Minority Influence Flashcards
What do echo chambers do?
Keep us in our place - just say what other people believe
Where do the minority views come from if we are inhabiting echo chambers?
Minorities within the group
More influential but less radical than those outside the group ?
Why do Asch’s studies underestimate the power of the majority?
There was no explicit communication between participants, and no power structure. There was no power but people still confined
What did a variant of Asch’s study show?
Variant with 16 naive ppts and 1 confederate - the members of the naive majority reacted with amusement and laugher throughout the group
What did Schacter find?
3 deviates: deviate, slider and mode. Interested in how influential they would be - the communication of the group directly towards the deviate and the slider tie they changed their view. But the deviant was seen as a undesirable group member - shows there are social costs to being a deviate: they were influential though because views did change
What are the types of deviates in group discussions?
Deviate - once a view emerged, argue against it
Slider - start by disagreeing, then change mind, argue against it
Mode - agree all along
What is a way of minorities being influential?
Gain access to power or authority but many minorities lack power - lots of the research has come from powerless minorities exerting influence
What are the difference between the changes majority and minority induce?
Moscovici:
if minority expresses deviate views consistently but flexibly, can bring about conversion: private or indirect attitude and change (internalisation)
whereas, majority produces immediate public compliance
What are the possible responses to group pressure?
In private reject, public accept = compliance
in private and public reject = independence
in private and public accept = internalisation - changing views
in private accept but public reject = anti conformity
What does Moscovici think you need to do to introduce a change?
Importance of your behavioural style:
consistency - over time and between individuals (most important)
investment - must be costs to exposing a view point, liberty or financial
autonomy - no ulterior motives
rigidity - being consistent while remaining flexible
What model did Moscovici develop?
Conflict model to provoke conversion
proposes minority influence is qualitatively different from majority influence
What is the conflict model?
Believes majority influence is qualitatively different to minority influence:
majority: induces public conformity through comparison issues, just compare themselves to others, don’t care about the issue
minority: private change through cognitive conflict and validation processes - check our views with others, start to focus on the arguments, if strong argument they convert. start to doubt your own views, changed strong arguments, attend to the issue
Moscovici, Lage and Naffrechoux - first experiment
4 naive and 2 confederates - called blue slides green
colour perception task - varied in intensity
consistent condition: confederates called all slides green
inconsistent condition: confederates called two thirds of the slides green, one third blue
Results: in control group, all called blue, inconsistent group: call them green a small amount of time and consistent: huge proportion of them being called green
Moscovici, Lage and Naffrechoux - second experiment
Colour thresholds - second experiment - standardised test of colour discrimination, given a series of tiles, asked at what point of transition from blue to green, when did they say green not blue. Each ppt tested alone
Results: both experimental groups showed lower threshold for green than controls, latent, indirect effect, threshold that they saw blue tiles as green had shifted
minority - not just public behaviour but also private, cognitive changes
Moscovici and Lage 1976
Compared minority and majority influence: consistent minority (2 confederates) inconsistent minority (2 confederates) a single consistent confederate unanimous majority and non unanimous majority Results: minority influence: consistent - 10% green inconsistent - less than 1% single consistent 1% green majority influence: consistent: 10% unanimous majority: 40% non-unanimous majority: 12% but only the consistent minority condition shifted participants colour thresholds - only consistent minority
What are latent effects?
Effects on things which aren’t the focus of persuasion, delayed over time
What is conversion theory 1980?
Means that attention to arguments = private acceptance
this effects are measurable later and indirect effects
After-image effects - Moscovici and Personnaz
After-image exposed, asked to say what colour it was even though it was the same colour
The minority - saw an after image of green rather than blue
Controversial and hard to replicate
Example of indirect effect
If minority have a debate about a topic, can get shifts on a topic that is unrelated to that topic - no change in that topic but change in something similar
Wood et al 1994
Meta-analysis of over 100 studies
Minorities are less persuasive than majorities on direct measures - the measures which look at attitudes there and then
But not indirect measures - then minorities are more persuasive, thinking of views
Persuasive compared to control conditions - minorities are active agents for change
What is the first process which could occur causing minority to induce attitude change?
Systematic v heuristic
systematic = minorities use this, thinking about the issues
heuristic - using a rule of thumb, not thinking about the issue, don’t think of an argument
but no simple story that minorities only use systematic and majorities only use heuristic
What is the source context elaboration model?
Elaboration - thinking about the message
Different situations allow or encourage more or less elaboration
low elaboration - majority, use heuristics
high elaboration - systematic processing - favours neither. if important issue, then will elaborate more
intermediate elaboration - conversion theory - favours minorities, listen to arguments and take them seriously
Can minorities promote stronger attitudes?
They appear to promote stronger attitudes - more resistant to counter-persuasion attempts, won’t change, more predictive of behaviour
What does Nemeth believe?
Minorities and majorities affects the type rather than the amount of thinking
majority - creates anxiety because they don’t want to say conflicting things, have a focus on trying to solve it
minority - feeling relaxed if only 1 person doesn’t agree, so they are more creative in their thinking, listen more and therefore change their attitudes
What is the effect of group membership?
Minorities often belong to an outgroup - we tend to be more persuaded by members of our in-group
What is self-categorisation theory?
Turner - more social influence when:
source disagrees with us
source is member of our group
we see the sources position as prototypical i.e.: most typical of the in-group, least of the outgroup
