Social Change

Question 1

What is social change?

Answer 1

when a whole society adopts a new belief of way of behaving that then becomes widely accepted as the norm

e.g attitudes towards homosexuality

Question 2

Processes of social change

Answer 2

PROCESSES

• Drawing attention to issue - if minorities views are different from majorities it creates a conflict that people want to reduce
• Cognitive conflict - requires majority to think more deeply about the issues
• Consistency of position - Moscovici
• Augmentation effect - minority willing to suffer for their cause so it is taken more seriously by the majority
• Snowball effect - overtime minority view becomes majority view - NSI urges others to join
• Social cryptoamnesia - minority ideas assimilated into majority viewpoint without those in majority remembering where the ideas came from

Question 3

EVALUATION

Answer 3

EVALUATION

• Minority can be seen as deviants and not always bring change - Bashir et al
• Real-life conformity - Nolan et al
• Effects are fragile and not guaranteed - nemeth
• Criticism on MI leading to Social change

Question 4

EVAL: Minority seen as deviants

Answer 4

Minority seen as deviants

• Bashir et al points out that they have a low status in society and so some may be dissauded from joining
• fear of being sterrotypically-labeled
• e.g feminists - manhaters, suffragettes - radical
• research may lack external validity fails to compensate real-world consequences

Question 5

EVAL: Real-life social change

Answer 5

Real-life social change

• Nolan et al hung up messages every week highlighting most resident were trying to reduce energy use in california
• as a control, another area had signs up asking people to use less energy but did not refer to the actions of others
• found decrease of energy use in experimental condition
• empirical evidence that social norms interventions→ social change

Question 6

EVAL: Criticism on MI leading to social change

Answer 6

Criticism on MI leading to social change

• social changees happens slowly e.g attitudes against drink-driving
• Nemeth - minority effects indirect and delayed
• snowball effect gives impression that it is a simple, constant process
• effects are fragile and not guaranteed to happen
• Martin et al showed that MI can create deeper thinking, empirical support
• Mackie majority can be influential too as people strive to understand their differing view (misperception) so will think deeply (systematic processing)
• role of deeper thinking may be more complex than Martin proposed, lacks validity