Social Influence and Social Change

Question 1

What is social Influence?

Answer 1

• When individuals and groups change each others attitudes and behaviours. Includes conformity ,obedience and minority influence

Question 2

What is social change?

Answer 2

• When societies rather than individuals adopt new attitudes ,beliefs and ways of doing things. Things include suffragette and gay rights movement.

Question 3

Explain lessons from the minority influence research?

Answer 3

• The steps that made changes from minority influence to social change are:
  1) Drawing attention: There was a lot of black and white segregation. Civil right marches made draw attention.
  2) Consistency: Their position remained consistent, Millions took part in marches
  3) Deeper processing: The activism made people think deeply abt it
  4) Augmentation process: Individuals risked their lives multiple times, they were beaten
  5) The snowball effect: MLK got attention of US government making a change from minority to majority
  6) Social cryptomnesia: People have a memory that change happened

Question 4

Explain lessons from conformity research?

Answer 4

• When a confederate gives a different answer than the majority this breaks the power of the majority and leads to social change. For example environmental activists put signs up like bin it everyone else does. This is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority is doing.

Question 5

Explain lessons from obedience research?

Answer 5

• Milgram explains the importance of disobedience role models.For example when the teacher refused to give shocks the rate of obedience plummeted. obedience can be used to create social change through gradual commitment

Question 6

Evaluate one strength about social change?

Answer 6

• Nolan done an experiment where they could see if they could save energy in hotels. For example, Researchers hung messages on the walls saying to save energy and how other people are saving energy. Another sign was put up as a control wether it didn’t say other people were saving but said to save and there was a huge difference from group 1 than 2.

Question 7

Evaluate another strength on minority influence?

Answer 7

• Nemeth claims social change is due to the thinking minorities have. For example, they think broad rather than narrow. The thinker actively searches for information and weighs up information.

Question 8

What is one limitation of deeper processing and minority influence?

Answer 8

• Mackie says that when minorities think deeper it’s not true. Majority influence creates deeper processing if you do share their views. When we find out what a majority is thinking it makes us deep what they have actually said.