minority influence

Question 1

what is minority influence

Answer 1

a form of social influence in which a minority of people (sometimes just one person) persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours → leads to internalisation of conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours

Question 2

what is a majority influence most likely to lead to

Answer 2

internalisation - both public and private beliefs are changed by the process

Question 3

how does consistency affect the majority influence

Answer 3

consistency in the minority’s view increases the amount of interest from other people
→ consistency might be agreement between people in the minority group (SC) and / or consistency over time (DC)
→ such consistency makes other people start to rethink their own views

Question 4

what is DC - diachronic consistency

Answer 4

they have been saying the same thing for some time nor

Question 4

what is SC - synchronic consistency

Answer 4

people in the minority all saying the same thing

Question 5

what are 3 factors that can encourage success for minority influence

Answer 5

→ consistency
→ commitment
→ flexibilty

Question 6

who and when investigated flexibility

Answer 6

Nemeth
→ 1968

Question 7

what did Nemeth 1986 find about flexibility

Answer 7

he argued that consistency is not the only important factor in minority influence because it can be interpreted negatively → it is off-putting to the majority and unlikely to result in any conversions to the minority position
→ he argued that if the minority is seen as inflexible and uncompromising then the majority is unlikely to change

Question 8

describe Nemeth’s study of flexibility

Answer 8

constructed a mock jury
3 genuine pps and 1 confederates
they had to decide how much compensation was give to a ski life accident victim
the majority said a higher amount and the conferdrate said a lower amount → when the confederate changed a bit, so did the majority

Question 9

define commitment

Answer 9

willingness to put yourself at risk which demonstrates dedication to the position as it shows the minority is not acting out of self interest

Question 10

when is social change evident

Answer 10

when people convert, it is a gradual process when the minority view will become the majority view

Question 11

what is the snowball effect

Answer 11

when the majority slowly recruits people and so they are converted and go on to spread the message to other people → gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occurred

Question 12

AO3 - research support for consistency
(Wood)

Answer 12

there is research that demonstrates the importance for consistency
→ Moscovici et al showed that a consistent minority option had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion
→ Wood et al (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential
→→ suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence

Question 13

research support for depth of though
(Martin)

Answer 13

evidence to show that change to a minority position does involve deeper processing of ideas
→ Martin et al (2003) gave pps a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measure their support
→ one group of pps then heard a minority agree with the initasl view while another group heard this from a majority group
→ pps were finally exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again
→→ Martin et al found that people were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group rather than if they were shared with a majority group
→ suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect, supporting the central argument about how the minority influence process works

Question 14

artificial tasks

Answer 14

→ a limitation of minority influence research is that the tasks involved - such as identifying the colour of a slide
→ research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviours of majorities in real life
→ in cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning, the outcomes are vastly more important, sometimes even literally a matter of life and dead
→ this means findings of minority influence studies such as Moscovici et al’s are lacking in External validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real-life social situations

Question 15

research support for flexibility

Answer 15

→ Nemeth (1986) investigated the extent to which a flexible minority could influence others.
→ Groups of 4: 1 confederate and 4 pps. The pps were presented with a scenario in which someone had been injured in a ski-life accident.
→ They had to decide how much compensation the victim would receive as a group.
→ There were two conditions of the independent variable: the inflexible condition: the minority (one confederate) argued for a low rate of compensation and refused to change his position. The flexible condition: the minority argued for a low rate of compensation but then compromised, offering a slightly higher rate.
→ Nemeth found that in the inflexible condition, the minority had little to no effect on the majority where in the flexible condition, the majority was much more likely to change their view and go along with the minority.
→ Thus, a minority needs to be flexible if it wants to change the attitudes and behaviours of the majority and over time, the increasing numbers who change from the majority to the minority are the converted.