Social Change Flashcards
(6 cards)
Social change-minority influence
Let’s consider the steps in how minority social influence creates social change by looking at a real-world example - the African-American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 605.
(1) Drawing attention through social proof - In the 1950s, black and white segregation applied to all parts of America. There were black neighbourhoods and, in the southern states of America, places such as certain schools and restaurants were exclusive to whites. The civil rights marches of this period drew attention to this situation, providing social proof of the problem.
(2) Consistency - Civil rights activists represented a minority of the American population, but their position remained consistent. Millions of people took part in many marches over several years, always presenting the same non-aggressive messages.
(3) Deeper processing of the issue - The activism meant that many people who had simply accepted the status quo began to think deeply about the unjustness of it.
(4) The augmentation principle - Individuals risked their lives numerous times. For example the
‘freedom riders’ were mixed ethnic groups who boarded buses in the south, challenging racial segregation of transport. Many freedom riders were beaten. This personal risk indicates a strong belief and reinforces (or augments) their message.
(5) The snowball effect - Activists (e.g. Martin Luther King) gradually got the attention of the US government. More and more people backed the minority position. In 1964 the US Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination, marking a change from minority to majority support for civil rights.
(6) Social cryptomnesia (people have a memory that change has occurred but don’t remember how it happened) - Social change clearly did come about so the south is quite a different place now. But some people have no memory (cryptoamnesia) of the events that led to that change.
Lessons from conformity research
Asch- one confederate gave correct answer, broke power of majority, encouraging others to- has potential to lead to social change.
A different approach is one used by environmental and health campaigns which exploit conformity processes by appealing to normative social influence. They do this by providing information about what other people are doing. Examples include reducing litter by printing normative messages on litter bins (Bin it - others do), and preventing young people from taking up smoking (telling them that most other young people do not smoke). In other words social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing.
Lessons from obedience research
Milgrams research demonstrates importance of disobedient role models. Another disobedient teacher.
Zimbardo (2007) suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment. Once small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one. People essentially drift into a new kind of behaviour.
Strength- research support for normative influences
Nolan et al (2008) aimed to see if they could change peoples energy use habits. Researchers hung messages on front doors every week for a month- key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy. Significant decrease in energy usage in first group. Shows that conformity can lead to social change through NSI.
C-However some studies show that people’s behaviour is not always changed through exposing them to social norms. David Foxcroft et al. (2015) reviewed social norms interventions as part of the gold standard’ Cochrane Collaboration. This review included 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.
Therefore it seems that using normative influence does not always produce long-term social change.
Strength-minority influence
Another strength is that psychologists can explain how minority influence brings about social change.
Charlan Nemeth (2009) claims social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire. When people consider minority arguments, they engage in divergent thinking. This type of thinking is broad rather than narrow, in which the thinker actively searches for information and weighs up more options. Nemeth argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues.
This shows why dissenting minorities are valuable - they stimulate new
ideas and open minds in a way that majorities cannot.
Limitation-deeper processing
One limitation is that deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change.
Some people are supposedly converted because they think more deeply about the minority’s views. Diane Mackie (1987) disagrees and presents evidence that it is majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their views (have same views). This is 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 believes something different, then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning.
This means that a central element of minority influence has been challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change.
