Chapter 1.7 - Minority influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. Leads to internalisation or conversion
What are the three main processes in minority influence?
- Consistency
- Commitment
- Flexibility
What is consistency?
When the minority keeps the same beliefs, both over time and between all the individuals that form the minority
How does consistency help a minority’s influence?
Synchronic(everyone saying the same thing) and diachronic(saying the same thing over a period of time) consistency increases the amount of interest from others
- Makes others rethink their own views
- Draws attention to the minority view
What is commitment?
Dedication to one’s belief and views such as making personal sacrifices and engaging in extreme activities
How does commitment help a minority’s influence?
Draws attention to their views when the extreme activities present risk to the minority
- This is called the augmentation principle
- Shows that the minority is not acting out of self-interest
What is the Augmentation principle?
If a person or movement is carried out action despite great opposition, obstacles, or difficulties, their beliefs are perceived as ‘stronger than those obstacles’ and therefore appear more valid.
What is flexibility?
Adapting their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counterarguments
How does flexibility help a minority’s influence?
Relentless consistency could be counter-productive if seen by the majority as unbending, unreasonable and rigid
- Minority influence is more effective if they show flexibility by accepting the possibility of compromise
What are the two stages in the process of change?
- Deeper thinking
- Snowball effect
What is deeper thinking?
If a message is significantly different to ideas currently in circulation amongst the majority, it gets further attention
- Causing people to evaluate their own opinions regarding to the minority’s views
What is the snowball effect?
A process that starts from an initial state of small significance and increasingly becomes larger, such as a minority supporting and gradually more and more people are converting, increasing its rate
What is a strength for consistency? (research support)
A study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people than a minority with an inconsistent one
- Meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies showed that minorities who were seen as being consistent were more influential
Presenting a consistent view helps
What is a strength for deeper processing? (research support)
There is evidence showing that a change in the majority’s position involves deeper processing
- One group of participants had a minority group agree with the initial view whilst the other group had a majority agree
- They were exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again
- People were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group
Shows that the minority message had been more deeply processed
What is a counterpoint for deeper processing? (real-life situations)
Research studies control and make clear distinctions between the minority and majority
- In real-world situations minorities have more power, status, and commitment to their causes whereas it is just the smallest group in research
- The features are usually absent
Findings are limited to research situations, cannot tell us about minority influence in real-world situations
