The role of social influence processes in social change, including minority influence, internalisation, snowball effect, social cryptomnesia and the role of conformity and obedience.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain how social influence processes (minority influence, conformity and obedience) produce social change, using the steps minorities take. The exam skill is to set out the stages of minority-led change in order and to link conformity (NSI) and obedience to real campaigns.

How minorities create social change

The stages: a minority draws attention to an issue, shows consistency, prompts deep processing in those who were neutral, demonstrates commitment (augmentation principle), the view spreads through the snowball effect until it reaches a tipping point, and then social cryptomnesia means people remember the change but not how it happened.

These stages join the minority-influence topic to real-world change, so learn them in order and be ready to apply them to an example such as the suffragettes or the US civil rights movement. First, the minority draws attention to an issue, making the majority aware of a problem they had ignored (the suffragettes used marches, protests and hunger strikes to make the question of votes for women unavoidable). Second, the minority is consistent, repeating the same message over time and across its members, which makes the majority take it seriously. Third, this prompts deep processing in people who were previously neutral, as they are forced to think hard about an unfamiliar position. Fourth, the minority shows commitment, often through personal risk or sacrifice (the hunger strikes), which draws further attention through the augmentation principle. Fifth, as more people convert, the view gathers momentum through the snowball effect, spreading from a small minority until it reaches a tipping point and becomes the majority position. Finally, social cryptomnesia occurs: society remembers that the change happened but forgets where it came from or who started it.

The role of conformity and obedience

Conformity research shows social change can be encouraged through normative social influence, for example campaigns telling people that "most others" recycle or use less energy. Obedience can produce change when legitimate authorities pass laws, and gradual commitment (incremental requests) increases compliance.

Conformity and obedience offer two further routes to change. Conformity research, especially the role of normative social influence demonstrated by Asch, is used in social-change campaigns that provide normative information: telling people that "most residents already recycle" exploits the desire to fit in with the perceived majority, nudging behaviour towards the new norm. Obedience contributes when legitimate authorities pass and enforce laws (such as the ban on smoking in public places), so that behaviour changes through obedience to legitimate authority, and Milgram's idea of gradual commitment suggests that small initial requests make people more likely to comply with larger demands later. A balanced evaluation notes that minority-led social change is usually slow and gradual, that the deep processing it relies on can sometimes entrench the majority position rather than change it, and that the role of social cryptomnesia is hard to study directly. Tying each route back to its underlying study (Moscovici, Asch, Milgram) is what lifts an answer into the top band.