minority influence evaluation Flashcards
what does it mean when we say that minority influence has research supporting how important consistency is
Moscvici et al sstudy showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people that can inconsistent opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion.
This suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence
what is one limitation of minority influence
artificial tasks
a limitation of minority influence is that research into it involves tasks like: identifying the colour of a slide are as artificial as Asch’s line judgement task
Research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life e.g. inn cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning, the outcomes are vastly more important, soemtimes even literally matters of life and death
This means findings of minority influence studies such as Moscovici et al are lacking external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real - life social situations
there is research to show that minority influence leads to internalisation
In a variation of Moscovici’s blue-green slide study, participants were allowed to write their answers down, so their responses were private, rather than stated out load
Surprisingly, private agreement with the minority position was greater in these circumstances. It appears that members of the majority were convinced by the minority’s argument and changed their own views, but were reluctant to admit it publicly.
Moscivici thought that this was probably because they did not want to be associated with a minority position for fear of being considered “radical”
This finding confirms that conversion is private internalisation of the minority’s message.
It has limited real-world application
Research studies usually make a very clear and obvious distinction between the majority and the minority
However, a significant limitation is that real-life social influence situations are much more complicated than this. There is more involved in the difference between a minority and the majority than just numbers
For example, majorities usually have a lot more power and status than minorities. Furthermore, minorities often face hostile opposition from the majority.
Many research into minority influence fails to acknowledge these real-world factors and fail to show the social support amongst members of the minority when hostility from the majority overwhelms them.
This is a limitation for minority research as it suggests that it may lack generalisability to the real world
