Minority influence

Question 1

What is minority influence?

Answer 1

• A form of social influence that happens when a minority, like an individual or small group, changes the beliefs or behaviour of a majority.

Question 2

What is social change?

Answer 2

• This occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things.
• Examples include accepting that the earth orbits the sun, women’s suffrage, gay rights and environmental issues.

Question 3

Examples of minority influence

Answer 3

• Rosa Parks
• Suffragettes (Emmeline Pankhurst)
• Fathers for justice
• Greta Thunberg

etc.

Question 4

How does the minority become the majority (4 ways)

Answer 4

1. Consistency= of the message within the group/ over time- the minority are able to draw attention to their cause.
2. Commitment= personal sacrifice (no personal gain), captures attention and lets people know you’re serious.
3. Flexibility
4. Non-dogmatic (non-judgemental)

Question 5

Consistency info

Answer 5

• The consistency in the minority’s views increases the amount of interest from other people.
• The consistency might be agreement between people in the minority group (synchronic consistency- they’re all saying the same thing), and/ or consistency over time (diachronic consistency- they’ve all been saying the same thing for some time now).
• Such consistency makes other people start to rethink their own views.

Question 6

Consistency- STUDY

Answer 6

Moscovici (1969)
- Wanted to see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer, in a colour perception task.
- Sample: 172 female participants.
- Participants placed in groups of 6 and shown 36 slides which were all varying shades of blue.
- Participants had to state the colour out loud on each slide.
- 2/6 of the participants were confederates, and in one condition the confederates said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue.

Question 7

Moscovici- FINDINGS

Answer 7

• In the consistent condition, the real participants agreed on 8.2% of the trials, whereas in the inconsistent condition, the real participants only agreed on 1.25% of the trials.
• This shows that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in minority influence.

Question 8

Commitment- INFO

Answer 8

• Sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views. It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause.
• Majority group members then pay even more attention.
• This is called the augmentation principle.

An example of this is the suffragette movement.

Question 9

Flexibility- INFO

Answer 9

• Nemeth argued that consistency is no the only important factor in minority influence because it can be interpreted negatively. Being extremely consistent and repeating the same arguments and behaviours again and again can be seen as rigid, unbending, dogmatic and inflexible.
• This is off putting to the majority and unlikely to result in any conversions to the minority position. Instead, members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter- arguments. The key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility.

Question 10

Define dogmatic

Answer 10

• Inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true.

Question 11

Define the snowball effect

Answer 11

• A situation where something starts small and gains momentum, growing in significance or intensity over time. In human behaviour, it often describes how small actions or events can lead to larger, more impactful outcomes.

Question 12

Define the augmentation principle

Answer 12

• A concept that states the effectiveness of a reinforcement or punishment is determined by how much it increases or decreases the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated.

Question 13

Define social cryptomnesia

Answer 13

• A cognitive bias experienced by entire cultures following social change. It occurs when the minority ideas become a social truth.

Question 14

Define internalisation

Answer 14

• A psychological process through which individuals integrate external rules and standards into their own identity or sense of self.

Question 15

Nemeth- what?

Answer 15

• Investigated the idea of flexibility in which ppts, in groups of 4, had to agree on the amount of compensation they would give to a victim of a ski-lift accident.

Question 16

Nemeth- procedure

Answer 16

• One of the ppts in each group was a confederate.
• Two conditions:
  1. When the minority argued for a low rate of compensation and refused to change his position (inflexible).
  2. When the minority argued for a low rate of compensation but compromised by offering a slightly higher rate of compensation (flexible).

Question 17

Nemeth- findings.

Answer 17

• Nemeth found that in the inflexible condition, the minority had little or no effect on the majority, however in the flexible condition, the majority was much more likely to compromise and change their view.
• Nemeth’s research highlights the importance of flexibility but questions the idea of consistency. On the one hand, Moscovici shows that minorities need to be consistent, whereas Nemeth shows that minorities need to be flexible.