Which finding demonstrates how breaking unanimity affects the potential for social change?

Which finding demonstrates how breaking unanimity affects the potential for social change?

• A. Majority influence is less powerful than minority influence
• B. Breaking unanimity can enable social change
• C. Unanimous groups are necessary for change
• D. Minority influence never leads to change

Answer: (B)

Breaking unanimity creates space for different views, which reduces the pressure to conform and lets people voice alternatives. When a group isn’t perfectly in agreement, the normative grip loosens, and a dissenting perspective can gain attention, be tested, and grow. Over time, that minority view can accumulate support and shift the group’s norms, leading to social change. This is why the idea that breaking unanimity can enable change captures the mechanism at work: dissent challenges the status quo and opens the door for new ideas to spread. In contrast, treating majority influence as always weaker or implying unanimity is necessary for change misses the key point that dissent is what makes change possible. And the notion that minority influence never leads to change is false because consistent, credible dissent can gradually transform norms.

Breaking unanimity creates space for different views, which reduces the pressure to conform and lets people voice alternatives. When a group isn’t perfectly in agreement, the normative grip loosens, and a dissenting perspective can gain attention, be tested, and grow. Over time, that minority view can accumulate support and shift the group’s norms, leading to social change. This is why the idea that breaking unanimity can enable change captures the mechanism at work: dissent challenges the status quo and opens the door for new ideas to spread.

In contrast, treating majority influence as always weaker or implying unanimity is necessary for change misses the key point that dissent is what makes change possible. And the notion that minority influence never leads to change is false because consistent, credible dissent can gradually transform norms.