Minority influence including reference to consistency, commitment and flexibility. Flashcards
What is minority influence
Minority influence is a type of social influence that motivates individuals to reject established majority group norms. This is achieved through the process of conversion, where majorities become gradually won over to a minority viewpoint. Conversion involves the new belief/behaviour being accepted both publically and privately and can be seen as a type of ‘internalisation’.
Research has shown that minorities can be influential provided they adopt the appropriate style of behaviour.
If people simply went along with the majority all the time and minority views never prevailed, there would be no change, no innovation.
Minority influence is almost always associated with internalisation because it leads to disagreeing with the majority. Ordinarily an individual would only go against the majority if they genuinely believed the views/behaviour of majority was wrong.
What are the Behavioural characteristics of the minority
Research shows that consistency is the most important behavioural characteristic that the minority should possess in order to influence the majority. Moscovici also suggested it is important for the minority to show commitment and flexibility.
We need to understand Consistency, Commitment and Flexibility in more detail.
Explain the behavioural characteristics of the minority
Consistency – minority influence will be persuasive if the minority is consistent (unchanging) with its opinion/behaviour, show confidence in its beliefs, and appears unbiased. If the minority adopt a consistent approach, others come to reassess the situation and consider the issue more carefully. After all, there must be a reason why the minority takes the position it does and is sufficiently confident to maintain it over time and with each other (Nemeth 2010).
Commitment – is important in the influence process because it suggests certainty, confidence and courage in the face of a hostile majority. Because joining a minority inevitably has greater cost for the individual than staying with the majority the degree of commitment shown by minority group members is typically greater. This greater commitment may then persuade majority group members to take them seriously, or even convert to the minority position. The augmentation principle explains how minorities can change the majority because if the minority is doing something quiet risky but shows commitment then the majority will pay more interest – e.g. ‘wow, he must really believe in what he’s saying so perhaps I should consider his viewpoint!’
Flexibility – Mugny (1982) suggests that flexibility is more effective at changing majority opinion than rigidity of arguments. Because minorities are generally powerless compared to majorities, the minority must therefore negotiate rather than enforce their position upon the majority. However, a minority that is too flexible or too rigid risks being seen as either weak and inconsistent or dogmatic. Nemeth (1986) argues that it is important to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility.
Research support for consistency
Early experiment into minority influence: Moscovici (1969)
Aim: To see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer, in a colour perception task.
Method/Procedure:
His sample consisted of 172 female participants who were told that they were taking part in a colour perception task. The participants were placed in groups of six and shown 36 slides, which were all varying shades of blue. The participants had to state out loud the colour of each slide. 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.
Findings:
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.
Conclusion: Moscovici’s results show that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in exerting minority influence.
Other research support for consistency– the importance of consistency was evident in Moscovici’s study where if the confederate was consistent in their choice of slide colour then the participant would change their view. Also Wood et al. (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of 97 studies of minority influence, and found that minorities who were perceived as being especially consistent in expressing their position were particularly influential.
Research support for commitment
Research support for commitment- Xie et al. (2011) discovered a ‘tipping point’ where the number of people holding a minority position is sufficient to change majority opinion. In fact Xie found that you need about 10% of the minority population to influence the majority.
Research support for flexibility
Aim: Nemeth (1986) believed that consistency was not the most important factor in minority influence, suggesting that it can often be misinterpreted as a negative trait. She set about investigating the idea of flexibility as a key characteristic of successful minorities who exert pressure.
Method: Participants, in groups of four, had to agree on the amount of compensation they would give to a victim of a ski‐lift accident. One of the participants in each group was a confederate and there were two conditions: 1) When the minority argued for a low rate of compensation and refused to change their position (inflexible). 2) When the minority argued for a low rate of compensation but compromised by offering a slightly higher rate of compensation (flexible).
Results: Nemeth found that in the inflexible condition, the minority had little or no effect on the majority; however, in the flexible condition, the majority members were much more likely to also compromise and change their view.
Conclusion: Nemeth’s research highlights the importance of flexibility, and questions the idea of consistency, suggesting that striking a balance between the two is the most successful strategy for a minority to adopt.
Strengths of minority influence
There is ‘real value’ of research into minority influence since Nemeth (2010) argues that the dissent in the form of the minority group opens the mind and as a result, people search for information, consider more options and make better decisions and are more creative. This then allows researchers to understand the means and processes for social change which can be linked to minority influence as was shown in many studies.
There is research evidence to show that change in minority position involves deeper processing of ideas. Martin et al. (2003) gave participants a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured their support. One group then heard a minority group agree with the initial view whilst one group heard the majority agree. Pps were finally exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again. It was found that pps were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to the minority group rather than the majority – this study shows the power of minority influence in terms of views being more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect.
Weaknesses of minority influence
One issue with research on minority influence is the lack of realism to many of the tasks that were given to participants - for example, in Moscovici’s study – judging the colour of slides cannot be seen as very real to life as we do not spend time judging the colour of items unless we are an artist or painter perhaps– this is also the case for many of the other studies so lack of ecological validity is a real issue with research on minority influence. This means that we should be cautious when analysing research findings for minority influence research as most studies lack ecological validity and may not represent how minority influence works in the real world.
Although minority influence research has real value, it may not apply to real life situations which can be much more complicated. For example, Nemeth (2010) claimed that it is still difficult to convince people of the value of the dissent since people may accept the minority opinion on the surface but may become irritated by this view fearing lack of harmony and as a result we attempt to belittle the dissenting view to contain it!
