Minority Influence Flashcards
What is Minority Influence?
One person or a small group influence the beliefs and behaviour of others - leading to internalisation where public behaviour and private beliefs change.
What was Moscovici’s study?
A group of 6 people viewed 36 different shades of blue and state whether the slides were blue or green. In each group there were 2 confederates who consistently said the slides were green - 8.4% of the time the participants conformed to the minority view.
When the participants had an inconsistent minority, conformity was 1.25%.
What is Consistency?
The minority must be consistent in their views, which draws interest over time. Synchronic consistency is them all saying the same thing and diachronic consistency is saying the same thing over time. This makes people start to rethink their views.
What is Commitment?
Minorities engage in risky or extreme actions to draw attention - majority groups pay more attention due to the extremity of the belief of the minority - augmentation principle.
What is Flexibility?
- Nemeth argued consistency is not the only factor because it can be off-putting and dogmatic, so members need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counterarguments.
How do the 3 factors explain the process of change?
The deeper processing caused by exposure due to the 3 factors makes you think more deeply about it - as people switch from the majority to minority this is known as the snowball effect.
What is the strength - research support?
Moscovici’s study showed a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect than an inconsistent opinion. Wood carried out a meta-analysis and found that minorities seen as consistent were more influential.
What is the strength - research support for deeper processing?
Martin presented a message supporting a viewpoint and measured agreement. One group heard a minority agree with the initial view and the other group heard a majority group agree. They were then exposed to a conflicting view and had their attitudes measured again. People were less willing to change if they listened to a minority than if they had listened to a majority. This suggests the minority message had been more deeply processed.
What is the limitation - lacks mundane realism?
Research studies such as Martins make clear minority-majority distinctions, and doing this in a controlled way is a strength of minority influence. In the real-world, social influence is more complicated - majorities have more power and status and minorities are overly committed. Therefore most studies are limited in what they can actually tell us.
What is the limitation - artificial tasks?
Tasks involved are often as artificial as Asch’s line judgement. This includes Moscovici’s task - research is far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities IRL - which is often a matter of life or death. This means findings lack external validity.
