4.1.1 - Minority Influence Flashcards
What is minority influence
- creates a conversion whereby people consider the message that the minority is sharing
- people want to understand why the minority have this view so have an interest in what they have to say
- as a result internalisation of the minorities message occurs until the minority becomes the majority
How does minority influence take place
In order to change the opinions of others, minorities must adopt a particular behaviour style, they must be:
- committed
- consistent
- flexible
What is the snowball effect
Over time, an increasing number of people begin to share the views of the minority, so they become ‘concerted’
- the more conversion that takes place, the faster the rate of conversion becomes
- eventually social change will occur as the minority is now the majority
Why do minority groups need to show consistency?
- consistency from minority groups increases the amount of interest from other people
- people then begin to rethink their own views
- two types of consistency:
Synchronic consistency
Diachronic consistency
What is diachronic consistency?
When the minority have been saying the same thing for sometime
What is synchronic consistency?
When all members of the minority are saying the same thing
How do minority groups show commitment?
- some minorities, engage in extreme activities to draw attention to their views
- The extreme activities are at some risks of the minority which demonstrate their commitment
- This leads to majority group members, paying more attention to the minority
How do you minorities show flexibility?
- members of minority group need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept a reasonable invalid counter arguments from members of the majority
- The aim is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility
- Which insures that the consistency is an interpreted negatively
Who investigated minority influence
Moscovici et al (1969)
What was the aim of moscovivi’s study?
To see if a minority group could influence the majority when naming the colours of different colour slides ( blue and green)
What was the procedure of moscivici’s study
- A group of six people asked to view a set of 36 blue coloured slides that varied in intensity. Each participant was asked to state whether the slides were blue or green.
- In the first group of participants, there were two confederate, that consistently said that the slides of a green on 2/3 of the trials (both said same slides were green)
- In the second group participants, there were two confederacy in consistently said that the slides with green on 2/3 of the trials
- In the control group there were no confederate
What were the results of moscivici’s study
- Group one with the consistent Confederates: 32% of participants gave the same wrong answers as the Confederates at least once
- Group 2 with the inconsistent Confederate: conformity fell to 1.5%.
- Group 3 the control group, Perowne got answers wrong only 0.25% of trials
Moscovici A03: ecological validity
Limitation
- Lab studies said it was not relatable to real life tasks
- The task was unusual and strange, therefore people are more likely to conform as it means nothing to them
- lacks ecological validity
Moscovici A03: explanatory power
- strength
- The study has explanatory power, because it can explain how minority influence has been successful in real life eg: suffragettes
Moscovici A03: generalisability
- The study was only on females, so cannot be generalised to men
- In the past studies have shown that women are more likely to come for the men
- Which is a limitation because it means that the study is unrepresentative
Minority influence theory A03: research support
- wood et al (1994) carried out a meta analysis of almost 100 similar study to Moscovici
- He found that minorities who was seen as consistent, the most
- Which suggests that consistency is the key factor in the success of minority influence.
Minority influence theory A03: not representative of real life
- Moscovici’s colour of the slides task is just as artificial as Ash’s is line judgement task
- in cases like political campaigning, Audrey decision making the outcomes of us the important this means that many studies into minority influence of lack, external validity
- They are limited in what they tell us about how my note influence works in real life
- Research is not representative of how minorities attempt to change behaviour of majorities in real life
Minority influence theory A03: research supporting internalisation of the minorities view
- in a variation of moscivici’s study participants were allowed to write to their answers down, so the responses were private
- Private agreement with the minority position was greater in these circumstances
- It appears that members of the majority will be in convinced by the minorities argument, but were reluctant to admit this publicly
- Moscovici suggested that this is because they didn’t want to be associated with the minority as members of the majority didn’t want to be considered radical or outsiders
- This finding shows that the minority is converting the private opinion of others
Minority influence theory A03: the theory is not always relevant
- It has been argued that people do not process the minority
view more deeply than the majority - It is when we
disagree with the majority that we think about the
opposing arguments more deeply. - This is to say, if the majority express a different view
from the one we hold, we must consider carefully why this
is the case in order to understand why we are
different to the majority. - By contrast, people tend not to waste time trying to
PVOCeSS why a minority’s message might be different; therefore
It will be less, rather than more influential.
