Minority influence

Question 1

What is minority influence?

Answer 1

• A form of social influence in which a minority of people (or one person) persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. This leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.

Question 2

What are the three main processes of minority influence?

Answer 2

Moscovici (1969):
1. Consistency
2. Commitment
3. Flexibility

Question 3

What is consistency?

Answer 3

• Minority influence is most effective if the minority keeps the same beliefs, both over time (diachronic consistency) and between all the individuals that form the minority (synchronic consistency). It’s effective because it draws attention to the minority view.

Question 4

What is commitment?

Answer 4

• Minority influence is more powerful if the minority demonstrates dedication to their position i.e. by making personal sacrifices (augmentation principle). This is effective because it shows the minority is not acting out of self-interest.

Question 5

What is flexibility?

Answer 5

• Nemeth (1986) - argued that relentless consistency can be counter-productive if it is seen by the majority as unbending and unreasonable. Therefore minority influence is more effective if the minorty show flexibility by accepting the possibility of compromise.

Question 6

Explain the process of change.

Answer 6

• The 3 factors (consistency, commitment and flexibility) make people think about the minority 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.

Question 7

What is social cryptomnesia?

Answer 7

• Refers to the idea that people can remember there was a change but cannot remember how it occurred.

Question 8

What research did Moscovici conduct?

Answer 8

Moscovici et al (1969) - Blue-green slides:

• Demonstrated minority influence where a group of 6 people were asked to view a set of 36 blue-coloured slides that varied in intensity, and then state whether the slides were blue or green. In each group, 2 confederates consistently said the slides were green 2/3 of the trial. The participants gave the same wrong answer on 8.42% of trials, and 32% gave the same answer as the minority on at least one trial.
• A second group of participants were exposed to an inconsistent minority and agreement fell to 1.25%. For a third control group, there were no confederates and all participants had to do was identify the colour of each slide. They got this wrong on just 0.25% of the trials.

Question 9

(AO3) What is a strength of this explanation?
(1)

Answer 9

Research support for consistency:

• Research evidence demonstrated the importance of consistency.
• Moscovici et al.’s study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion.
• Wood et al (1994) - carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential.
• This suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.

Question 10

(AO3) What is a strength of this explanation?
(2)

Answer 10

Research support for depth of thought:

• Research evidence shows that change to a minority position does involve deeper processing of ideas.
• Martin et al (2003) gave participants a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured their support. One group of participants then heard a minority group agree with the initial view while another group heard this from a majority group. Participants were finally exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again. Martin et al found that people were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group rather than if they were shared with 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 the minority influence process works.

Question 11

(AO3) What is a weakness of this explanation?

Answer 11

Artificial tasks:

• The tasks involved - such as identifying the colour of a slide - are as artificial as Asch’s line judgement task. Research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of minorities in real life.
• In cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning, the outcomes are vastly more important, sometimes even literally a matter of life or death.
• This means findings of minority influence studies i.e. Moscovici et al’s are lacking external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real-life social situations.