minority influence Flashcards
Define minority influence.
A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. Leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.
Name the three important factors for a minority to be effective.
Consistency, commitment, flexibility.
Define consistency.
Consistent minorities are persuasive; they create doubt about established viewpoints/beliefs. Minority influence is most effective if the minority keeps the same beliefs, both over time and between all the individuals that form the minority. Consistency is effective because it draws attention to the minority view. There are two types of consistency - synchronic and diachronic.
Define commitment.
Consistency in the face of abuse shows that minorities are committed and helps motivate individuals to consider their viewpoint. This is effective because it shows the minority is not acting out of self-interest.
Define 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. Minorities that compromise and are slightly inconsistent are more persuasive - this questions the importance of consistency. They key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility.
Name the two types of consistency.
Synchronic and diachronic.
Define synchronic consistency.
all saying the same thing.
Define diachronic consistency.
have been saying the same thing for a long time.
Explain the process of change to a minority viewpoint.
All factors make people think about the view or cause.
Over time, increasing numbers of people switch from the majority position to the minority position - they have become converted.
The more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion. This is called the snowball effect. Gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occurred.
Define social cryptoamnesia.
The gradual process by which minority view becomes majority views - few converts initially, then more and more.
Give an example of minority influence.
The environmental campaign group GREENPEACE was formed in Canada in the 1940s.
Originally they were seen as a bunch of weirdos, and attracted ridicule. but they persisted with their with their views and campaigns.
Slowly, they won people over gaining more members (social cryptoamnesia).
Eventually they become seen as a mainstream, legitimate voice for environment matters.
Discuss research support of consistency as a strength of minority influence.
One strength is research evidence demonstrating the importance of consistency.
Moscovici et al’s blue/green study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people than an inconsistent opinion. Wood et al (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 other studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential.
This suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority.
Discuss research support of deeper processing for a change to a minority viewpoint as a strength of minority influence.
Another strength is evidence showing that a change in the majority’s position does involve deeper processing of the minority’s ideas.
Martin et al (2003) presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured ptps agreement. One group of ptps then heard a majority group agree with it. Ptps were finally exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again. People were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a majority group.
This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect, supporting the central argument about how minority influence works.
However, real-world social influence situations are more complicated than the controlled way they are set up in research like Martin et al (2003).
For example, majorities usually have a lot more power and status than minorities. Minorities are very committed to their causes to make up for the hostile opposition they have to face. These features are usually absent from minority influence research - where they are simply presented as the smallest group.
This implies that minority influence in the real-world are more complicated than minority influence research suggests - and Martin et al’s research findings are very limited in the support they can provide the theory.
Discuss artificial tasks as a limitation of minority influence research.
One limitation of minority influence research is that the tasks involved are often artificial. For example, Moscovini et al’s identifying the colour of a slide task, which is far removed from how minorities attempt to change behaviour of majorities in real-life. In cases such as jury decision-making and political campaigns, the outcomes are vastly more important, sometimes even literally a matter of life and death. This means that the findings of a majority of research into social influence lack external validity, and are therefore limited in what they can tell us about the process of social influence in real-world social situations.
