Social change Flashcards
What is minority influence?
A form of social influence where people reject the established norm of the majority of group members and move to the position of the minority.
What is normative social influence?
It is the result of wanting to be liked and be a part of the group by following social norms.
What is informational social influence?
It is the result of wanting to be right- looking to others for the right answer.
What is social impact theory?
It is the likelihood that a person will respond to social influence will increase with: strength of group, immediacy and number of people in the group.
What is social change?
When a whole society adopts a new belief or way of behaving which then becomes widely accepted as the norm.
describe Moscivici study.
(1969) operationalized minority influence by testing the colour perception of groups of 6 women. 2 confederates consistently incorrectly named 36 blue slides as green. Participants agreed with the minority that the slides were green on 8.42% of the trials. This was compared to a condition that required the confederates to be inconsistent, correctly identifying the slides as blue a third of the time. agreement was just 1.25%. 32% gave the same answer as the minority at least once. It was concluded that to be effective the minority must be consistent, leading the group to question and change its existing views.
what are the disadvantages of Moscivici’s study?
small sample size, ethical issues
laboratory experiment: As events do not occur in the natural environment the research may have low validity and it is not possible to generalise from the laboratory situation to naturally occurring events.
• The laboratory situation means more likelihood of demand characteristics
• The more variables and people are manipulated the more likelihood of ethical dilemmas.
what are the advantages of Moscivici’s study?
participants are safe and not harmed in anyway.
laboratory experiment: As all variables have been controlled the results are thought to be reliable.
• It can be easily checked for reliability as others can replicate the procedure.
• Conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect relationships.
• The pace of research can be forced – you can simulate the conditions you want to investigate.
why does minority influence cause social change?
Consistency draws attention of the majority to the integrity of the minority behaviour. This makes the majority assess their own thinking and behaviour. As a result the majority could adopt the minorities position. The more people that change their view the more likely the minority becomes a majority.
How can Milgram’s experiment be an example of social change?
It helps us to understand social change through an agentic shift in a large scale way, to obeying orders in the Nazi Germany genocide.
