Social Change Flashcards
What is social change?
Occurs when whole societies rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things. E.G gay rights, environmental issues.
What are the 6 stages that make a minority lead to a majority and social change.
1- Drawing Attention
2- Consistency
3- Deeper processing
4- Augmentation principle
5- Snowball effects
6- Social cryptoamnesia
How does normative social influence link to social change?
When the minority slowly starts to become the majority, people go with the new majority in order to be liked and accepted.
How might a minority draw attention to themselves?
Protests, marches, riots.
What is deeper processing?
People start to actually question their own beliefs due to the minority drawing attention to themselves.
What is the augmentation principle?
Individuals risk their lives or harm in order to promote what they believe in.
What is social cryptoamesia?
People have a memory that change has happened but aren’t aware how it happened.
What is the research of Nolan (2008)
Aimed to see if could change energy use habits.
Hung messages on front door of houses every week for one month about reducing usage
Control group just had messages asking them to save energy.
Significant energy decreases in 1st group compared to second.
What did Foxcroft (2015) find?
Reviewed 70 studies where the social norms approach was used to reduce student alcohol use. The researchers found only a small reduction in drinking quantity and no effect on drinking frequency.
What did Charlan Nemeth (2009) find?
Claims social change is due to type of thinking that minorities inspire. When people consider minority arguments, they engage in divergent thinking.
Broader thinking about issue.
