Social Change Flashcards
What was moscovici aim?
To investigate how a consistent minority can affect the opinions of a larger group.
What was moscovici’s procedure?
- tested for colour blindness.
- placed in a group of four participants and 2 confederates.
- shown 36 slides of different shades of blues do asked to state the colour allowed.
- this was done with two groups.
- group 1 - the confederates were consistent and answered green each time.
- group 2 - the confederates were inconsistent and answered green 24 times and blue 12 times.
What did moscovici find?
In the consistent group - 8.42% of the trials resulted in P’s answering green . And 32% agreed at least once.
In the inconsistent group - 1.25% of trials resulted in P’s answering green.
What was moscovici’s conclusion?
The study suggests that minorities can change the opinion of a majority group, particularly if they are constant.
The minority should demonstrate consistency by…
Sticking to their views
The minority should show commitment by…
- Living by their own beliefs.
- making personal sacrifices to demonstrate their view.
The minority should demonstrate flexibility by…
Considering other points of view.
Social change through minority influence (6 stages)
Drawing attention to an issue - minority views different from majority creates a conflict that people want to reduce.
Cognitive conflict - the conflict created causes the majority to think more deeply bout the issue as their views are challenged.
Consistency of position - moscovici showed consistency increases the chances of changing the majority’s view.
The augmentation effect - minority appears to be willing to suffer for there cause so it’s taken more seriously
The snowball effect - minority converts a small group of people who convert other people. Over time the minority become the majority.
Social cryptoamnesia - minority ideas become the majority
What did clerks experiment involve?
- 270 students were asked to play the role of jurors.
- they were given a summary of a murder case from a film and the jury’s decision about key pieces of info.
- the persuasiveness of the arguments and the views of the jury were manipulated.
- Clark found that the participants were most persuaded when they heard consistent persuasive arguments from the minority jury members and when they heard that more than one juror had defected from the majority position.
- this supports moscovici’s experiment because they both show the constancy of an argument increasing the likely hood of a participant being persuaded.
What did wood (et al) do?
Conducted a meta-analysis of 97 studies of minority influence and found that consistent minorities were particularly influential.
