SI: Social influence processes in social change Flashcards
(22 cards)
What are some real life examples of social influence in many different types of social change?
The birth of trade unionism.
The actions of the suffragettes.
The paralympic movement.
What power do persuasive groups possess in order to bring about social change?
How can social change come about?
- Their ability to organise, educate and mobilise support for their cause.
- When individuals band together and form an organisation to focus their collective power.
What are the different stages in the process of conversion?
- Drawing attention to an issue.
- Cognitive conflict.
- Consistency of position.
- The augmentation principle.
- The snowball effect.
DRAWING ATTENTION TO AN ISSUE
How do minorities bring about a social change?
- By drawing the majority’s attention to an issue.
- If their views are different to those held by the majority, this creates a conflict that they are motivated to reduce.
How did the suffragettes draw attention to their issue?
They used educational, political and militant tactics to draw attention to the fact that women were denied the same voting rights as men.
COGNITIVE CONFLICT
What does the minority create a conflict between?
What does it result in?
- Creates a conflict between what majority group members currently believe and the position advocated by the minority.
- It doesn’t necessarily result in a move towards the minority position, but it does mean that majority group members think more deeply about the issues being challenged.
Cognitive conflict
What did the suffagettes do?
How did some people deal with the conflict?
- They created a conflict for majority group members between the existing status quo (only men allowed to vote) and the position advocated by the suffragettes (votes for women.)
- Some people dealt with this conflict by moving towards the position advocated by the suffragettes, others simply dismissed it.
CONSISTENCY
What has research on minority influence established?
Established that minorities tend to be more influential in bringing about social change when they express their arguments consistently (over time and with each other).
CONSISTENCY OF POSITION
What did the suffragettes do?
- They were consistent in their views, regardless of the attitudes of those around them.
- Protests and political lobbying that continued for years, plus the fact that women played a conspicuous role in WW1, eventually convinced society that some women were ready for the vote.
THE AUGMENTATION PRINCIPLE
How does a minority appear if they are willing to suffer for their views?
They are seen as more committed and so taken more seriously by others.
THE AUGMENTATION PRINCIPLE
How did the suffragettes demonstrate this?
As the suffragettes were willing to risk imprisonment or even death from hunger strike, their influence became more powerful (i.e. it was augmented).
THE SNOWBALL EFFECT
What occurs in this effect?
How is this demonstrated by the suffragette movement?
- Minority influence initially has a relatively small effect but this then spreads more widely as more and more people consider the issues being promoted, until it reaches a “tipping point”, at which point it leads to wide- scale social change!
- Universal suffrage (all adult citizens having the vote) was finally accepted by the majority of people in the UK.
What has research consistently demonstrated that behavioural choices are related to?
Group norms, i.e. they are the subject of normative influence.
What did the social norms approach (Perkins and Berkowitz, 1986) say?
If people perceive something to be the norm, they tend to alter their behaviour to fitn that norm.
Give a real life example of the social norms approach.
- E.g. If university students think that heavy drinking is the norm, then they’ll drink more.
- If they think that responsible drinking is the norm, then they’ll drink less (i.e. they conform).
What is behaviour based on?
Based more on what people think others believe and do
( the ‘perceived norm’) than on their real beliefs and actions (the ‘actual norm’).
What is the gap between the perceived and actual norm referred to as?
What is correcting this the basis for?
Misperception
Correcting this misperception is the basis for an approach to social change known as social norms interventions.
Social norms interventions
How do they typically start by?
Give a real life example.
- Typically start by identifying a widespread misperception relating to a specified risky behaviour within a target population.
- E.g. Young adults generally misperceive the frequency and quantity of alcohol typically consumed by their peers and as a result develop norms that justify their own heavy drinking behaviour.
SOCIAL NORMS INTERVENTIONS
What are perception correction strategies used for?
What is the aim of these strategies?
- They can be used in media campaigns, promotional material and through other routes.
- The aim is to communicate to the target population the actual norm concerning that particular behaviour.
SOCIAL NORMS INTERVENTIONS
What do researchers hope by advertising the actual norms?
Researchers hope that recipients will moderate their own behaviour to bring it more in line with the behaviour of their peers.
Evaluation/ discussion
Social change through minority influence is gradual…
P- Social change through minority influence is very gradual.
E- The role played by minority influence may be limited since minorities such as the suffragetes rarely bring about social change quickly.
E- This is because there is a strong tendency for human beings to conform to the majority position, people are more likely to maintain the status quo than engage in social change.
L- This suggests that the influence of a minority is frequently more latent than direct (i.e. creates the potential for change rather than actual social change.)
Evaluation/ discussion
Being perceived as ‘deviant’ limits the influence of minorities
P- Being perceived as ‘devient’ limits the influence of minorities- as the majority sees them as ‘devient’
E- Members of the majority may avoid aligning themselves with the minority position as they do not want to be seen as devient themselves.
E- The message of the minority would then have very little impact because the focus of the majorities attention would be the source of the message (i.e. the devient minority) rather than the message itself.
L- In trying to bring about social change, therefore, minorities face the double challenge of avoiding being portrayed as deviants and also making people directly embrace their position.
