Minority influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
A form of social influence in which a minority of people (sometimes just one person) persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours.
What can minority influence lead to?
Internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.
What is consistency?
Minority influence is most effective if the minority keep the same beliefs, both over time and between all individuals that form the minority. Consistency is effective because it draws attention to the minority view.
What is commitment?
Minority influence is more powerful if the minority demonstrates dedication to their position, for example, by making personal sacrifices. This is effective because it shows that the minority is not acting out of self-interest.
What is flexibility?
Relentless consistency could be counter productive if it is seen by the majority as unbending and unreasonable. Therefore minority influence is more effective if the minority show flexibility by accepting the possibility of compromise
What is synchronic consistency?
When they’re all saying the same thing
What is diachronic consistency?
When they’ve been saying the same thing for some time now
What does a consistent minority lead to?
People rethinking their own views
‘Maybe they have a point’
What did Nemeth (1986) argue?
Consistency is not the only important factor in minority influence because it can be off-putting
What is the snowball effect?
When more and more people adopt the minority opinion, until gradually the minority becomes the majority
What is conversion?
The process of a majority of people slowly changing over to a minority view
What was Moscovici’s study into consistency?
Female participants were shown 36 blue slides of different intensity and asked to report the colours. There were two confederates (the minority) and four participants (the majority).
First part - two confederates answered green for each of the 36 slides. They were totally consistent in their responses.
Second part - answered green 24 times and blue 12 times. In this case they were inconsistent in their answers.
A control group was also used consisting of participants only - no confederates.
When the confederates were consistent in their answers about 8% of participants said the slides were green.
When the confederates answered inconsistently about 1% of participants Said the slides were green.
Evaluate: research support for consistency
Research evidence demonstrates the importance of consistency
Wood et al carried out a meta analysis and found that minorities who were seen as consistent were the most influential
Suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority
Evaluation: artificial tasks
Tasks involved are often artificial
For example, Moscovici’s task of identifying the colour of a slide
This means the findings are lacking external validity
Evaluation: deeper processing
There is evidence showing that a change in the majority’s position does involve deeper processing of the minority’s ideas
Martin et al. People were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group than if they had listened to a majority group
Suggests the minority message had been more deeper processed
What is the augmentation principle?
increase in the influence of the minorities message because they’re willing to make sacrifices
