11: Research into Minority Influence (Moscovi)

Question 1

what is meant by minority influence

Answer 1

a form of social influence in which a minority of people (sometimes just one person) outside others in the majority to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours.
This is different from conformity where the majority is doing the influencing.
Minority influence is most likely to lead to internalisation, in which both public behaviour and private beliefs are changes

Question 2

Who did research into minority influence?

Answer 2

Moscovici (1969)

Question 3

Outline Research into Minority Influence
- aim

Answer 3

Moscovici (1969) aimed to test whether a minority group were more likely to influence a majority group into giving the incorrect answer on a colour perception test if they were consistent in their views

Question 4

Outline Research into Minority Influence
- procedure

Answer 4

172 female ppts who had all had their eyesight tested were involved
Each test involves a group of 6 people made up of 4 participants and two confederates (a minority trying to influence the participants behaviour)
The groups were presented with a series of 36 slides which were clearly different shades of blue and asked to state aloud what colour each slide was
In one condition, the confederates states that the blue slides were green (incorrect answer) every time (the consistent condition)
in another condition, the confederates answers green 24 times and blue 12 times (the inconsistent condition)

Question 5

Outline Research into Minority Influence
- findings

Answer 5

• inconsistent condition: 1.25% of the ppts answers were green
• consistent condition: 8.42% of their answers were green
• control condition (with no confederates): 0.25% of incorrect answers were given

Question 6

Outline Research into Minority Influence
- conclusion

Answer 6

concluded that i’d a minority group wants to influence the majority group, they must be consistent in their views

Question 7

Evaluate Research into Minority Influence
- Strengths

Answer 7

P: well controlled
E: controlled setting of a laboratory made it easy to control EVs
E: for example, Moscovici was able to control the lighting and slides used to ensure participants could clearly judge the colour of the slides
L: study measure what in intended to - high internal validity

Question 8

Evaluate Research into Minority Influence
- Limitations

Answer 8

P: low ecological validity
E: although laboratory setting is controlled, it can also be seen as artificial because it doesn’t represent real life
E: for example, the task of colour judgment is not an ordinary common task so is less meaningful
L: findings may not generalise to real-life minority influence

P: high demand characteristics
E/E: because ppts were aware they were taking part in a study they may have acted unnaturally or tried to please Moscovici by behaving in a way they thought they were intended to by conforming (please-you effect)
L: reduces the internal validity of research into MI as it isn’t measuring what it intends to measure

P: Suffers from ethical issues such as deception
E: can be criticised for deliberately misleading ppts
E: for example, Moscovici told his ppts that all of the people sat around the table were participants when some of them were really confederates which may have caused some pots to feel embarrassed or foolish after the experiment (lack of protection from harm)
L: goes against the ethical code of conduct
E: furthermore, by using deception it was not possible to gain full informed consent until afterwards when they were told the truth in the debrief. again, this goes against the ethical code. However in defence of Moscovici he wouldn’t have been able to obtain realistic results has he not used deception

P: evidence against comes from Nemeth and Brilmayer (1987)
E: testes smock jury where group discussed the amount of compensation that should be given to someone in a ski lift accident
E: found that when a confederate put forward an alternative POV and refused to change his position this has no influence on the group. however, when they showed flexibility and compromised this did have an influence on the group.
L: suggests consultancy is not always effective as it could be seen as rigid whilst flexibility may have more of an influence
E: since there are more serious consequences to decisions made in a jury, this may not be representative of real life everyday MI situations