Lesson 11- minority influence

Question 1

Minority influence

Answer 1

Occurs when very persuasive small groups or even individuals can change the way the majority behaves and thinks
Moscovici (1985) considered minority influence to lead to conversion, when individuals change their private beliefs and views because of minority influence

Question 2

Minority groups are convincing when

Answer 2

Committed- when members or minority demonstrate their dedication to belief perhaps by making sacrifices (augmentation principle) or by taking risks or by being inconvenienced some way, shows not acting out of self-interest
Consistent- when minority repeatedly gives the same message over time, makes majority reassess their belief and consider the issue more carefully
Flexible- shows they are willing to listen to other viewpoints, majority will be more likely to listen to minority point of view and take their argument more seriously

Question 3

Effect and process

Answer 3

Snowball effect- effect initially has small effect but then spreads as more and more people consider the issues being raised and are converted to the minority viewpoint, eventually reaches tipping point where minority becomes majority
Social crypto-amnesia- minority influence is a slow process and may even be unconscious, sometimes the individual is not even aware of where the new idea originated from

Question 4

Evaluation (4 weaknesses 1 strength)

Answer 4

-Moscovici (1969) told 172 female participants that they were taking part in a colour perception task, naive participants were placed in groups of six, two of which were confederates, and shown 36 slides which were varying shades of blue, participants had to state out loud the colour of each slide, consistent condition: confederates said that all slides were green, swayed the minority 8.2% of the time
Inconsistent condition: said 24 slides were green and 12 blue,participants only went along with minority 1.25% of the time
-sample is gender biased as study only used women, cannot generalise to males/assume they would respond to minority influence the same way, research often suggests that women are more likely to conform than men, further research is needed
-sample is culturally biased as all participants were from America, findings cannot be generalised to other populations, cannot conclude participants from other cultures would response to minority influence the same way
-lacks ecological validity as most studies into minority influence were conducted in laboratories, usually a collection of students who don’t know each other and will never meet again
-studies into minority influence have been criticised for deceiving participants, Moscovici told participants they were taking part in a colour perception test which means they did not give their informed consent, however deception was necessary ti the experiment to avoid demand characteristics and achieve valid results