Minority Influence

Question 1

What is minority influence?

Answer 1

Situations where a minority of people persuades others to adopt their belief, attitudes or behaviours, leading to internalisation or conversion

Question 2

Commitment

Answer 2

Demonstrates dedication to cause, possibly making personal sacrifices, showing they’re not acting out of self-interest (augmentation principle). Majority group members then pay more attention

Question 3

Consistency

Answer 3

Draws attention to the minority view and increases the amount of interest from other people. This can be between people of the group (synchronic consistency) or over time (diachronic consistency)

Question 4

Flexibility

Answer 4

Allows the possibility of compromise. Relentless consistency could be counter-productive as could be seen by the majority as unreasonable / rigid

Question 5

Strengths of minority influence

Answer 5

• Research supporting consistency (eg. Moscovici 1969 found participants in consistent group in colour identification task agreed 8% compared to 1% in non-consistent group)
• Research evidence for importance of consistency (eg. Wood’s meta-analysis found consistent minorities were significantly more influential)
• Research support for deeper processing (eg. Martin demonstrated enduring effect and greater degree on internalisation)

Question 6

Limitations of minority influence

Answer 6

• Lacks external validity (eg. Moscovici’s artificial task and stimuli, lacking mundane realism)
• Rare (eg. Moscovici only found 8% agreement with consistent minority, displaying limited power of minority influence)