Minority influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
When one person or a small group influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people.
How does consistency effect minority influence?
Over time, consistency in the minorities view increases interest from others. This may be synchronic consistency where they are all saying the same thing or diachronic consistency where they are saying the same thing for a long time.
How does commitment effect minority influence?
Some minorities enagage in extreme activities to show commitment to their ideas. Majority group members then pay more attention and this is called the augmentation principle.
How does flexibility effect minority influence?
Nemeth said that flexibility was also important in influencing majority groups as being rigid and inflexible will put off others. They need to balance consistency and flexibility.
How does minority influence lead to change?
Commitment, flexibility and consistency all help to influence the majority and make thmem think about the new ideas. This deeper processing is what leads to a change in view. Over time more people move from the majority to the minority view and the snowball effect means that more people are converted. The minority view becomes the majority and change has occured. Social cryptoamnesia also happens as people have no memory of the evnts that lead to change.
What did Moscovici do in his experiment?
He showed minority influence by showing blue slides and asking participants to say if they were blue or green. In the experiment, there were two confederates who consistently said they were green, another group where there was an inconsistent minority and a control group where there was no confederates.
What were Moscovici’s results?
In the trial with consistent confederates, participants gave the same wrong answer in 8.42% of the trials and 32% gave the same answer as the minority at least once. In the inconsistent minority group, agreement fell to 1.25% and in the control group only 0.25% of answers where wrong.
