Six employees in a construction company with 600 workers spoke monthly for two years about their experiences of depression. They repeated the message that depression is an illness rather than ordinary sadness. The message was then visibly supported by most employees and repeated in briefings across every site for six months. The organisation-wide briefings then stopped.
The company collected anonymous survey data.
| Survey point | Employees privately agreeing that depression is an illness (%) | Employees who would openly challenge a comment that someone should ‘snap out of’ depression (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Before the six employees began speaking | 38 | 22 |
| After two years of monthly talks | 61 | 45 |
| After six months of organisation-wide briefings | 64 | 81 |
| One year after the organisation-wide briefings stopped | 62 | 53 |
Using the source, explain how minority and majority influence account for the pattern in the results, including the results after the organisation-wide briefings stopped.
26 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE Psychology 4.3 Application: Changing attitudes, covering 4.3.1 Minority influence and social change and 4.3.2 Majority influence and social change. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.