4.1.1 - Minority Influence

Question 1

What is minority influence

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

How does minority influence take place

Answer 2

In order to change the opinions of others, minorities must adopt a particular behaviour style, they must be:
- committed
- consistent
- flexible

Question 3

What is the snowball effect

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Why do minority groups need to show consistency?

Answer 4

• 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

Question 5

What is diachronic consistency?

Answer 5

When the minority have been saying the same thing for sometime

Question 6

What is synchronic consistency?

Answer 6

When all members of the minority are saying the same thing

Question 7

How do minority groups show commitment?

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

How do you minorities show flexibility?

Answer 8

• 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

Question 9

Who investigated minority influence

Answer 9

Moscovici et al (1969)

Question 10

What was the aim of moscovivi’s study?

Answer 10

To see if a minority group could influence the majority when naming the colours of different colour slides ( blue and green)

Question 11

What was the procedure of moscivici’s study

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

What were the results of moscivici’s study

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

Moscovici A03: ecological validity

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Moscovici A03: explanatory power

Answer 14

• strength
• The study has explanatory power, because it can explain how minority influence has been successful in real life eg: suffragettes

Question 15

Moscovici A03: generalisability

Answer 15

• 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

Question 16

Minority influence theory A03: research support

Answer 16

• 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.

Question 17

Minority influence theory A03: not representative of real life

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

Minority influence theory A03: research supporting internalisation of the minorities view

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

Minority influence theory A03: the theory is not always relevant

Answer 19

• 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.