Minority Influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
It is exposure to minority views that leads to innovation and change. Will be minorities within a group - always differences among a group. These may be more influential than minorities that come from outside the group. Although the Asch experiment’s are a powerful example of the majority influence, they underestimate the extent of social influence - inhibited from making any communication to the naive participant.
What did Schachter (1951) find?
Looked at what happened when people went against the group norm. Found the communication from the group was directed toward the deviant. The likability ratings were reversed - the deviant was the least liked person in the group. However, the deviant was indirectly influential on the decision the group made - there are social costs to being a deviant, but it can bring about change.
How can minorities be influential?
Becoming in a position of powerful - maintain deviant opinion until able to become in a position of power. Have access to power so can just get things done.
What did Moscovici suggest?
He argued that if a minority expresses their deviant views consistently but flexibly, they are able to bring about private or indirect attitude change = “conversion”. Majority influence can be instantly effective, but doesn’t lead to a private change in opinion.
What is Moscovici’s analysis?
The importance of behavioural style - if you want to introduce a change into the world, you should demonstrate the following four things: show consistency over time and between members (this is the most important thing to do), show investment (should be some cost to exposing your viewpoint), show autonomy (no ulterior motives), and not be rigid - be consistent whilst remaining seemingly flexible.
What is Moscovici’s conflict model?
Suggested that minorities induce a different process of persuasion - they persuade and convert people to their viewpoint, making it different to majority influence. When exposed to majority influence we are primarily involved in social comparison process, meaning we pay relatively little attention to the focal issue. When exposed to minority influence, we engage in a process of validation - check how our view line up with those of the minority, and focus on the pros and cons of the argument (focus on the issue). By thinking about the arguments, if they are strong, we start to be persuaded. Through the process of validation, we can be converted.
What experiment did Moscovici do?
Took groups and had some confederates who were going to call a blue side green. Four naive participants and two confederates. In the consistent condition, the confederate called all slides green. In the inconsistent condition, confederates called 2/3 of the slides green, 1/3 blue. When have an inconsistent minority, they are not very influential to the naive participants. When have consistent minority, larger percentage of naive participants called the slides green.
What is the second colour discrimination task that Moscovici did?
Given a series of coloured tiles, and asked to say what the colours were. Interested to see the difference between blue and green, and at what point they perceive them as green or blue. Both groups (whether exposed to inconsistent or consistent task) has lower threshold on judging whether a tile was green or blue - both had some sort of minority influence exerted on them.
What did Moscovici and Lage (1976) find?
Follow up of previous colour threshold experiments. Actively compared minority and majority influence. Has unanimous majority and non unanimous majority. Overt responses, got a replication of this effect. However, when it came to the colour threshold condition (majority influence), only the consistent minority condition shifted participant’s colour threshold.
What is conversion theory (1980)?
Attention to arguments lead to private acceptance. Has latent (time) and indirect effects - can see its effects later on, not immediately.
What did Moscovici and Personnaz (1980) find about latent/indirect effects?
They reported after-image effects. Asked to say what colour that was. Showed that in the minority condition, participants saw the after-image of green rather than blue. However, been hard to replicate.
What did Wood et al. (1994) find?
Meta-analysis of over 100 studies. Minorities are generally less persuasive then majorities on direct measures, but not on indirect measures. May be some degree of resistance that is present.
What are theories on the process of minority influence?
One of the most plausible theories coming from Moscovici’s theories is maybe majority influence induces heuristic processes (spend little time thinking about true issues, use simple rules of thumb to understand things) whereas the minority encourages you to think about the issues, and creates systematic processes. However, results have shown inconsistent findings in this, and can show the reverse.
What is the source context elaboration model (Martin and Hewstone, 2008)?
Looks at the extent of the situation encourages greater or less elaboration (engagement with the argument). Low elaboration leads to heuristic processes (favours the majority), High elaboration favours systematic process (favours neither). Intermediate elaboration leads to conversion theory (systematic processing of minority view). This is the ‘sweet spot’ of changing people’s minds.
Can minorities promote stronger attitudes?
More resistent to subsequent persuasion. Nemeth argued that affects type rather than amount of thinking. Majority influence makes us feel anxious, and therefore narrows the focus on the message. However majority influence we are relaxed, and leads to broader focus, and divergent thinking.
