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SOCIAL INFLUENCE Real-world examples Can anybody think of a real-life example of social change where one person or a small group have eventually converted the majority to their views or way of behaving? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Suffragette movement - women were given the right to vote. Martin Luther King – Black Civil Rights Movement Nelson Mandela/Rosa Parks – Apartheid – Racial segregation The Green Movement (recycling) Campaign against smoking – public smoking ban Adolf Hitler - Holocaust Minority influence Form of social influence. Minority (one person or small group) persuade others to adopt their beliefs/behaviours. If consistent and active the minority can create social conflict (doubt) among members of the majority. Leads to internalisation (a.k.a. ‘conversion’). Private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours. First studied by Moscovici et al (1969). Consistency • • • • Minorities are more influential when they express their arguments consistently as this increases the amount of interest from others. Synchronic consistency – the minority are all saying the same thing. Diachronic consistency – minority have been saying the same thing over a long period of time. Same position consistently = must believe it to be true as views don’t change, taken more seriously, encourages majority to rethink their own views. Commitment A.k.a. drawing attention to the issue. Sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views. It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority as this demonstrates commitment to the cause. E.g. protests which can lead to arrest. Majority group members then pay even more attention (“Wow they must really believe what they’re saying is true so maybe I should consider their views”). This is called the augmentation principle. If members of minority willing to suffer for their views, the impact of their position on other group members is increased (‘augmented’). Flexibility Nemeth (1986) – NOT consistency, but FLEXIBILITY. Being extremely consistent and repeating same arguments can be seen as rigid which can be offputting to the majority and reduce the likelihood that they will convert to the minority position. Instead, members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of view, and accept reasonable and valid counter-arguments (i.e. compromise). They key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility. The snowball effect Van Avermaet, (1996) Over time, increasing numbers of people switch from the majority to the minority through the process of conversion. Once a few members of the majority start to move towards the minority position, then the influence of the minority begins to gather momentum as more people pay attention to the view. This is called the snowball effect. Gradually what started off as the minority view becomes the majority view. Social change has occurred! Group membership According to Hogg and Vaughan we are most likely to be influenced by those we perceive to be like us (called our ingroup). If people similar to us express certain attitudes we are more likely to be influenced by the minority. Although, it still takes time to occur. Conformity research and social change (pg 34) Asch’s research – variation – social support – broke the power of the majority and encouraged others not to conform. This has potential to lead to social change. Environmental and health campaigns increasingly exploit conformity processes by appealing to NSI. They do this providing statistics/information about what other people are doing. E.g. reducing litter – print normative messages on litter bins – ‘Bin it – others do’ and preventing young people from initiating smoking by telling them most young people don’t smoke. In other words, social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing. Obedience research and social change (pg 34) Milgram’s research clearly demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models – variation – social support –allies. Could be through ‘gradual commitment’ that social change occurs – once a small instruction is obeyed it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one. Supporting evidence for NSI Nolan et al (2008) – investigated whether social influence processes led to reduction in energy consumption in a community. Hung messages on front doors of houses in San Diego, California every week for 1 month. The key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had a different message that just asked then to save energy but made no reference to other people’s behaviour. Found a significant decrease in energy usage in experimental group. This is a strength as it shows that conformity can lead to social change through the operation of NSI. Role of deeper processing Moscovici’s conversion explanation of minority influence argues that minority and majority influence involve different cognitive processes. Minority – internalisation – think deeply about issue. Mackie (1987) disagrees and argues that it is majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their views. This is because we like to believe that other people share our views and think in the same way as us. When we find that a majority believes something different then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning. This means that a central element of the process of minority influence has been challenged and may be incorrect, decreasing the validity of Moscovici’s theory. Methodological issues Explanations of how social influence leads to social change draw heavily on the studies by Asch, Milgram and Moscovici. All of these studies can be evaluated in terms of their methodology. These criticisms are just as applicable here and raise doubts about the validity of the explanations.