SI - Minority influence Flashcards
What is the result when the majority influences the minority by establishing norms?
Compliance rather than conversion.
What is the result of when the minority influences the majority by consistent challenges and beliefs leading to reappraisal?
Conversion rather than compliance.
What is a naive ppt?
Someone who is unaware of the purpose of the research or the hypothesis being tested.
What does majority influence create?
Compliance rather than conversion.
What does minority influence create?
Conversion rather than compliance.
How does minority influence create conversion?
Provided the minority adopt a consistent and committed approach, people scrutinise the message itself. They want to understand why the minority hold this position so as a result, conversion to the minority position, when it occurs, tends to be deeper and longer lasting as people have internalised the minority’s point of view.
What behavioural style must the minority adopt?
Being consistent, committed and flexible in their arguments.
Why does a minority group need to be consistent to achieve minority influence?
Because when people are first exposed to their differing view, they assume the minority is in error.
However, 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).
Moscovici et al. (1969) study.
What evidence is there for a minority influence being consistent and it having positive results?
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.
What is the key study showing how consistency affects minority influence?
Moscovici et al. (1969).
Why does a minority group need to show commitment to achieve minority influence?
It is difficult to dismiss a minority when it adopts an uncompromising and consistent commitment to its position.
Commitment is important in the influence because it suggests certainty, confidence and courage in the face of a hostile majority.
Because joining a minority inevitably has greater costs for the individual than staying with the majority, the degree of commitment shown by the majority 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.
Why does a minority group need flexibility to achieve minority influence?
Mugny (1982) suggests that flexibility is more effective at changing majority opinion than rigidity of arguments.
Because minorities are typically powerless compared to the majority, they must negotiate their position with the majority rather than try to enforce it.
Mugny distinguished between rigid and flexible negotiating styles, arguing that a rigid minority that refuses to compromise risks being perceived as dogmatic (narrow-minded and refusing to consider that their opinions might also be justified). However, a minority influence that is too flexible and too prepared to compromise risks being seen as inconsistent.
Neither approach is particularly effective at persuading the majority to shift to the minority’s position, but, claims Mugny, some degree of flexibility is more effective than none at all.
Describe the procedure of the study on minority of influence done by Moscovici et al. (1969)
Each group had 4 naive ppts and a minority of 2 confederates.
They were shown a series of blue slides that varied only in intensity and were asked to judge the colour of each slide.
In the ‘consistent’ experimental condition, the 2 confederates repeatedly called the blue slides ‘green’ on every trial.
In the ‘inconsistent’ condition, the confederates called the slides ‘green’ on two-thirds of the trials, and on the remaining on-third of trials called the slides ‘blue’.
In a control condition, compromising 6 naive ppts and no confederates, ppts called the slides ‘blue’ throughout.
Describe the findings of the study on minority of influence done by Moscovici et al. (1969)
The consistent minority influence the naive ppts to say ‘green’ on over 8% of the trials.
The inconsistent minority exerted very little influence, and did not differ significantly from the control group.
After the main study was over, ppts were asked individually to sort 16 coloured discs into either ‘blue’ or ‘green’. 3 of these discs were unambiguously from the blue end of the colour spectrum and 3 were unambiguously from the green end. The remaining 10 discs were ambiguous in that they might be considered either blue or green. To be able to to this, ppts had to establish a threshold point where everything one side of that point would then be judged ‘blue’, and everything the other side ‘green’.
Individuals who had been in the ‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’ minority conditions set their thresholds at different points, with the result that those in the consistent condition judged more of the chips to be green than those in the inconsistent condition. The effect was even greater for those ppts who hadn’t gone along with the minority during the experiment, suggesting that the initial influence was more at a private than a public level.
What is conformity like when there is an inconsistent minority compared to a consistent minority?
It is lower when the minority is inconsistent.
