Minority Influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
It is when one person or a small group influences the beliefs and behavior of others.
How is minority influence different from conformity?
In minority influence, the smaller group influences the majority, whereas in conformity, the majority influences individuals.
What is internalisation in minority influence?
It is when both public behavior and private beliefs are changed as a result of minority influence.
How does consistency help minority influence?
It makes people rethink their own views, as a consistent minority appears more committed and confident.
What are the two types of consistency?
• Synchronic consistency: All members of the minority say the same thing.
• Diachronic consistency: The minority maintains their position over time.
How does commitment strengthen minority influence?
Engaging in extreme activities that involve some risk shows dedication to the cause, making the majority take them seriously.
What is the augmentation principle?
If the minority appears to suffer for their cause, the majority pays even more attention to their views.
Why is flexibility important in minority influence?
Being too rigid can be off-putting; adapting and accepting reasonable counterarguments makes the minority seem more reasonable.
What did Nemeth (1986) argue about flexibility?
He suggested that strict consistency without flexibility makes the minority seem dogmatic and unpersuasive.
Why do individuals think deeply about the minority position?
Because it is new or unfamiliar, prompting deeper consideration.
What is the snowball effect?
As more people adopt the minority view, it gains momentum until it becomes the majority opinion, leading to social change.
What was the aim of Moscovici et al.’s (1969) study?
To investigate the effect of a consistent minority on the majority in a color perception task.
How many people were in each group, and what were their roles?
Groups of six, with four real participants and two confederates (minority).
What were participants asked to do?
View 36 blue slides of varying intensities and state whether they were blue or green.
What were the two experimental conditions?
- Consistent minority – Confederates always said the slides were green.
- Inconsistent minority – Confederates said green 24 times and blue 12 times.
What was the purpose of the control group?
To measure natural responses without minority influence (no confederates present).
How often did participants agree with the minority in the consistent condition?
8.42% of the trials.
How often did participants agree with the minority in the inconsistent condition?
1.25% of the trials.
How often did participants make mistakes in the control group?
0.25% of the time.
strength (1)of minority influence
One strength is research supporting consistency.
Moscovici et al. (1969, see facing page) found a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion.
Wood et al. (1994) conducted a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities seen as being consistent were most influential.
This confirms that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.
strength (2) of minority influence
Another strength is research showing role of deeper processing.
Martin et al, (2003) gave participants a message supporting a particular viewpeint, and measured attitudes, Then they heard an endorsement of view from either a minority or a majority, Finally heard a conflicting view, attitudes measured again.
Participants were less willing to change their opinions to the new conflicting view if they had listened to a minority group than if they listened to a majority group.
This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect.
limitation of minority influence
One limitation is minority influence research often involves artificial tasks.
Moscovici et al’s task was identifying the colour of a slide, far removed from how minorities try to change majority opinion in the real world.
In jury decision-making and political campaigning, outcomes are vastly more important, maybe a matter of life or death.
Findings of studies lack external validity and are limited in what they tell us about how minority influence works in real-world situations.
