Minority Influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
It’s a form of social influence where a minority persuades others to adopt their beliefs or behaviours, often resulting in internalisation (private and public change).
What is consistency in the context of minority influence?
Consistency means keeping the same beliefs over time and among individuals in the group. It draws attention to the minority view.
What is commitment in minority influence?
Commitment is shown when minorities take risks or make sacrifices to demonstrate dedication, triggering the augmentation principle.
What is flexibility in minority influence?
Flexibility means being willing to compromise or consider others’ views. It’s more effective than rigid consistency.
What are synchronic and diachronic consistency?
Synchronic is when all members of the minority agree. Diachronic is when the group has held the same position over time.
What is the augmentation principle?
When a minority takes risks to show commitment, the majority takes their views more seriously.
How does minority influence lead to change?
Through deeper processing of ideas, leading to internalisation and the snowball effect—a growing number adopt the minority view until it becomes the majority.
Why is flexibility important according to Nemeth (1986)?
Because rigid consistency may be seen as dogmatic, which discourages conversion. Flexibility shows reasonableness and encourages change.
What is the snowball effect?
As more people switch to the minority view, the rate of conversion accelerates, eventually turning the minority view into the majority norm.
What did Moscovici’s (1969) study involve?
Groups viewed 36 blue slides; two confederates consistently called them green on two-thirds of trials. 32% of participants gave the same wrong answer at least once.
What was the result in the control group of Moscovici’s study with no confederates?
Participants got the answer wrong on only 0.25% of trials.
What happened when the minority was inconsistent in Moscovici’s study?
Agreement fell from 32% to 25%, showing consistency is crucial.
What evidence supports the importance of consistency?
Moscovici et al. and Wood et al.’s (1994) meta-analysis showed consistent minorities were more influential.
What evidence supports deeper processing?
Martin et al. (2003) found participants were less willing to change their views after hearing a minority viewpoint, suggesting deeper cognitive processing.
How does writing answers in private support minority influence theory in Martin et al. (2003)?
Private agreement with the minority increased, suggesting people internalise minority views even if they don’t express them publicly.
Why is using artificial tasks a limitation of minority influence research?
Tasks like identifying slide colours lack real-world relevance and reduce external validity.
What are the limitations of real-world applications of research?
In real life, minorities often lack power/status and face more opposition. These social dynamics are not captured in controlled lab studies.
Why is minority influence in real life often more complex?
Real-life minorities may be cohesive, highly committed groups facing hostile resistance, making influence harder but more meaningful.
