SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Compliance (shallowest) - When someone accepts influence because they hope to achieve a favourable reaction from those around them. It does not result in any change in the persons behabviour,only in the views they express in public.                                                                                                                                                                           Identifaction - Individulas accepts influence because they want to be associated with another person or group. Has element of internalisation and compliance.                                                                                                                 Internalisation (deepest) - Individuals may go along with the group because of an acceptance of their views. The individual accepts infleunce because the content of the attitude or behaviour proposed is consistent with their own value system.

Explanations for conformity

Normative social influence - When the individual doesnt change their private opinion even though they go along with the majority. One condition for normative influence to occur is that the individual must feel they are under survelliance by the group, they want to gain acceptance.                                                                                                            Informational social influence - When an individual actually changes their private opinion. More likely to happen in situations or situations where there is some ambigouity (unclear), or when one person is seen as an expert.

Difficulties in distinguishing between compliance and internalisation - How do we define public compliance and private acceptance. Could be possible that acceptance has poccured in public but later when in rpivate they have forgotten the info given by the group of because they have received new info. For internalisation, the individual may just be complying in public, but as a result of self-perception they come to accept that position as their own.

Research support for normative influence - Linkback and Perkins (2003) found that adolscents exposed to the message that the mojority of their age peers did not smoke and we subsqequently less likely to take up smoking. Schultz (2008) found that hotel guest exposed to the normative message that 75% of their guestreused their towles each day. These studies support the claim that people shape their behaviour out of desire to fit in with their reference group.

Research support for informational influence - Wittenbrink and Henly found that participants exposed to negative info about African Americans later reported more negative beliefs about black individuals. Fein demonstrated how judgments of canidate performance could be influenced by reactions. Partcipants saw what was supposedly the reaction of their fellow partipants on screen during the debate. This produced a large shift in judgments.

Normative influence may not be detected - Nolan investigated whether people detected the influence of social norms on their energy conservation behaviour.  When asked what influenced their own behaviour, people said neighbours had the least impact when they had the most. This suggest that people rely on beliefs about what should motivate their behaviour, so under-detect the impact of normative influence.

Indiviudual differences in ISI - ISI does not affect everyones behaviour in the same way. Asch found that only 29% of students conformed comared to other partcipants at 38%.

Key study - Asch (1956) -

Procedure - 123 male US undergraduates were tested. Participants sat around a table and asked to look at lines of different lengths. They took turns to call out which of the 3 lines was the same length as the standard line - real participants answered 2nd to last. On 12 out of the 18 trials, the confederates were instructed to give the saem incorrect answers.

Findings - On the 12 critical trials, the average conformity rate was 33%, 1/4 never conformed on any trilas, 1/2 conformed on 6 or more, 1/20 conformed on all 12 trials. When Asch interviewed participants afterwards and discovered that many of the participants who had conformed still privately trusted their own judgments, they conformed in public to avoid disapproval from other group members.

• Group size - Asch found very little conformity when the majority consisted of only 1 or 2 confederates. However when 3 confederates conformity jumped to 30%. Futher increaes in the soze of the majority did not increase levels of conformity. Campbell and Fairey  suggested that group size may have a different effect depending on the type of judgment being made. Where there is no correct answer (music preference) then the individual is concerned by fitting in, the larger the majority the more likely they are to be swayed. When there is a correct response , the individual is concerned about being correct so just the view of 1 or 2 other will be suficient.           
• The unanimity of the majority - When the real participant was given the support if another person, conformity levels droped to 33% to 5.5%. If someone gave an answer that was both different from the majority and also different from the right answer, conformity levels dropped to 9%.Asch concluded that it wasx breaking the groups unanimous position that was the major factor in conformity reduction.
• The difficulty task - In one variations Asch made the differences of the lines smaller which increased conformity. This suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder-look

Asch's research may be a 'child of its time' - In 1956, the US was in the grip of McCarthyism, a strong anti-communist period where people were scared to go against the majority so more liekly to conform. Perrin and Spencer repeated Aschs study in the Uk in the 1980s using studenst and only 1 students conformed ine 396 trials. 

Limited applications of findings  - Only men were tested by Asch. Other research suggets that women are more conformists because they are more concerened by social relationships (Neto). The particpants in Asch's study were from the US a individualist culture. Similar studies conducted in collectivist culture have found higher conformity rates -  this makes sense because such cultures are more orientated to group needs (Bond and Smith).

Findings only apply to certain situations  - The facts that the participants had to answer out loud and were with a group of strangers who they want to impress may mean conformity rates are higher. However (Williams and Sogon) found that conformity rates are higher when your with your friends.

Artificial situation and task - Participants knew they were in a research study and may have simply gone along with the demands of the situations. The task to identify lines was trivial so there was no reseaon to not conform. Also the particpants were in a group which didnt resemble everyday groups. This is a limitation because it means the findings cannot be generalised to everyday situations. 

Independent behaviour rather than conformity - In 2/3s of these trials participants stuck to their original judgment depsit being faced with an overwhelming majority expressing a different view. Asch believed that his study demonstrated a tendency for participants to stick to what they belived to be the correct judgment - show independent behaviour. 

Key study : Milgram(1963)                                                                                                               Procedure - Involved 40 male participants who weretold it was a study of how punishment affects learning. There were 2 experimental confederates - an experimenter and a 47 year old man who was introduced as another volunteer. The real partcipant was the teacher and the confederate was the learner. The teacher had to test the learner on how well he can remeber word pairs, everytime he got a word the teacher had to give him electric shocks(15 volts to 450 volts) when the learner recieved the fake shocks of 300volts he pounded on the wall and then gave no response to the next question.When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series of orders / prods to ensure they continued. There were 4 prods:1)Please continue 2)The experiment requires you to continue 3)It is absolutely essential that you continue 4)You have no other choice but to continue.                                                                                                          

Findings - No participants stopped below 300volts with on 12.5% stopping there.65% continued to 450 volts. 

Proximity - Both the teacher and the student were seated in the same room. Obedience fell to 40% as the teacher was now able to experience the learners anguish more directly. In the another variations the teacher was forced to put the learners hand on the shock  plate, the obedience fell to 30%. In a experimenter absent study, the experimenter gave orders over the phone. So a large majority now defied the experimenter with only21% continuing tomaximum shock leve,  some repeatedly gave the lowest shock level.

Location - These studies were conducted in a psychology lab in Yale univeristy. Several particpanyts said the location gave them confidence in the integrity of the poeple involved.Milgram moved his study to a run down office and obedience artes dropped slightly to 48% but not significantly.

The power of uniform - Bushman carried out a study where a female researcher dressed in either a police style uniform, a business executive or a beggar, stopped people in the street and told them to give chnage to a male researcher for a expired parking meter. When in the uniform 72% of the people obeyed, But as business excutive and beggar it was 48% and 52%. People claimed they obeyed the woman in the uniform because she appeared to have authority.

Ethical issues - Baumrind critcised Milgram for his apparent lack of concern for the well-being of his research participants. Milgram deceived his particpants by telling them the experiment was for the effects of punishment on learning,rather than telling them the tue purpose. Although Milgram claimed the particpants were free to leave at any time, the 'prods' made it more difficult because some particpants thought they had no choice but to stay.                                                          

Internal validity:a lack of validity - Orne and Holland said that particpant learned to distrust experimenters because they know he true purpose of the study may be disguised. In milgrams study, although the learner cried out in pain, th experiementer remianed cool and distant, so the participant believed the learner was not actually suffering. Perry discovered that the particpants were skeptical on whether the shocks were real of fake. Murata divided the groupinto doubter(those who thought it was fake) and the belivers(those who thought it was real). He found that those who thought he shocks were real disobeyed the experiementer and only gave low intensity shocks.

Individual differences - A commonly help assumption is that women are more susceptible to social influence than men (Eagly). Milgram did one condition in which the participants were female. The rate of obideidence was the same as males. Blass studied 9 other replications of milgrams study which had male and female participants, 8 out of 9 foundno evidence of any gender differences  in obedience.

Supporting replication - A documentary aboutreality TV  presented on French television in 2010 including a replication of Milgrams study. Partcipants believed they were contestants for a new game show and were ordered by the presenter to give electric shocks to toher fake participants in front of a live audience. 80% gave the maximum shock of 460 volts -  their behaviour was almost identical tot hose of Milgrams study e.g. nail biting, nervous laughter etc.  This replication supports Milgrams original study about obedience to authroity.

Historical validity - Would the same things happen today? Blass carriedout an analysis of Milgrams obedience experiments and studies conducted by other researchers between 1961 and 1985 and he discovered no relationship whatsoever i.e. no more or less obedience than the ones conducted earlier. Burger 2009 found levels of obedience almost identical to those found by Milgram 46 years earlier.  So Milgrams findings still apply today.

Good external validity - Milgram argued that the lab environment accuratley reflected wider authority relationships in real life. Hofling supports tjis because he studied nurses in hospital wards and found that obedience to unjustified demands by doctors were very high (21 out of 22) nurses obeying. So Milgrams study can be generalised to some real life situations.

The Stanford prison experiment (Haney 1973) Procedure - A mock prison was set up in the basemtn of the psychology department at Stanford university. Male student volunteers were psychologically screened and 24 of the most stable were randomly assigned to play the prisoner or guard. The prisoners were arrested at home and were then given a uniform and an assigned ID number, by which the wre refered to by the guards. The guards ahd uniforms, whistles and wore reflective sunglasses(to prevent eye contact). Zimbardo was the prison superintendent. The study was planned to last 2 weeks.

Findings -  Over the first few days the guards grew incresingly tyrannical and abusive towards the prisoners. Some guards were so enthusiastic that they volunteered to do extra hours without pay. The partcipants seemed to have forgot this was a study because even when they were unaware of being watched they still conformed to their roles. One prisoner had enough and instead of asking to leave the studym he asked for parole. 5 Prioners had to be released early because of their extreme actions (crying,rage,anxiety) - syptoms that had started to appear within the 1st 2 days. The study was finally terminated after 6 days. One prisoner went on a hunger strike and the guards attempted to force feed him and then put him in a dark little closet as punishment.

Conformity to social roles is not automatic - In the SPE, guard behaviour varied from being fully sadistic  to, for a few being 'good guards'. These guards did not degrade or harass the prisoners and even did small favours for them. Haslam and Reicher argued that this shows that the guards chose how to behave rather than blindly conforming to their social roles.          The problem of demand charcteristics - Banuazizi and Movahedi argued that the prisoners and guards behaviour was due to it being a response to powerful demand charcteristics. B and M presented some of the details of the SPE to studnets who had never heard of the study. The vast majority of the students correctly guessed the pirpose of the study.                                                                                                                                                                        Ethical - A major ethical issue arose because of Zimbardos dual roles in the study which meant he didnt care for the wellfare of his particpants, they were not prtected from harm. But they was no deception since they were told that their usual rights would be suspended. Zimbardo acknoledged that his study should have been stopped earlier and he also carried out debriefing sessions and found no lasting effects.                                                                                                                                                                   

Control - A stength is that Zimbardo had some control over variables, the most obvious example of this is the selection of emotioanlly stabel participants who were randomly assigned to their roles as prisoners or guards. This was one way researchers tried to rule individual personality differences as an explanation of the findings. Having such control over variables increases internal validity.                                                                        

Relevance to Abu Ghraib - Abu ghuraib a military prison in Iraq notorious for the abuse and torture of iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. Zimbardo said the guards who commited the abuse were victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely. The situational factors such as lack of training, unrelented boredom and no accountibality to higher authority were both present in SPE and abu ghraib.

Agentic shift involves moving from an autonomous state, where a person sees himself or herself as responsible for their own actions and into an agentic state, in which a person sees himself or herself as an agent for carrying out another persons wishes.                                                   

One explanation for why people adopt an agentic state is the need to maintain a positive self-image. Once the participant has moved into the agentic state, the evaluating the consequence of their action is not an issue because they are no longer responsible for their actions and any actions performed are virtually guilt-free.                        

Binding factors - once a person enters the agentic state social etiquette keeps them in. In order to break off then experiment, the participant must breach the commitment made to the experiemnter. So the subject thinks if he breaks it off, he will appear arrogant and rude.

Legitimacy of authority - The first condtion needed for a person to shift to the agentic state is the perception of a legtimate authority(someone who is percieved the be in a position of social control). Milgram belived it is a shared expectation amongst people that many sittuations do have a controlling figure. There is a tendency for people to accept definitons of a situation that are provided by a legitimate authority.                                                            

Legtimate authority requires an institute - If the authoritive figures commands are harmful or destructive, then for them to be perceived as legitimate they must occur within some sort of institute(a universcity, a military).

The agentic state explanation and real-life obedience - Milgram calimed that people shift back and fourth between the autonomous state and the agentic state. However this fails to explain the very graudla and irreverisble transition that Lifton1986 found in his study of German doctors working at Auschwitz. Lifton found that these doctors had changed from the ordinary meidal professionals into men and women capable of carrying out vile and potentially lethal experiments on helpless prisoners. 

Agentic state or just pain cruel? - One common belief between social scientists is that in Milgrams study he detecetd signs of cruelty amongst his participants, who had used the situation to express their sadistic impulses - this belief was given substance because of Zimbardos prison experiment. Within a few days the guards inflicted rapidly escalating cruelty on increasingly submissive priosners despite the fact their was no obvious ahutoritive figure intructing them to do so. Both studies clearly expose unfalttering aspects of human nature.

The legitimate authority explanation and real-life obedience - Legitimacy can serve as the basis for justifying the harming of others, If people authroise another person to make judgements for them about what is appropriate conduct, they no longer feel their own moral values are relevant. So as a consequence when instructed to do immoral actions, they are willing to do so.

Research support - Blass and Shmitt showed the video of Milgrams study to students and sked them who they thought was resposnible for the harm to the learner. The studnets blamed the experimenter. They indicated that responsibility was due to the legitimate auhtority but also due to expert authority. They recognised legitimate authroity as the cause of obedience.

A limited explanation - The agentic shift does not explain why some of the particpants did not obey. It also does not explain findings from Hoflings nurse and doctor experiement. The nurses should have shown anxiety levels similar to Milgrams particpants because they were doing something wrong and destructive but this was not the case. This suggests agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience.

Cultural differences - A strength of the legitimacy of authortiy explanation is that it is a useful account of cultural differences in obdience. Kilham and Mann replicated Milgrams study in Australia and found only 16% of people went to the highest voltage. Mantel found 85% for German particpants. This shows in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legtimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals. Such supportive factors from cross-cultural research increases the validity of the explanation. 

Social  support and resisting conformity - Asch found that the presence of social  support enables an individual to resist conformitypressure from the majority. When an ally was introduced who also gave the right answer caused conformity levels to drop from 33% to 5.5%. Social support appearrs to break the unanimous position of the majority. The ally makes the individual feel more confident in their decision and better able to stand up to the majority.                                                                                                              

Social support and resisting obedience - Research has shown that individuals are generally more confident in their ability to resist temptation toobey if they can find an ally who is willing to join them in opposing the authority - disobedient peers act as role models. In Milgrams study  when there were 3 people testing the learner- 2 of  which were confederates - who refused to continue to shock the learner,only 10% of the real participants carried on the maximum shock level.                                                                                                            

Locus of control - This term refers to a persons perception of personal control over their own behaviour, measured with 'high internal or high external' but most people are in between. A strong internal locus is the belief that we can control events in our life, these people believe that what  happens to them is a consequence of their own ability and effort, they  are most likely to  display independencein thought and behaviour, they rely less on peoplesopinions so they are better at resisting social influence. People with external locus of control believe that what happens to them is determined by external factors e.g. luck or influence of others. These people take less perosnal responsibility for their actions and arent indpendent and accept the influence of others.                                                                              

Internality and resistance to social influence - Characteristics of internalsfor resisting social influence- 1)They are active seekers of information, so less likely to rely on others for opinions. 2) More achievement orriented so are more likely to become leaders. Spector found that a relationship exists between locus of control and leadership style. 3)  They are able to resist force from others e.g. in a stimulated prisoner of war camp situation, inetrnals were better able to resist  the attempts of an interrogator to gain info, the more intense the pressure, the greater the difference between internals and extenals.

Social support: the importance of response order - Allen and Levine studied whether the pesonse positonof the person providing the social support made any difference. In one condition a confederate answered first giving the right answer - the real  participant always answered 5th last.  In the 2nd variation the confederate answered 4th. Support was significantly more effective in positon 1 than 4. The researchers suggest that a correct 1st answer, in confirming the participants own judgment produces an intial commitment to the correct response.                                                                                                                                                                               

Social support:support may not have to be balid to be effective - Allen and Levine, in 1 conditon the confederate providing the support wore glasses with veyr thick lenses therefore he provided invalid social support. in the 2nd variation the supporter had normal vision. Both reduced the amount of conformity but the valid social  supporter had much more of an impact, showing thta an ally is helpful in resisting conformity, but more so if they are percieved as offering valid support.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Locus of control is related to normative but not informational influece-Spector measure locus of control and predispostionto normative and informational inlfuence in 157 students. He found a significant correlation between locus of control and normative social influence, with externals more likely to conform to this form of influence than internals. But he dound no relationship to informational social influence with locus of control not appearing to be a significant factor in this type of conformity.                      

Locus of control: people are more exteranl than they used to be - A meta analyiss by Twenge found that young americans believed their fate was determined more by luck and powerful others rather than their own actions. The  trend was of students becoming more external was explained by Twenge in terms of alienation experienced by young people and the tendency to explain misfortunes on outside forces.

Minority influence is a form of social influence in which members of the majority group change their beliefs or behaviours as a result of their exposureto a persuasive minority. Internalisation - private attitudes are also changed

In order to bring about a conversion process, minorities must be                                  Consistent - If the minority adopt a consistent approach, others will consider the issue more carefully. Wood 1994 carried  out  a meta-analysisof97 studies of minority influence and found minorities who were percieved as being consistent  were most influential.                                     Commitment - When members  are dedicated to a particular cause. It is important because it suggests certainty, confidence and courage. Because joining a minority has a greater cost for the indivudual than staying with the majority.                                                                                    Flexibility - Mugny suggests that flexibility is more effective at changing majority opinion than rigid arguments. Since minorities are typically powerless compared to the majority sothey must negotiate their position. 

Key study: Moscovici 1969                                                                                                       

Procedure - Each group had 4 particpants and a minority of 2 confederates. They were shown a series of blue slides and had to judge the colour. In the consistent experimental condition, the 2 confederates called the blue slides green. In  the inconsistent condition, the confederates called the slides green on 2/3s of the trials and blue on1/3.                     

Findings - The consistent minority influenced the participants to say green over 8% of the trials. The inconsistent minority had very little influence that didnt differ from the control group. After the experiment, participants were asked to individually sort 16 coloured discs into either blue or green. 6 of these discs were unambiguous but the other 10 were amibuous(could be either blue or green). Those in the consistent conditon judged more the discs to be green, the effect was greater for those who didnt go along with the minority during the experiemnt suggesting initial influence was more at private than at public level.

Research support for flexibility - Nemeth and Brilmayer 1987 used a stimulated jury situation where group members discussed the amount of compensation to be paid for someone involved in a ski accident. When a confederate put foward anothe rpoint of view and refused to change his view, this had no effect on other group members. When a confederate comprimised and therefore showed some shift towards the majority,  he did exert influence on the rest. However this was only evident in late negotiations(showed flexibility) than earlier negotiations(caved into majority).                                       

The real value of minority influence - Nemeth 2010 argued that disagreement in the formof minority opinion, opens the mind and as a result  of the exposure, people search for information and consider more options. Disagreement akkiws people to say what they believe and stimulate creative thought. Supported by Dyne and Saavedra who studied disagreement in work groups, finding that the groups descion quality had improved.                                                                                                              

Do we  really process the minroities message more - Mackie 1987 argued that majority leads to greater processing because we believe that the majority of the group members share similar beliefs to ours, so if they explore a different one, we must consider it carefully to understand why this is the case.                                                                                  

 Minority influence in name only - Nemeth claims it is difficult to convince people of the value of diagreement because people quickly become irritated by a disargeeing view that persists and they also fear lack of harmony. People are encourgaed to fit in and made to fear reprocussions incl being marganalised by ridicule because they are associated with the deviant point of view.                                                                                                                                                            

Atrificial tasks - The tasks such as identifying the blue slide or Aschs study are artificial. Research is therefore far removed from how minroties attempt to change behaviours of majorities in real life such as political matters in which the outcomes are very important. This means minority influence studies like Moscovicis lack exteranl validity since they are limited about what  they can tell us about minority influencein real life.

The F scale - The Californian F scale was used by Adorno to measure different components that made up the authoritarian personality. The F scale contained statments such as 'Obedience and respect are the most important values children should learn'. Agreeing with this was indicative of an Authoritarian personality - individuals with this type of personality were rigid thinkers who obeyed authority, saw the world in black and white. Adorno also found those who scored high tended to have been raised by parents who used an authoritarian parenting style, so if a child grows up in this type of family, with strong emphasis on obeidence, they then aquire these same authoritarian attitudes through a process of learning and imitation.

Right-wing authoritarianism - According to Altemeyer 1981, high RWA people possess 3 important perosnality charcteristics: 1)Conventionalism - an adherence to conventional norms and values. 2)Authoritarian aggression - aggressive feelings toward people who violate these norms. 3) Authoritarian submission - uncritical submission to legitimate authority.               Altemeyer tested the relationship RWA and obedience, where partcipants were ordered to give themselves increasing levels of shock when they made mistakes on a learning task. There was a significant correlation between RWA scores and the level of shocks the particpants were willing to give themselves.

Key study: Elms and Milgram 1966

Procedure - Elms and Milgram carried out a follow up study using participants who had previously taken part in 1 of Milgrams experiments 2 months before. They selected 20 obedient partcipants and 20 defiant participants. Each particpant completed the MMPI scale and the F scale to measure their levels of authorianism. Particpants were also asked a series of open ended questions about their childhood relationship with parents and their attitudes towards the experimenter and the learner.

Findings - They found higher levels of authoritarianism among those particpants classified as obedient. They also found significant differences between obeident and defiant particpants that were consistent with the idea of the Authoritarian perosnality. e.g. Obedient particpants reported being less close to their fathers during childhood, obeident particpants also saw the authroity figure in Milgrams study as more admirable. This suggets that the obedient group was higher on the trait of authoritarianism,

Research evidence for the authoritarianism/obedience link - The studies that have reported authoritarian participants are more obedient. These studies tend to suffer from a great deal of suspicion concerning whether the shocks were real or fake. Dambrun and Vatine 2010 overcame this problem by using a virtual environment where an actor taking the role of the learner was filmed, recorded and displayed on a computer screen. Participants were informed the experiment was a simulation and the shocks were not real but stimulated. Despite this, participants still tended to respond as if the situation was real and there was a clear and significant correlation between participants RWA scores and the maximum voltage shock.

The social context is more important - Milgram did accept there might be a dispositional basis (personality) to obedience, he believed the evidence for this was not strong. Milgram showed that variation in the social context e.g. proximity of the victim etc were the primary causes o differences of obedience. So rely on the RWA lacks the flexibility to account for these variations.

Differences between authoritarian and obedient participants -  Elms and Milgram also presented some important differences in the characteristics of the Authoritarian personality and the characteristics of obedient participants. r.g. when they asked participants about their upbringing, many of the fully obedient people said they had a good relationship with their parenst rather tan growing up very strcitlyasscoiated with the Authoritarian perosnality. It also seems unlikely that given the number of participants who were fully obedient in Milgrams study that the vast majority wouldve grown up in a harsh environment.

Education may determine authoritarianism and obedience - Middendorp and Meloen 1990 have found that generally less educated people are consistently more authoritarian than well educted and they also were more obedient. This is clearly a possibility even though after education level was statistically controlled . the more obedient subjects were still more authoritarian on the scale.

Left-wing views are associated with lower levels of obedience - There is some support for this distinction, Begue 2014 carried out a replication for Milgram's study as part of a fake game show, where contestants had to deliver fake electric shocks to the other contestants. An interview was done after using 'Word Value Survey Questionnaire' revealed that the more participants defined themselves on the left hand of the spectrum, the lower the intensity of shocks they agreed to give.This suggests that the situational context as studied by Milgram does not exclude the possibility of individual differences. 

Furthermore, the authoritarian explanation of prejudice does not explain how whole social groups (e.g. the Nazis) can be prejudiced. This would mean that all members of a group (e.g. Nazis) would have an authoritarian personality, which is quite unlikely.

Harsh parenting style does not always produce prejudice children/individuals. Some prejudice people do not conform to the authoritarian personality type. Doesn’t explain why people are prejudiced against certain groups and not others.

1) Drawing attention to an issue - Minroties can bring about change by drawing the majoritys attention to an issue. If their views are different to those held by the majority, this creates conflict that they are motivated to reduce.                                                                                         

2) Cognitive conflict - The minority creates a conflict between what majority group members currently believe and the position advocated by the minority. This doesnt necesarily result in a move towards the minority position but it does mean the majority group members think more deeply about the issues being challenged.

3) Consistency of position - Minorities tend to be more influential whent they express their arguments consistently (over time and with each other).

4) The augmentation principle - If a minority appears willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as committed and so taken more seriously by others.

5) The snowball effect - Minority infleunce intially has a relatively small effect but this then speads more widely and more and more people consider the issues being promoted until it reache tippin point at which point it leads to wide-scale social change.

Perkins and Berkowitz researched that if people perceive something to be the norm, they tend to alter their behaviour to fit that norm. Behaviour therefore is based on what people think others belive (perceived norm) than on their real beleifs. The gap between the perceived norm and the actual norm is referred to as misperception and correcting this misperception is the basis for an approach to social chnage known as social norms interventions.

Social norms interventions -Started by identifying a widespread misperception relating to a specified risky behaviour within a taregt population. Perception correction stratergies can then be used in media campaigns, the aim of these stratergies is to show the population the actual norm concerning the particular behaviour.

An example: 'Most of us dont drink and drive' - It  was designed to  reduce drinking and driving among young adults(21-34) in the USA. An intial survey showed that 20.4% of young adults reported having  driven within one hour of drinking 2 or more drinks. 92% believed their peers had done the same. By correcting this misperception with the poster, reported drinking and driving had lowered to 13.7% comared to other countries that didnt run the campaign.

Social change through minority influence may be very gradual - Change doesnt happen that quick because there is a strong tendency for human beings to confrom to the majority position, groups are more likely to mantain the  status quo. The infleunce of a minroity is therefore more latent than direct.

Being perceived as deviant limits the influence of minorities - The potential for minorities to influence social chnage is often limited because they are  seen as deviant in the eyes of the majority, who may avoid alligning themselves withthe minority because  then they may be seen as deviant. So minorities face double the challengeof avodiing being portrayed as deviants and also  making people directly embrace their position.

Limitations of the social norms approach - Not all social norms interventions have led to social change, Dejong 2009 tested the effectiveness of social norms marketing campaigns to drive down alcohol use among students across 14 different college sites. Surveys were conducted  by post at the beginning of the study and 3 years after the campaign had finished. Students did not show lower perceptions of student drinking levels.

Social norms and the boomerang effect - Schultz 2007 suggested an unwelcome problem with social interventions. Although they are typially aimed at people whose behaviour is less desirable, but those  who behaviour is desirable will also receive the message and therefore engage in more destructive behaviour e.g. those who used less energy than the norm then increased their usage.