minority influence

Question 1

what is minority influence?

Answer 1

a form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours
this leads to internalisation or identification, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours

Question 2

what three things to minorities need to uphold to successfully influence people?

Answer 2

•consistency
•commitment
•flexibility

Question 3

what is consistency?

Answer 3

minorities staying consistent with their message (repeating the same message over time), this increases the amount of interest from other people

Question 4

what are the two types of consistency?

Answer 4

diachronic and synchronic

Question 5

what is diachronic consistency?

Answer 5

repeating the same message over time

Question 6

what is synchronic consistency?

Answer 6

all the group saying the same thing

Question 7

what is commitment?

Answer 7

minorities need to show dedication through things like making personal sacrifices. This gives the minorities message credibility because they are unlikely to be prepared to suffer for a cause that is not worthwhile.
this is known as the augmentation principle.

Question 8

what is the augmentation principle?

Answer 8

the minorities staying committed and showing that they are prepared to make personal sacrifices if necessary due to how worthwhile their cause is

Question 9

what is flexibility?

Answer 9

minorities must not come across as fixed and narrow in their views, they need to show that they’re willing to listen, compromise and adapt

Question 10

how do minorities influence social change?

Answer 10

1. minority draws attention to the issue
2. consistency
3. conflict is created, people begin thinking about the issue
4. augmentation principle, the minority must remain committed
5. snowball effect, the minority starts to become the majority, laws might be put in place
6. social crypto-amnesia, people forget how the change started

Question 11

what is the acronym for remembering how minority influence leads to social change?

Answer 11

ACCASS

Question 12

how does informational social influence link to how minority influence leads to social change?

Answer 12

when the minority remain consistent and committed, people begin to think more deeply about the issue which often leads to internalisation (their private beliefs and attitudes are changed privately as well as publicly)

Question 13

how does normative social influence apply to minorities influencing social change?

Answer 13

in the ‘snowball effect’ stage, the last people to change are probably just complying and following what everyone else is going to fit in

Question 14

evaluation points for minority influence

Answer 14

strength: research support for consistency
strength: research support for depth of thought
limitation: artificial tasks

Question 15

strength: research support for consistency

Answer 15

•Moscovici’s study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion
•Wood carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were the most influential
•this suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence

Question 16

Wood carried out a meta-analysis on how many studies?

Answer 16

100

Question 17

strength: research support for depth of thought

Answer 17

•change to a minority position involves a deeper processing of ideas
•Martin gave participants a viewpoint and measured their support. one group head a minority group agree with the initial view while the other group heard this from a majority.
•participants were then exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again
•Martin found that people were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group in comparison with a majority
•this suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect, supporting the central argument about how the minority influence process works

Question 18

limitation: artificial tasks

Answer 18

•research involved like Moscovici’s study and Asch’s line judgement task use artificial tasks
•research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life, as there are often greater consequences
•this means that the findings of minority influence studies such as Moscovici’s are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real life situations

Question 19

what was the aim of Moscovici’s study?

Answer 19

to see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception task. He claimed that Asch had put too much emphasis on the notion that the majority in a group had a large influence on the minority.

Question 20

what was the procedure of Moscovici’s study?

Answer 20

•his sample consisted of 172 female participants who were told that they were taking part in a colour perception task
•the participants were placed in groups of 6 and shown 36 slides all in varying shades of blue
•2 of the 6 participants were confederates
•in one condition (consistent) the two confederates said that all 36 slides were green
•in the second condition (inconsistent) the confederated said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue

Question 21

what were the results of Moscovici’s study?

Answer 21

•the participants have the same wrong answer on 8% of consistent trials
•33% gave the same answer as the minority on at least one trial
•in the inconsistent condition, real participants only agreed on 1% of trials

Question 22

what were the conclusions of Moscovici’s study?

Answer 22

this shows that a consistent minority is 7% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in minority influence. Minorities can influence a majority but not all the time, and only when they behave in certain ways (eg consistent behaviour style)

Question 23

what are 3 limitations of Moscovici’s study?

Answer 23

•bias sample
•deceit
•artificial task

Question 24

Moscovici limitation: bias sample

Answer 24

•172 female participants from America
•results are unable to be generalised as we cannot be sure that male participants from other cultures would respond in the same to minority influence
•research also suggests that females are more likely to conform

Question 25

Moscovici limitation: deceit

Answer 25

•he has been criticised for deceiving his participants
•he did not gain fully informed consent

Question 26

Moscovici limitation: artificial task

Answer 26

•lab experiment setting and an artificial task questions the ecological validity of the research and whether it can be generalised to other settings