Minority Influence Flashcards
What is minority influence
A form of social influence in which a minority on people (or just 1 person) persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. Leads to internalisation or conversation- change of private and public behaviour
What is needed for minority influence to occur
Consistency , commitment , flexibility
What is consistency
The minority must keep the same beliefs, over time and between the individuals from the minority.
What is commitment
Minority demonstrated dedication to their position, eg by making personal sacrifices.
What is flexibility
Relentless consistency could be counter productive . Minority must appear reasonable and accept positive compromise.
What is the process of change
The snowball effect
- deeper processing of thinking
- gradually the minority view becomes the majority view and change as occurred
Evaluation- research support for consistency
Moscovici et al (1969)
Blue green slide study
-2 confeds who always gave the wrong answer
-p’s gave the same wrong answer on 8.42%
-low levels show that consistency is needed
More research support
Wood et al (1994)
Conducted a meta analysis and found that 100 similar studies
-concluded that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential
—— consistency is therefore vital in minority influence
Evaluation- research support for depth of thought
Martin et al (2003)
Gave ps a message supporting a view point and measured their support
-one group heard a minority group agree
-the other heard this from a majority group
——people were less willing to change heir opinions if they had listened to a minority group
-suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect
Evaluation - artificial tasks
Very artificial- identifying the colours on a slide
- similar to aschs as both artificial
- overall results therefore lack external validity
