minority influence and social change Flashcards
what is minority influence?
minority influence refers to situations where one person or a small group of people influences the beliefs and behaviours of other people
what are the factors that affect minority influence?
1) consistency
2) commitment
3) flexibility
how does consistency affect minority influence
consistency in minority views increase the amount of interest in others.
synchronic consistency where people in the minority are all saying the same thing.
diachronic consistency where people in the majority have now been saying the same thing for long time now
how does commitment affect minority influence?
sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views demonstrating commitment to the cause and so cause the majority to consider their views which is known as the augmentation principle.
how does flexibility affect minority influence?
members of minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of views and accept reasonable and valid counter arguments
what is the importance of being flexible with viewpoints of the minority?
Nemeth argued that consistency is not the only important factor in minority influence as being extremely consistent and repeating the same words and actions can be dogmatic and rigid which can be quite off-putting to the majority
what is the snowball effect?
when increasingly number of people switch from the majority position to the minority group and gradually the minority view becomes the majority view
research support for minority influence consisteny
moscovici’s research aim was to see whether a consistent minority of participants could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception test. in the first half of the experiment, the two confederates answered consistently in their response and in the second half they were inconsistent with their answers
what were the results for moscovi’s study
8% of the participants agreed with the minority/confederates and said green when they were consistent with their responses compared to the 2% of participants that agreed with the confederates when they gave inconsistent answers. this suggests that minorities can influence majorities and this influence is more effective when the minority are consistent in their responses
what is social influence?
social influence is the process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours.
what is social change?
social change occurs when whole societies rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things.
what are the conditions necessary for social change by minority?
1) draw attention to the issue
2) being consistent with beliefs and express arguments consistently over time and across each other so they are more likely to be taken more seriously.
3) the augmentative principle where there are risks involved in putting forward an argument, then those express such views are taken seriously
4) snowball effect where some individuals adopt the minority view they start to influence a greater number of people
5) social cryptoamnesia is when the minority viewpoint becomes the majority and is forgotten that it was ever a minority view
