Social Influence Flashcards
(16 cards)
What is Social Influence?
Process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviors.
Includes conformity, obedience, and minority influence.
Define Social Change.
Occurs when societies adopt new attitudes, beliefs, and ways of doing things.
This process involves collective shifts rather than just individual changes.
List the 6 steps of social change.
- Drawing attention
- Consistency
- Deeper processing
- Augmentation principle
- Snowball effect
- Social cryptomnesia
What historical movement exemplifies minority influence leading to social change?
African American Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s against segregation
Describe the first step in how minority influence created social change.
Drawing attention - Marching through the streets (social proof of the problem).
Describe the second step in how minority influence created social change.
Consistency - lots of marches with large amounts of people
Describe the third step in how minority influence created social change.
Deeper processing - people who had once accepted the situation are now thinking about ineqaulity
What does the Augmentation Principle refer to in the context of minority influence?
Some individuals risked their lives, e.g., freedom riders rode on buses to challenge the situations, some were beaten.
What is the Snowball Effect in the context of social change?
Black people continued to push for change until it gained government attention and discrimination was prohibited.
Social change from minority to majority support for civil rights
What is Social Cryptomnesia?
Knowing the change has occurred but not remembering how.
What key lesson does Asch’s research provide regarding conformity?
Highlighted the importance of dissenters.
Dissenters can break the power of the majority and encourage others to dissent.
What did Milgram’s research demonstrate about obedience?
Importance of disobedient roles; obedience rates plummeted in the presence of dissenters.
Explain Zimbardo’s study of obedience to create social change
Process of gradual commitment as once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes hard to resist a bigger one making people drift into a new behaviour
What was strengths of normative influence?
Nolan et al investigated if social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption through hanging messages (most residences were trying to reduce consumption) on front doors in San Franscisco every week for a month against a control message that didnt label actions
Significant reduction in energy consumption and shows conformity can lead to social change thru normative influence
Identify a limitation of minority influence.
Social change is slow; it can take decades to change attitudes toward issues like drink-driving and smoking. Nemeth argues that effects are indirect and delayed making them fragile
shows limited role of minority influence
What is a limitation of the methodologies used in studies on social influence and social change?
Moscovici, Asch and Milgram used flawed methodology that raises doubts about the validity of their explanations.
