Minority Influence - Consistency And Commitment Flashcards
What are the three factors that can enhance the effectiveness of a minority?
Consistency
Commitment
Flexibility
Moscovici (1969) Study Summarised Into Key Points
Colour Perception Test
172 Female Participants
Placed into groups of six and shown 36 slides
Two of the six participants were confederates and in one condition (consistent) the two confederates said that all 36 slides were green; in the second condition (inconsistent) the confederates said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue.
Moscovici (1969) Study Summarised Into Key Points Results
Moscovici found that in the consistent condition, the real participants agreed on 8.2% of the trials, whereas in the inconsistent condition, the real participants only agreed on 1.25% of the trials.
This shows that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in minority influence.
How can Commitment be displayed?
Augmentation principle
The will to act with consequences and a sacrifice that is made to display commitment
Research suggests that minorities require a degree of (Blank)…
Flexibility to remain persuasive and that rigid and dogmatic minorities are less effective
What is meant by consistency?
Minority must be consistent in their views over time to increase the level of interest from other people
What is Diachronic consistency?
Consistency over time
What is meant by Synchronic Consistency?
Consistency between all members of the group
Evaluation of Moscovici limitation
Moscovici used a bias sample of 172 female participants from America.
As a result, we are unable to generalise the results to other populations, for example male participants, and we cannot conclude that male participants would respond to minority influence in the same way.
Furthermore, research often suggests that females are more likely to conform and therefore further research is required to determine the effect of minority influence on male participants.
Evaluation of Moscovici study limitation
Moscovici has also been criticised for deceiving his participants, as participants were told that they were taking part in a colour perception test.
This also means that Moscovici did not gain fully informed consent.
Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Moscovici’s experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results.
If the participants were aware of the true aim, they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently.
