Minority Influence Flashcards
What is meant by minority influence?
Studies the impact of a small group of people on others behaviour, and works by converting people from a minority to a majority through a staged process until it becomes the majority
What are the factors determining how effective a minority influence will be?
Consistency
Commitment
Flexibility
Outline what is meant by consistency
When initially formed people assume they are wrong, however if they are consistent people reassess the situation and consider carefully. Can be achieved by repeating the same message. This makes the minority reassess their belief
Outline what is meant by commitment
Minority sticks to cause and is uncompromising in its approach. Contributes to social change when a minority show they are willing to give something up for their belief the majority take their argument more seriously
Outline what is meant by flexibility
In order to gain power, minorities need to negotiate their position within the majority. This can be done by listening to others to form conclusions. This contributes to social change as the minority show they are willing to listen to other viewpoints, so the majority may listen to their POV or take the argument more seriously
Who researched into minority influence?
Moscovici et al (1969)
What was Moscovici’s aim?
To see whether a consistent minority of participants could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception task
What was Moscovici’s procedure?
172 female participants were tested for eyesight, then four participants at a time were placed in a room with two confederates and asked to state the colour of the slides they were presented with. Confederates answered first followed by 4 naive participants. All slides were blue but off differing brightness totalling 36. There were two conditions
Consistent - confederates called green on all trials
Inconsistent - two confederates called green 24 times and blue 12 times
What were Moscovici’s results?
32% reported the slide as green once
Participants conformed 8.4% of the time in the consistent condition
They conformed 1.3% of the time in the inconsistent condition
What was Moscovici’s conclusion
When a minority behaves consistently, they are more influential than when inconsistent. They must maintain a consistent viewpoint among the minority
Strengths of Minority Influence
Research to support from Moscovici (1969)
Can be applied to many real life scenarios including the suffragettes
Limitations of Minority Influence
Research can be questioned for validity - Mundane realism, demand characteristics
Research using confederates is unethical - may cause harm
Size of minority should be taken into consideration - may impact on conformity rates
