Social Change Steps Psychology

[Lore Dosher]

Thisinvolves the way in which society develops, through big changes in peoples behaviours, belief and attitudes. This process occurs continually, but at a gradual pace, with minority influence being the main driving force for social change. The minority gradually win over the influence on the majority and create brand new social norms.

There are loads of examples of social change throughout history, some positive some negative, but there are also shifts in behaviours and attitudes that are changing everyday- being environmentally aware and even social distancing with coronavirus!

By encouraging the belief that others are doing it or advising people that it is a better way to act (leading to internalisation). For example, campaigns might be developed highlighting that everyone else is giving up smoking or everyone is using Tik Tok instead of Facebook (Normative SI). Adverts highlighting how bad smoking is for your health and all the benefits of Tik Tok over Facebook (Informational SI). Alongside this you can bring in the aspects of minority influence to explain social change

Changes to the laws which make a certain behaviour more of a social norm which others then adopt. This is because following the law and authority figures is a social norm so this can also create a snowball effect where more and more people change their views and behaviour in order to avoid punishment or consequences. For example, changes in attitudes towards smoking in doors and drink driving.

Dictators can bring about social change through power and through the process of obedience. This leads to groups of people changing their behaviour because of the fear of punishment/consequences of not obeying.

Consistency contributes to social change when a minority repeatedly gives the same message. This makes a majority reassess their belief and consider the issue more carefully (and so may adopt the minority point of view)

Flexibility / being non-dogmatic contributes to social change when a minority show they are willing to listen to other viewpoints the majority listen to their point of view / take their argument more seriously (and so may adopt it as their own)

Looking through previous exam questions, there is more content you could learn and apply to this. Outlined below are more steps on how social change occurs. This builds upon minority influence, seeing this as the igniting spark of social change. However, to some extent it also ties in some of the earlier ideas of internalisation and compliance that we looked at in conformity. These will not be explicitly asked about, unfortunately different textbooks have different information in them about this subtopic. I would recommend you make sure you know how the 3 topics (in bold above) can impact social change and you have real life examples to explain how this works. That being said, it will never hurt to have more information to use in an exam question, therefore I would recommend you read over the key terms below and add these to the following notes where you think it is appropriate.

4. Enshrined in law

In 1918 Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act giving some women over the age of 30 the right to vote. Further legislation has followed since. We now have obedience!

When we talk about the economical impact we are discussing how the psychological theory or research or topic has affected the process or system by which goods and services are produced, sold or bought in country or region. Therefore you be expected to argue whether social change has been beneficial to the economy and explain how this has happened using psychological theory. Below are some examples to help you with this;

However, it could be beneficial for a business to employ someone who is going to act as a dissenter and question the norms for the benefit of the company, not only could this lead to new innovative methods and systems for the business but it could also provide social support for others. This could encourage them to question the norms and see better ways of working. Therefore, this could result in innovative techniques that might increase productivity and/ or increase the businesses profit overall.

Temple Grandin is a really good example of this. She was one of the first scientists to report that animals are sensitive to visual distractions in handling facilities such as shadows, dangling chains, and other environmental details that most people do not notice. This lead to a large number of companies changing their cattle facilities. Temple Grandin explains that her autism enabled her to see things differently, and she describes her ability to think in pictures. She was one of the first individuals on the autistic spectrum to document the insights she gained from her personal experience of autism. She is a spokesperson for autism and will often promote the abilities that people with autism have, describing them as super powers.

Another example could be the social change of smoking. Prior to 2007, people could smoke anywhere they wished. Restaurants would have a smoking and non smoking areas and most pubs and clubs would be filled with smoking. The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act was established in the UK in 2002, with the majority of tobacco advertisements being banned in the country from February 2003, as outlined by Action on Smoking and Health.

By drawing peoples attention to this risk of smoking, stopping highlighting that other role models are doing it (stopping normative social influence) less people are going to smoke, which means less people are going to end up with heath complications as a result of this, thus putting less economic pressure on the NHS. However you could argue, that tax being made from more people buying cigarettes has now dropped, which might suggest a negative impact on the economy.

The process of minorities creating social change occurs through several stages. First, the minority is in direct opposition to the majority's views and current social norms, it is not accepted by society and can be met with resistance. Then the process of conversion occurs, through which the views of the majority members are slowly changed.

As more and more people start to convert their views, the snowball effect occurs. At this stage, the minority becomes the majority and the previous social norms shift. Finally, once the minority position is fully integrated into the new societal norms, society can forget that it was not always this way. This is called social cryptomnesia, it occurs when the minority ideas become a social truth.

In this experiment, the investigator asked groups of four participants to estimate the compensation a ski lift accident victim should receive. Each group had one confederate who represented the minority and argued that the victim deserved less compensation. The confederate would not compromise in one situation and would rigidly hold to their position.

In another situation, the confederate allowed some compromise by meeting the rest of the group halfway and offering the victim a slightly higher compensation than initially proposed. The experiment results showed that the inflexible confederate had far less influence on the views of the majority group than the flexible confederate. This finding highlights the importance of the minority group being flexible when trying to change the opinions and ideas of the majority group.

Wood et al. is a meta-analysis of about 100 studies on minority group behaviour. The analysis found that the minority group has more influence when it is consistent in its beliefs and actions. As a result, the minority group needs to be consistent when influencing a majority group.

A consistent minority group believes in a clear set of values and beliefs that do not suddenly change or contradict. The beliefs seem fixed, which gives the majority group the impression that they are well thought out and defensible. There are two types of minority influence consistency:

An example of diachronic consistency is that gay rights advocates took more than a hundred years to organise and campaign for the legalisation of gay marriage in many Western countries. Their belief that people should treat same-sex relationships the same as heterosexual relationships has survived today.

One example of synchronous agreement is that the LGBTQIA+ community and its advocates share many of the same beliefs, including freedom of expression and freedom for people to have relationships with whomever they choose. This gives them greater collective power and strengthens their message in the eyes of the majority group.

The minority tend to have an internal locus of control and believe they drive their own destiny. Usually, the minority have an internal locus of control. Committed minorities, i.e. those who take risks for their cause, tend to affect the majority through an augmentation principle. It means the majority value the importance of the cause - as the minority are risking their lives for it.

Mosccovici proposed that encouraging critical thinking can help the conversion process because it compels the majority of group members to question their beliefs rather than blindly following the crowd intellectually.

However, Diane Mackie (1987) counters this claim. According to Mackie, discovering that the majority does not think the same way we do can force us to think deeper about our position, so we can embrace the majority's viewpoint.

In one of his famous line judgement studies, Solomon Asch found that individuals are less likely to conform to the incorrect majority if at least one other person opposed the majority views. This gave the participant support to oppose the majority as well. Feeling like we are not alone can encourage us to voice our opposition towards the majority.

This idea could also apply to social change, unjust government actions are more likely to be challenged when there is dissent against them. Public health and environmental campaigns also take advantage of normative social influence to drive positive social change. This practice discourages people from certain behaviours by highlighting how if they engage in them, they will no longer fit in.

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