How has research demonstrated the value in studying the role of social influence processes on social change?
Nolan (2008) hung messages on doors in California with a message to reduce energy consumption. Messages which stated other residents were trying to reduce their energy consumption were most effective. This illustrates the power of conformity as a driver for social change. The message stating other residents were reducing their energy use harnessed the power of NSI and encouraged the Californian residents receiving the message to comply with the energy saving behaviour. This demonstrates that it isn’t just minority influence that is key to social change but majority influence too. It is strengthened by the field experiment as field experiments are conducted in naturalistic conditions, the behaviour they observed is more likely to be natural and therefore the study can be generalised to other real world situations.
How has research demonstrated the identity of a minority group affects their ability to advocate for social change?
Maass eg al. (1982) investigated the idea of a group membership and found that a minority of heterosexual men were more persuasive than homosexual men in convincing heterosexual men to change their views on gay rights than in comparison to a minority of homosexual people. It demonstrates that straight men have more persuasive power discussing gay rights with other straight men, in comparison to gay men. Also suggesting that minority groups who wish to enact social change should focus their attention on converting someone within the dominant social group, as such converts will have the appropriate identity to better persuade others within the majority group.
How does the research into the impacts of social influence processes on social change lack ecological validity?
Most research has only been conducted in the laboratory. For example Moscovicis research on minority influence was conducted in controlled conditions. Social change is very difficult to replicate in the laboratory therefore much of our research tells us nothing about how these processes operate in the real world. However, real world research can be conducted through experiments such as field, but these may lack experimental control that a lab experiments may have.
What is the Snowball Effect?
This is when those people converted to the minority position may then go on to
persuade others of the minority message. This results in an increasing pace of change until eventually the minority position becomes the majority position, leading to social change.
