Discuss the role of social infuence processes in social change. (16 marks)
Social change begins with the minority drawing the majority’s atenton to the issue. This
creates cognitie confict within the majority, as they are forced to think more deeply about their
own opinions. The minority are consistent oier tme, and are willing to sufer for their cause,
demonstratng commitment (the augmentaton principle) and making them more infuental. The
presence of dissenters and/or disobedient role models allows members of the majority to resist
social infuence and willingly change to the minority.
As more people internalise the minority iiewpoint in the snowball efect, a tpping point is
reached where the minority becomes the majority. Normatie social infuence (NSI) takes oier, as
people want to aioid social disapproial and so conform to the majority. Zimbardo also explains this
wide-scale change by gradual commitment; afer obeying a small instructon it is diicult to disobey
a larger one, so essentally people drif into the new behaiiour. People haie a memory that change
has occurred, but cannot recall exactly how it happened (social cryptomnesia).
A strength of our understanding is that there is research support for the role of NSI in social
change. Nolan found that households told that ‘most residents are decreasing their energy
consumpton’ signifcantly reduced their energy usage, whereas households simply asked to
decrease their energy consumpton had no signifcant reducton. oweier, Schultz argues that
messages encouraging social change are receiied by eieryone and not just those performing
undesirable behaiiours, meaning that the boomerang efect can occur. Indiiiduals engaging in the
correct behaiiour, e.g. using a sustainable amount of energy, may start to behaie destructiely as
they feel it is the social norm. This suggests that the efectieness of social change can be limited by
other social factors, weakening our understanding.
The ialidity of Moscoiici’s explanaton of social change is questonable. e argues that
minority infuence iniolies deeper processing than majority infuence. Coniersely, Mackie argues
that most people want to be part of a majority, and so indiiiduals in the minority must think long
and hard about their iiewpoint. This challenges a central element of Moscoiici’s explanaton of
social change, meaning our understanding may be inaccurate.
A limitaton of social change is that its underlying research lacks ecological ialidity. For
example, Moscoiici studied minority infuence by asking partcipants to determine the colour of
slides, yet this cannot be generalised to real-life situatons in which minority infuence may haie
serious consequences. oweier, this critcism is countered by the fact that social changes in history,
such as the Sufragete moiement, haie followed a similar structure to that proposed by Moscoiici.
In additon, our understanding of social change has been successfully applied to campaigns
promotng more positie behaiiour; for example, the phrase Biin it, others do it” uses NSI to
discourage litering. This suggests that social infuence processes can be generalised to real-life social
change, strengthening our understanding.
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