Minority Influence Flashcards
What is the conversion theory?
This suggests that when a minority has informational social influence over a majority by providing new information and challenges to the majority, it can convert the majority to the new ideas and beliefs
What is consistency in minority influence?
For a minority to effect change, it has to be consistent in its message between the people in the group (synchronic consistency) and over time (diachronic consistency)
What is commitment in minority influence?
People who show commitment to a cause through strong actions and personal suffering are more likely to be believed
What is flexibility in minority influence?
Minorities who are consistent but inflexible are less persuasive. Rigidly sticking to the same arguments is unappealing and a degree of flexibility is a more successful style
What is the key study in minority influence?
Moscovici et al
What was moscivici et al’s aim in minority influence?
To examine the effect of a consistent minority on the majority using an unambiguous task
What moscovici et al’s procedure in minority influence?
Groups of four naïve participants and two confederates were asked to estimate the colour of 36 slides. All the slides were blue but brightness was varied by adding filters. In one condition, the two confederates (the consistent minority) called the slides green on all trials in the hearing of the naïve participant. In another condition, the minority varied the consistent response.
What were moscovici et al’s results in minority influence?
The naïve participant agreed that blue was green on 8.42% of the trials and 32% said the slides were green at least once in the consistent condition. In the inconsistent condition only 1.25% gave green responses compared to the control group who just gave two wrong answers (0.25%)
What was moscovici et al’s conclusion on minority influence?
These results are small changes but are significant. They show that a minority can sway the majority even when absent as long as consistency is maintained
How can minority influence occur in real life?
Juries are an example of where a minority can sway a majority by forcing more discussion over the evidence. Nemeth has shown that getting discussion to take place with a dissenting voice gives minorities mor influence. When a case is taken point by point, the evidence is often not as convincing as first though and the majority gradually agree with the minority
What is a flaw with moscovici’ experiment in minority influence?
Lab conditions- used artificial environment - can’t be applied to real life so lacks ecological validity
What are the ethical issues in moscovici’s experiment in minority influence?
Ethics- they were told it was a visual perception task - need to be debriefed at the end of the task
how does writing the answers down affect the results of moscovici’s experiment in minority influence?
Getting the participants to write their answers privately after exposure to the minority view maintained the conformity effect even in its absence
