Minority Influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
Refers to situations where the a small group of people influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people.
What does minority influence lead to?
Internalisation- both public and private behaviour and beliefs are changed by the process
What was the aim of Moscovici’s research?
He wanted to see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in the colour perception task?
What were the findings and results of Moscovici’s research?
Six people were asked to view a set of 36 blue-coloured slides that varied in intensity. In each group there were two confederates who consistently said slides were green. True p gave wrong answer (green) on 8.42% of trials.
A second group of Ps were exposed to an inconsistent minority (24 times said green, 12 said blue). In this case, agreement fell to 1.25%.
A third control group there was no confederates, got this wrong on 0.25% of the trial.
What are the three aspects to minority influence?
Consistency, commitment and flexibility.
What are the two types of consistency?
Synchronic: They’re all saying the same things
Diachronic: They’ve been saying the same thing for some time now
Consistency minority makes people rethink their own views
What is commitment in terms of minority influence?
Sometimes minorities engage in extreme activities to draw attention to their views. It shows greater commitment, this is called “Augmentation principle”
What are the key points for flexibility?
Nemeth argued that consistency is not the only important factor in minority influence as it can be off putting, as they may be viewed as rigid and dogmatic. Making it unlikely for them to gain any converts to the minority position. Need to balance between consistency and flexibility by adapting view point.
What effect explains process of change?
Snowball effect. Overtime, increasing numbers of people switch from the majority position to the minority position and they become “converted”. The more this happens the faster the rate of conversion. Gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occurred.
Brief evaluation for minority influence
Research support for consistency
Research support for deeper processing
Artificial tasks
What are the strengths for minority influence? (Depth)
Research support demonstrating the importance of consistency. Moscovici’s blue/green slide study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect of changing views of others over an inconsistent view.
Wood et al carried out a meta analysis of 100 similar studies and found that being consistent was the most influential. This suggests presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority.
Martin et al supports deeper processing of minorities ideas. He presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint then measured P’s agreement. One group heard minority agree with initial view whereas other heard the majority agree. Then exposed to conflicting views and agreement was measured. People less willing to change opinions. If they had listened to a minority group. Minority message more deeply processed. HOWEVER, real- world social influence situations are much more complicated as majorities have more status, minorities commit to their cause as they face a hostile opposition these features were absent from minority influence research- minority just smallest group. Limited in explaining MI in real world situations.
What are the limitations of minority influence (depth)?
Tasks involved are just as artifical as Asch’s line judgement task, Moscovici et al’s task of identifying colour included. Research is far removed from minority’s aim to change majorities behaviour in real life. Lacks external validity as limited in telling us about the real world in which cases are more serious such as jury decision making.
