Role of Social Influence Processes in Social Change - Full Essay Plan

Discuss role of social influence processes in social change

Social change occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things. The process can be described in 6 steps. Firstly, by drawing attention to the issue.

Consistency of belief: (is essential in Moscovici's experiment). Found that the consistent condition had more participants agreeing to the minority influence than in the inconsistent condition.

Deeper processing of the issue: This attention meant the many people who had simply accepted the status quo began to think about the unjust of it.

The augmentation principle many people risking their lives, being proactive for the issue.

The snowball effect: gradually as the minority influence starts to become the majority. This is when change happens e.g. 1964 the US civil right act was passed

Social cryptomnesia: is when people have a memory that change had happened but don’t remember how it happened.

P = Research support using normative social influences.

E = Nolan et al investigated whether social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community.
They hung messages on front doors of houses every week for a month.
They had 2 groups each with a different message.
First groups message: said that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage.
Second group message: asked to control their energy usage, no reference to people.

E = the results shows that there…