Minority influence Flashcards
Minority influence
A form of social influence in which a minority will persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. Leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.
Consistency
The minority must be consistent in their views. Over time, this consistency increases the amount of interest from other people, Consistency can take the form of agreement between people in the minority group.
Synchronic consistency - they’re all saying the same things
Diachronic consistency - they’ve been saying the same things for a long period of time
A consistent minority begins to make people question their own views
Commitment
The minority demonstrate commitment to their cause or views. Sometimes minorities do things that are quite extreme to draw attention. It is important these extreme activities present some risk as it shows greater commitment. Majority group members then pay more attention. This is called the augmentation principle
Flexibility
Relentless consistency could be counter-productive if it is 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.
Deeper processing
All of these factors outlined make people think about the minorities view or cause. If you hear something new your likely to deeply think about it, especially if the cause is consistent, committed and flexible. It is this deeper processing which is important in the conversion process. Over time people switch from the majority to the minority and this is known as conversion. The more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion is called the snowball effect. Gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occurred.
Moscovici Et Al
Participants either heard a consistent or inconsistent minority on whether slides were blue or green.
Eval - research support
Research support for the importance of consistency. Moscovici’s research and woods meta analysis of 100 studies showing consistency is effective in the success of minority
Eval
The role of deeper processing amongst a majority regarding the opinion of the minority. Martin et Al participants either exposed to a minority or majority viewpoint. When challenged, the minority group was less likely to change view - suggesting deeper processing was involved.
Social influence and social change
social influence - the process by which individuals and groups change each others attitudes and behaviours. Includes conformity, obedience and minority influence.
social change - this occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things. Examples include accepting the earth orbits the sun, women’s rights, gay rights and environmental issues.
How minority influence creates social change
1) Drawing attention to an issue e.g. marching, campaigning
2) Consistency and flexibility keeping the same message over time, but being willing to compromise so as to not appear dogmatic
3) Deeper processing of the issue people begin to think about the minority opinion more deeply
4) Augmentation principle the minority demonstrates commitment through sacrificing something e.g. freedom, reputation, their own property
5) Snowball affect more and more people become persuaded by the message
6) Social crypto amnesia, conformity/obedience people have a memory that change has occurred but not how it happened. People conform to the new majority position, or if a new law is put into pace, they obey the new law.
Eval - limitation
Explanations of how social influence leads to social change draws heavily on the studies of Moscovici, Asch and Milgram. There are a number of limitations of these studies, particularly the use of artificial tasks in Moscovici and Asch research. For example, in Asch demand characteristics may have played apart as they may have guessed confederates weren’t true participants so it wasn’t reflective of how they’d really conform. This therefore casts doubts on the validity of the explanations and so suggests that from research we cant strongly use these studies as evidence of social change.
Eval - support
Research has supported the role of social influences process in social change. Some research investigated whether social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community. They hung messages on the front doors of houses in San Diego, California every week for one month. They key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As control some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy but made no reference to other peoples behaviour. They found significant decreases in energy usage rom the first group. This suggests that conformity can lead to social change through normative social influence and therefore that the theory is valid.
