Achieving minority influence Flashcards
Define minority influence?
A type of social influence that motivates individuals to reject established majority group norms
What are the four ways of achieving minority influence?
Behavioural style - consistency and commitment
Behavioural style - flexibility
Style of thinking
Identification
How does behavioural style consistency and commitment achieve minority influence?
Minority influence will be persuasive if the minority is consistent with its opinion / behaviour as it shows confidence in its belief and appears unbiased. Consistency shows minority to be committed especially if they’ve had to resist social pressures against their viewpoint and created enough doubt about established norms to get individuals to re-examine their beliefs/behaviour (Moscovici)
How does behavioural style - flexibility achieve minority influence?
When minorities are seen as flexible and demonstrate the ability to be moderate, co-operative and reasonable then they will be persuasive. Successful minority influence therefore seems to require the minority to compromise
What research supported the impact of flexibility on achieving minority influence?
Nemeth (1986) - created groups of three participants and one confederate who had to decide on how much compensation would be given. When confederate acted as consistent minority he had no effect on majority, however, when he acted as a flexible minority and compromised he made a bigger impact
How does style of thinking help achieve minority influence?
A consistent, committed minority stand an increased chance of getting individuals to engage in systematic processing, where the minority viewpoint will be considered over time rather than instantly dismissed
What research supports style of thinking?
Smith et al (1996) - found that if a minority could get a majority to consider an issue in terms of arguments for and against the issue then the minority became more influential - showing how style of thinking is important in determining the persuasiveness of the minority
How does identification achieve minority influence?
When a majority identifies with a minority then the minority will be more persuasive in getting the majority to convert e.g if a minority consisted solely of males it would be more persuasive to males than females
What research supports identification?
Maas et al (1982) - found that homosexual minority arguing for homosexual rights were less persuasive in changing heterosexual opinions than a heterosexual minority arguing for homosexual rights suggesting that identification is important
