Minority Influence Flashcards
What is the limitation of the study of minority influence in terms of where the study was conducted
Most of the research on minority influence is based on experiments conducted in laboratories. This raises the question of ecological validity. Edward Sampson (1991) is particularly critical of laboratory research on minority influence. It is also more difficult to generalise
What is the second limitation of the study on minority influence in relation to groupings and tasks
The participants in laboratory experiments are rarely ‘real groups’. More often than not they are a collection of students who do not know each other and will probably never meet again. They are also involved in an artificial task. As such they are very different from minority groups in the wider society who seek to change majority opinion.
What is the 3rd limitation of the study on minority influence based on ppt gender and ability to generalise
Also Moscovici (1969) used female students as participants (i.e. unrepresentative sample), so it would be wrong to generalize his result to all people – they only tell us about the behavior of female students.Also, females are said to be more conformist than males, therefore there might be a gender difference. Another critic could be that four people are not enough for a group and could not be considered as the majority.
