Minority Influence Flashcards
What is social change?
Occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things
What is minority influence?
Forms of social influence in which minority persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours
Examples of minority influence leading to social change
- hitler
- campaigns for same sax couple/ marriage rights
How can minorities have influence on disobeying authority?
- courageous people emerged to service as disobedient models.
- likely to have internal locus of control= believe they are in control of events in their life not some external force
who is Moscovichi?
one of the first people to study the process of minority influence in his blue slide/green slide experiment
AMRC of Moscovichi
A- effects of minority influence
M- 6 people asked to view set of 36 blue coloured slides varied in intensity + stated whether slides green or blue. 2 conf=green
R- p’s green (wrong) 8.42%. second g exposed to inconsistent: green 24x blue 12x= green 1.25%. control g no conf= wrong 0.25%
C- consistency key in influencing other p’s
what did Moscovichi’s research do?
inspired wealth of research into minority influence in order to be able to bring about change
how will conflict be created?
minorities who are consistent + committed and flexible
what does consistency mean?
keeping same beliefs, both over time and between all individuals that form the minority
synchronic consistency
everyone saying same thing
diachronic consistency
saying same thing for long time
what does commitment mean?
demonstrating dedication to their position. enagaging in extreme behaviours sometimes to draw attention. risk shows committment to cause
augmentation principle
risk shows commitment to cause
what does flexibility mean?
flexible, co-operative, reasonable is persuasive. adapting and accepting counter argument
Strengths of minority influence
- research support for consistency: Wood meta-analysis found that minorities who were consistent were most influential.
- research support for deeper processing: people less willing to change views if listened to minority view.
Limitations of minority influence
Artificial task- Mocovichi colour slide study is far removed from how minorities attempt to change behaviour of minorities in real life,
What research support is there for consistency?
- Wood et al
- metannalysis of nearly 100 similar studies
- found minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential
- = consistency is minimum requirement for minority influence a majority
What research support is there for deeper processing?
Martin
- presented message supporting particular view point and measured participants agreement
- one group heard minority group agree with initial view, other group heard this from a majority group
- exposed to conflicting view, found that people less likely changed their opinion if heard minority group rather than majority
- minority message more deeply processed and more enduring effect
