Minority influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
A form of social influence in which the minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours.
What does minority influence lead to?
Leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public attitudes.
Who studied the process of minority influence?
What was the study called?
Moscovici (1969)
Blue slide, green slide study.
What did the blue slide, green slide study entail?
A group of 6 people were asked to view a set of 36 blue coloured slides that varied in intensity.
The ppts were asked to state whether the slides were blue or green.
How many confederates were there and what did they do?
There was 2 confederates in each group who consistently said the slides were green on 2/3s of the trials.
What were the findings of the study?
The ppts gave the same wrong answer on 8.42% of trials, 32% gave the same answer as the minority on at least one of the trials
What were the second group of ppts exposed to?
They were exposed to an inconsistent minority.
What were the findings for the second group?
Agreement fell to 1.25%.
What were the 3rd group exposed to?
There were no confederates and all ppts had to do was identify the colour of each slide.
What were the findings for the 3rd group?
They got the answer wrong on just 0.25% of the trials.
What are the 3 things needed for minority influence to become the majority?
Consistency,
Commitment,
Flexibility.
What does consistency mean for social influence?
Minority influence is most effective if the minority keeps the same beliefs, both over time and between all the individuals that form the majority.
How is consistency effective?
It’s effective as it draws attention to the majority view, making the majority question or rethink their own views.
What is synchronic consistency?
When a group of people all say the same thing.
What is diachronic consistency?
When a group of people have been saying the same thing for a long time.
What does commitment mean for minority influence?
Minority influence is more powerful if the minority demonstrates dedication to their position, for example, by making personal sacrifices.
This causes the majority to pay even more attention.
This is called the augmentation principle.
Why is commitment effective?
This is effective because it shows that the minority are not acting out of self-interest.
What is the augmentation principle?
If a person performs an action when there are known constraints, their motive for acting must be stronger.
What does flexibility mean for minority influence?
Relentless consistency could be counter-productive if it’s seen by the majority as unbending and unreasonable. Therefore minority influence is more effective if the minority show flexibility by accepting the possibility of compromise.
Who argued that consistency can be interpreted negatively so flexibility should also be used.
Nemeth 1986
The key for minority influence is to strike a balance between …
Consistency and flexibility
How does minority influence work?
Over time, after persistent and passionate efforts, increasing numbers of people will switch from the majority position to the minority position - they have converted.
The more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion - snowball effect.
Gradually, the minority view has become the majority and change has occurred.
What is the snowball effect?
A process that starts from an initial state of small significance and increasingly becomes larger, such as only starting with a small group of people supporting an idea and gradually more and more people are supportive.
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COMPLETE EVALUATION
