Minority Influence Flashcards
Minority Influence
is a third form of social influence. This occurs when a individual or small group (the minority) changes the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of a large group (the majority).
Moscovicis research
In 1969 Moscovici aimed to find out how a minority group was able to influence others. He investigated the factors and processes that were instrumental in a minority being effective in persuading others of their opinion.
Procedures:
His sample consisted of 172 female participants who were told that they were taking part in a colour perception task. In each group of 6 females, there were two confederates. The task was to identify the colour of 36 blue slides that varied in intensity.
In one condition the confederates (the minority) consistently said the slides were green. In a second, inconsistent, condition the confederates said green on two thirds of the trials and blue on the remaining third.
Findings:
In the consistent condition, participants agreed that the slides were green on 8% of the trials. 32% of the participants gave the answer green at least once.
In the inconsistent condition, participants agreed that the slides were green on just 1% of the trials. This was hardly more than the control group with virtually no one saying green.
Conclusions:
Moscovici and his colleagues concluded that in order for a minority to have any influence on a majority group they must be consistent i.e. they must always say the same thing.
If a minority group varies in their viewpoint, then they have very little power to persuade others to agree with them.
Evaluation of Moscovici, criticism
Moscovici’s laboratory experiment study has been criticised for being very artificial. In everyday life, minorities are often very passionate about the views they hold which cannot be is unlikely to be the case for the confederates in Moscovici’s study. Furthermore, changing the majority’s viewpoint usually takes many years whereas this study took place over a short period of time. This suggests that this study cannot provide an accurate reflection of how minority groups operate in the real world.
3 Processes involved in minority influence
consistency, commitment, flexibility
Consistency
This is an important feature of a minority group. The members of a minority group must all propose the same message – they must all be synchronised with each other.
They must also continue to have the same opinion over time. For example, all members of an environmental group promoting the dangers of climate change and carbon emissions should not drive cars and should travel instead by public transport or bicycle. In addition, they should continue to do this year after year. By doing this, others begin to take them more seriously and start to consider the view that they are expressing. The consistency of the minority group helps to puncture the certainty of the majority who then feel that the minority might have a point worth considering.
Commitment
Sometimes minority groups mount campaigns to promote their message in dramatic and dangerous ways to draw attention to their views. It is important that such campaigns appear to put the minority group at some risk to demonstrate their level of commitment to the cause. When the majority pays attention to selfless and risky actions being taken by the minority group, it is more likely to integrate the group’s opinion into their own personal viewpoints due to the personal sacrifice made by the minority. This is known as the augmentation principle.
Flexibility
Although Moscovici’s research showed that a minority should be
consistent, it is also important that it shows some flexibility. The minority
to some extent has to negotiate with the majority to get others to agree
with them. If the minority group is totally rigid and dogmatic or narrow minded in its stance, then others will not take them so seriously and might regard them as fanatical.
For example, an environmental group interested in reducing carbon emissions should acknowledge that some individuals living in remote rural areas have to use a car in order to get to work. Refusing to accept this would have the effect of the majority thinking they were being unreasonable and so rejecting their views. A minority has the difficult task of striking a balance between consistency and flexibility to be influential.
Evaluation of research into minority influence, support
- There is research evidence that supports the idea that consistency is an important factor in a minority being influential. Mosovici’s study showed that the confederates who consistently said the slides were green persuaded the majority to agree with them 8% of the time whereas the inconsistent minority had hardly any effect on the majority. A meta-analysis of about 100 other studies also found that a minority that was consistent was the most influential.
- There is also evidence that supports the idea that flexibility is an important factor. In a simulated jury set up, a confederate who disagreed with the majority and refused to alter his position had no effect on the majority opinion about the amount of compensation that should be paid to someone after a ski-lift accident. A confederate who offered a different opinion to the majority but who was prepared to shift a little towards the majority was able to influence others to agree with him.
- There is also evidence that supports the role of commitment. Anecdotal, real life evidence suggests that showing commitment to a cause can influence a majority to take on board a minority’s position. For example, the suffragettes showed commitment by chaining themselves to parliament railings or giving their life to the cause. However, in addition empirical research has also found evidence for the role of commitment in minority influence. For example, Hogg and Vaughan (1998) found that minorities were more likely to exert an influence on the majority if they were seen as acting from a committed principle, rather than out of self interest, and if they were seen to have made a personal sacrifice. Furthermore, Xie et al (2011) found that the tipping point for ‘tipping the majority’ to the minority’s position was just 10%; this means that just 10% of committed opinions holders was enough to have an effect on the majority.
- There is evidence to support that conversion to a minority opinion does involve internalisation. In a variation of Moscovici’s study, participants wrote down their answers to the blue slide task instead of saying them out loud. In this condition, agreement with the minority that the slides were green was greater than in the original condition. This shows that participants had been convinced by the minority opinion and had privately accepted it showing internalisation. However, they were reluctant to express this publicly. This is likely to be because they did not want to be associated with the minority group as minorities are often regarded as a little odd.
Evaluation of research into minority influence, criticism
However, one criticism is that much of the research into minority influence is rather artificial and staged. Agreeing with views about the colour of slides is not indicative of other situations of being exposed to minority opinions. This means that what the research has found about minority influence might not apply very well in other more real-life situations where a minority group try to persuade the majority to change their minds. So, we are less confident about the role of consistency and flexibility in minority influence.
