Minority Influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
A conversion process whereby people scrutinise the message itself in order to understand why the minority hold their view
What can happen as a result of minority influence
Conversion to the minority view, with the people conversion tending to be longer lasting as people have internalised the minorities pov
What are the three key elements to successful minority influence
Consistency, commitment and flexibility
Why do minories need consistency to their view
When people are first exposed to a minority view they assume they have made some mistake and that the minority is in error. However if the minority is consistent in their approach, other can come to reassess their position and situation more carefully.
What did Wood et al do
A meta analysis of 97 studies of minority influence, which found that those percieved as being particularly consistent in expressing their opinion were particularly influential
Who carried out a meta analysis of minority influence studies and how many studies did they evaluate
Wood et al, 97 studies
Why is commitment in minority goups inevitably greater
Joining a minority is at greater risk to the individual than staying in the majority, so the degree of commitment from minorities is inevitably greater
Why do minorities have to be flexible in their arguments
Mugny suggests that this is far more effective at changing majority opinion than rigidity of arguments, as minorities are typically powerless so must negotiate their position rather than enforce it. Those who fail to compromise risk being seen as dogmatic, whilst those who are too flexible risks being seen as inconsistent.
Why do minorities need commitment to their arguments
Commitment suggests certainty, confidence and courage, and it is increasingly difficult to dismiss a minority if it adopts uncompromising commitment
What is a particularly important piece of research into consistency minority influence
A study done by Moscovici et al, where each group was made up of 4 naive participant and a minority of 2 confederates. Why were shown blue slides which varied only in intensity. In one condition, the consistent condition, the minority confederates called out green to every slide, while in the inconsistent condition confederates only called out green on two-thirds of trials. They found that the consistent minority influenced the participants to say green on over 8% of trials, while the inconsistent minority had results that differed little from the control group
Who conducted a study showing naive participants blue slides
Moscovici (leonardo da mosco -vici)
Who provided support for the importance of flexibility in minority influence
Nementh and Brilmayer, they simulated a jury situation
What did Nementh and Brilmayer do to provide evidence of the importance of minority influence
They simulated a jury situation where group members discussed the amount of compensation to be paid to someone in a ski lift incident. When a confederate put forward an alternate pov and refused to change positition this had no effect on participants. However, when the confederate compromised they exerted influence on the rest of the group. This influence only occured when the confederate shifted late in negotiations rather than those who shifted early, who were seen as caving in. Shows effect of flexibility
What is evidence of the tipping point for minority influence
The tipping point was found by Xie et al, who used a computer model of social networks to simulate how the prescence of minority opinions eventually leads to opinion change. The study concluded that the percentage of committed opinion holdres necessary to tip the majority into accepting the minority opinion was just 10%. This is referred to as the snowball effect.
Who used computer simulations to prove the tipping point of minority influence
Xie et al
Who suggested that majority views actually create greater message processing
Mackie
Who argued against Mackie’s views that the minority view ‘opens’ the mind
Nemeth
Who suggested that minorities are powerless so must negotiate
Mugny
