Minority influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
It refers to a situation in which an individual experiences a type of social influence were they are motivated to rejected societal norms, which may lead to internalization or conversion.
Why does minority influence take longer to achieve than majority influence?
Minority influence therefore takes longer to achieve than majority influence because time will need to be taken for individuals to re-examine their beliefs and behavior in light of the new info that the minority are advocating.
What are the three factors that enhance effectiveness of minority influence>]?
Consistency, commitment and flexibility.
What was the aim for Moscovici (1969)
To see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a color perception task.
What was the method for Moscovici (1969)
Sample consisted of 172 female p’s, placed in groups of 6 and shown 36 slides which were all varying shades of blue. The p’s had to state out loud, the colour of each slide.
What was the procedure for Moscovici (1969)
Two of the 6 p’s were
confederates and on one
condition (consistent) the two confederates said all slides were green.
In the second condition
(inconsistent) confederates said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue.
What was the findings for Moscovici (1969)
In the consistent condition, real p’s agreed on 8.2% of the trials, whereas in the inconsistent condition, real p’s only agreed on 1.25%
of the trials.
Moscovici’s results show that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an
important factor for minority influence.
What was the GRAVE for Moscovici (1969)
G: Moscovici had an all female sample is gender biased, gynocentric,
this means that it lacks population validity.
V: The task that Moscovici conducted lacked mundane realism
because it was an artificial task, this means that the study lacked
validity.
E: The participants were deceived which means that they did not give
their fully informed consent.
What is a limitation of Moscovici’s (1969) experiment?
P: A limitation of Moscovici’s study is that he used a biased sample
of female participants from America.
E: This means that we are unable to generalise the results to other
populations, for example male participants. We cannot conclude that
male participants would respond to minority influence in the same
way.
C: Therefore, Moscovici’s research lacks population validity due to
it’s generalisation issues.
I&D: This research can be criticised as being gynocentric since the
research takes exclusive focus on conforming behaviour of female
participants to a minority influence.
What did Nemeth (1986) say about consistency?
Being extremely consistent and repeating the same arguments and behaviors over and over again can be seen as rigid, unbending, dogmatic and inflexible.
What was the aim for Nemeth (1986)
They investigated the idea of flexibility as a key characteristic of successful minorities who apply pressure.
What was the method for Nemeth (1986)
Method: P’s in groups of 4, had to agree on the amount of
compensation they would give to a victim of a ski-life accident. One of the p’s in each group was a confederate, there were 2 conditions.
When the minority argued for a low rate of compensation and
refused to change their position. (inflexible)
They compromised by offering a slightly higher rate of compensation. (flexible)
What was the findings/conclusion for Nemeth (1986)
Results: in the inflexible condition, the minority had little or no effect
on the majority.
However, in the flexible condition, the majority members were much
more likely to also compromise and change their view.
Conclusion: Nemeth’s research highlights the importance of flexibility
and questions the idea of consistency, suggesting that striking a
balance between the two is the most successful strategy for a minority
to adopt.
What is the snowball effect?
Over time, increasing numbers of people will switch from the majority
position to the minority position. They have become ‘converted’ – the more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion.
