Minority influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
- A form of social influence in which one person or a small group of people (minority) persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes etc
» leads to internalisation or conversion
How does minority influence occur?
Through 4 processes
- consistency
-commitment
-flexibility
- snowball effect
What is conversion?
Involves the majority internalising the attitudes of the minority
What is consistency?
When the minority keeps the same beliefs (synchronic consistency) over time (diachronic consistency) between all members that make up the minority e.g. women’s rights movement has maintained message since the 1840s
Why is consistency effective?
It draws attention to the minority view
What is commitment?
When the minority demonstrates dedication to their position, this is can be shown in extreme ways which may post a risk (augmentation principle) e.g. hunger strikes
Why is showing commitment effective?
It shows that the minority are not acting out of self- interest & majority members pay even more attention
What is flexibility?
Nemeth- consistency may put majority off, arguments may be seen as rigid and unbending
Members of the minority must be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept valid counter arguemnets
Why is flexibility effective?
Increases the likelihood of conversion if the minority are prepared to be open and accept possibility of a compromise
Explaining the process of change
if hear something new it forces you think more deeply about it especially if the source of this is C,C,F
-this deeper processing is important in the process of conversion to a different minority viewpoint
The more this happens= faster rate of conversion= snowball effect
Outline Moscovici study for research support for consistency
blue/ green slide study
-Group of 6 people asked to view a set of 36 blue coloured slides that varied in intensity
- had to state whether they were blue or green
- 2 confederates who said the slides were green
- true participants gave the same wrong answer on 8.4% of the trials
- consistently had a greater effect
- agreement on ‘green’ in the inconsistent group fell to 1.25%
What is a weakness of minority influence research?
artificial tasks- Moscovici study
-Identifying the colour of a slide lacks mundane realism
-not an accurate representation of how minorities attempt to change the behavior of majorities in real life
-in cases such as jury decision-making & political campaigning outcomes are more important
- lack external validity & limited
What is another weakness of Moscovci study?
- Moscovici used a bias sample of 172 female participants from America.
- unable to generalise the results to other populations, for example male participants
- cannot conclude that male participants would respond to minority influence in the same way.
- research often suggests that females are more likely to conform and therefore further research is required to determine the effect of minority influence on male participants.
What research support is there for the role of deeper processing in the changing of the majority’s position to minority view?
Procedure
Martin et al- presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint & measure p’s agreement
1 group -heard minority agree with initial view
another group- heard majority agree with initial view
-p’s exposed to a conflicting view & attitudes were measured again
What research support is there for the role of deeper processing in the changing of the majority’s position to minority view?
Findings
- People less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to the minority group than if they listened to the majority group
- suggest the minority message had been deeply processed & internalised- had a more enduring effect - increases validity of the role of deeper processing
