social change Flashcards
(8 cards)
What is social change?
Occurs when whole societies rather than just individuals adopt new attitudes eg women’s rights , gay marriage
What is social cryptoamnesia?
When people have memory of a change occurring but don’t know how it happened
Lessons from minority influence research (civil rights example)
1)drawing attention through social proof: civil rights activists began to protest segregation in the 1950s, drawing attention to the issue, providing social proof of the problem
2)consistency: activists were a minority but remained consistent and presented the same non-aggressive message in all marches
3)deeper processing of the issue: those who accepted segregation previously began to think deeply about how unjustified and unfair it was was
4)augmentation principle: activists risks their lives numerous times, eg freedom riders continued to challenge bus segregation despite KKK activity and being beaten. Personal risk indicates strong beliefs and reinforces the message
5) snowball effect: activists eventually got attention of the government and more and more people supported the movement and the 1964 CRA was passed
6)social cryptoamnesia: the south is now a very different place to what it used to be but some people don’t remember how this change occurred
Lessons from conformity research
Asch highlighted importance of dissent in one of his variations as this ultimately led to social change.
Environmental and health campaigns exploit conformity processes by appealing to NSI by providing info about what other people are doing eg stickers about recycling on bins and how other people don’t litter and telling young people that the majority of other young people don’t smoke. Social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing
Lessons from obedience research
Milgram clear,y demonstrated the importance of disobedient role models. In variation where confederate teacher refuses to shock learner, rate of naive pps obeying plummeted. Zimbardo suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through gradual commitment. Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one and people drift into a new kind of behaviour
What is a strength of social influence and social change? (Research support for normative influence)
One strength is that research shows that social influence processes based on psychological research do work. Eg Nolan aimed to see if they could change people’s energy use habits. Researchers hung messages on front doors in San Diego every week for one month saying most residents were trying to reduce energy usage. Significantly less energy used compared to control group who was just told to reduce energy and weren’t told about other people trying to do the same. This shows conformity can lead to social change through NSI
What is a strength of SI and SC? (minority influence explains change)
One strength is that psychologists can extol in how minority influence brings about social change. Nemeth claims SC is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire. When people consider minority arguments, they engage in divergent, deep thinking in which they actively search for information and weigh up their options.argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues. Shows that dissenting minority are valuable and stimulate new ideas the majority can’t
What is a limitation of SC and SI? (Role of deeper processing)
One ,imitation is that deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change. Some people are supposedly converted as they think more deeply about the minority view. Mackie disagrees And presents a view that it is majority influence that creates deeper thinking if you don’t share their views. This is because we like to believe that other people share our views. When we find that the majority believes something different, we are then forced to think long and hard about their arguments. This means the central element of minority influence has been challenged, questioning the validity of it as an explanation for social change
