minority influence Flashcards
AO1: what is minority influence and what they need to have
a form of social influence where a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs. Leads to internalisation
what they need to have:
1) commitment- engaging in extreme activities to draw attention to their views
2) consistency- increases the amount of interest from others and makes them rethink their views.
3) flexibility- consistency is too off putting and rigid, instead need to be prepared to adapt their POV and accept counter arguments
AO1: moscovici’s study
Aim: To see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer, in a colour perception task.
method: 172 female participants who were told that they were taking part in a colour perception task. The participants were placed in groups of six and shown 36 slides, which were all varying shades of blue. The participants had to state out loud the colour of each slide. Two of the six participants were confederates and in one condition (consistent) the two confederates said that all 36 slides were green; in the second condition (inconsistent) the confederates said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue.
Findings: Moscovici found that 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
AO3: limitation- used bias sample
strength- big number participated
P: used bias sample of USA females
E/E: can’t generalise to target population and can’t conclude male participants would respond in the same way. psychologists would need to do more research into how males would respond.
L: low population validity
HOWEVER,
a big number of participants took part in the experiment, therefore the results can still be generalised to all females.
AO3: limitation- breaching ethical guidelines
P: ethical issues
E/E: He deceived his participants, as they were old that they were taking part in a colour perception test when in fact it was an experiment on minority influence. This also means that Moscovici did not gain fully informed consent.
L: his experiment was unethical
HOWEVER,
Moscovici’s experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results, as if the participants were aware of the true aim, they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently
AO3: limitation- methodological issues
P: methodological issues
E/E: judging the colour of the slide is an artificial task, and lacks realism since it is not an everyday task. doesn’t relate to real world minority influence such as political campaigns.
L: lacks external validity
AO3: questioned whether being consistent is enough to cause minority influence
P: Researchers have questioned whether being consistent alone is enough to cause minority influence.
E: Nemeth (1986) argued that if the minority is seen as being inflexible and uncompromising then the majority are unlikely to change.
E: constructed a mock jury with 3 genuine participants and one confederate, they had to decide amount of compensation to give ski lift accident victim. When confederate wouldn’t change from an unreasonable low amount, the others stuck together at a high amount but when the confederate changed his compensation offer a bit, so did the majority.
L: This therefore shows that the minority should balance consistency and flexibility so they do not appear rigid
