Minority Influence is stronger than Majority Influence Flashcards
Moscovici et al date
1969
Mocsovici et al study name
Minority influence
Method: the study was a
laboratory experiment
Method: what gender were the participants?
female
Method: how many women took part?
192
Method: how many women were in each group?
6
Method: participants judged
the colour of 36 slides
Method: all the slides were blue but
the shades of blue varied
Method: two of the six participants were
confederates
Method: condition 1
the confederates called all the slides green (consistent)
Method: condition 2
the confederates called 24 of the slides green and 12 blue (inconsistent)
Method control group
a control group was used which there were no confederates
Results: control group
the participants called the slides ‘green’ 0.25% of the time
Results: condition 1 (consistent) adopted the minority view
8.4%
Results: condition 1 (consistent) called a slide ‘green’ once
32%
Results: condition 2 (inconsistent)
1.25%
Conclusion: the confederates were in the minority but
their views appear to have influenced the real participants
Conclusion: the use of two conditions illustrated that the minority
had more influence when they were consistent
Evaluation: the study lacked ecological validity because it was conducted in a
laboratory
Evaluation: the task was
artificial
Evaluation: the participants may have felt that judging the colour of a slide was a
trivial exercise
Evaluation: the study was only conducted on women so
the results can’t be generalized to men
Evaluation: in a similar experiment
participants were asked to write down their answers instead of saying them and even more people agreed with the majority
Nemeth et al date
1974
Nemeth et al repeated Moscovici’s experiment but
instructed participants to answer with all of the colours they saw in the slide rather then just one, singular colour
Nemeth et al ran three variations
there were two confederates
Nemeth et al: the three variations were
the confederates said all the slides were green
the confederates said the slides were either green or blue-green]
the confederates said the brighter slides were blue-green and the duller shades were green
when the confederates always answered green or varied their response randomly
they had no effect on the participants repsonces
in the condition where the responses varied
the confederates had a significant effect
