Social Influence

Question 1

define social influence

Answer 1

the idea that we are influenced by others, and we have an influence on others.

Question 2

define social norms

Answer 2

learnt from a young age when socialized. allows society to function.

Question 3

define conformity

Answer 3

when we follow accepted behaviour

Question 4

what are the types of social influence?

Answer 4

• conformity
• obedience
• minority influence

Question 5

what are the types of conformity?

Answer 5

• internalisation
• identification
• compliance

Question 6

internalisation

Answer 6

Kelman (1958) proposed 3 types of conformity. the individual accepts the groups’ point of view publicly and privately.

Question 7

compliance

Answer 7

going along with others to fit in. the person doesn’t privately agree but publicly expresses behaviour that does.

Question 8

identification

Answer 8

person affects influence from others. the individual accepts the attitudes and behaviours they are adopting as right and true (identifucation). However, the purpose is to be accepted as part of the group. (compliance)

Question 9

Evaluation of types of obedience

Answer 9

• compliance and internalisaiton can be hard to define and measure.
• can also be applied to identification.

Question 10

Explanations for conformity:
Informational Social Influence

Answer 10

• occurs when we take information from others as evidence about reality: if we are uncertain about what behaviour and beliefs are right or wrong, we will look to others we see as ‘experts’ for guidance as we feel they will likely be right. Consequently, it is likely to occur in new or ambiguous situations. As a result, an individual will comply with behaviour and change their behaviour to the group position, so they change their public and private attitude; an example of internalisation. it is a cognitive process as it’s based on what you think.

Question 11

informational social influence
evaluation

Answer 11

Wittenbrick and Henley demonstrated that other peoples’ beliefs have an important influence on social stereotypes. When PPs were exposed to negative information about African Americans and were led to believe that this was the view of the majority, they too reported more negative beliefs about a black individual. Therefore, supporting the idea of social influence.
Similarly, it can shape political opinions, Fein demonstrated how judgements of candidates’ performances in US presidential debates could be influenced by the knowledge of people’s reactions. PPs saw what they thought was supposedly the reaction of their fellow PPs on-screen during the discussion. This produced large shifts in PP’s judgements of the candidate’s peformance.

Question 12

Explanations for Conformity
Normative Social Influence

Answer 12

This is about norms for a social group. The behaviour of individuals and groups of people is regulated by norms as we don’t want to appear foolish and we want social approval and want to be approved. People will believe they are under surveillance from the group. Therefore this is an emotional process. Consequently, it is likely to occur around strangers as you want to avoid rejection, but also want friends’ approval. However, you may conform to the majority position in public but it doesn’t mean this is internalised into a private setting or that this belief will endure over time. (Compliance).

Question 13

Normative Social Influence
Evaluation

Answer 13

• Linkenbach and Perkins (2003) conducted research into peoples’ normative beliefs and taking up smoking. Adolescents exposed to the simple message that the majority of their age group did not smoke were less likely to take up smoking.
• Normative social influence has also been used to show how people can be manipulated into behaving more responsibly when it comes to energy conservation. Schultz (2002) found that hotel guests were exposed to the normative message that 75% of guests reuse their towels each day, rather than requesting fresh ones, 25% of people reused their towels.
• In Asch’s study, many participants went along with what was the wrong answer just because other people did. When asked why they had done this, they said they felt self-conscious about giving the correct response as they were afraid of disapproval. When he repeated the study and got the participants to write their answers down, conformity rates fell.

Question 14

Variables affecting conformity: Asch
Procedure

Answer 14

123 male undergraduates were tested. PP’s were asked to sit around a table and compare 3 lines to a standard line: which one was the closest length to the standard line. The real PP was always 2nd to last to answer.
The confederates were told to give the same wrong answer in 12/18 of the trials. Asch was interested to see whether the PP’s would stick with what they believed or go with the majority answer.

Question 15

Variables affecting conformity: Asch
Findings

Answer 15

On the 12 critical trials, the average conformity rate was 33%.
Asch also found that individual differences affected conformity: 1/4 of the PPs never conformed, half conformed on 6 or more, and 1/20 conformed in each trial. Consequently, 75% conformed at least once.
To ensure the stimulus lines were unambiguous, Asch conducted a control condition where no confederates were purposefully giving the wrong answers. Results showed the wrong answer was given 1% of the time.
Asch interviewed the PPs after and found the majority who had conformed had done so through compliance - they publically changed their answers to avoid social disapproval.

Question 16

Asch: What were the variables affecting conformity?

Answer 16

group size: Asch found that when there were 3 confederates, conformity rose to 31.8%. However, fewer confederates didn’t affect conformity, and more than 3 didn’t substantially increase conformity. This suggests group size is important but to a certain level.
The unanimity of the majority: in the original study, the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer. However, when this changed and some confederates gave the correct answer, conformity dropped to 5.5%. When confederates have different but all wrong answers, conformity fell to 9%. It was concluded that unanimity was key to conformity.
Task difficulty: in one variation, Asch made the task more difficult by reducing the differences between the lengths to make the answer less obvious. This led to increased conformity. This is an example of informational social influence - looking to others for guidance.

Question 17

Variables affecting conformity: Asch
Evaluation

Answer 17

A child of its time: Asch’s study was conducted in 1950s America where McCarthyism was high. This was a time when people were more likely to conform. Consequently, this could have produced results that reflected conformity in 1956 America, but not today’s society.
Artificial: PP’s knew they were in a research study and therefore may have gone along with the demands of the group. The task of identifying lines is trivial and has no consequences so people are more likely to conform. Therefore, it cannot be generalised to everyday situations.
Gender: Asch only tested males so his findings are limited in how they can be generalised. Some researchers suggest women are more conformist as they are more concerned about acceptance.

Question 18

Conformity to social roles: Zimbardo
Procedure

Answer 18

The experiment took place at Stanford University, California in 1973, where a mock prison was created in the basement. Male student volunteers were physically and psychologically screened and the most stable 24 were randomly allocated the role of guard or prisoner.
The prisoners were then unexpectedly arrested at home. Once they arrived at the prison, they were blindfolded, deloused, and given a uniform and an ID number which they were referred to as. They were allowed 3 meals a day, 3 supervised toilet trips, and 2 visits a week.
The guards were given a khaki uniform, batons, whistles, and reflective sunglasses to avoid eye contact.
The study was planned to last 2 weeks.

Question 19

Conformity to social roles: Zimbardo
Findings

Answer 19

Over the first few days, the guards became tyrannical: woke them up in the middle of the night for a headcount, and made them clean the toilets with their bare hands. Within 2 days, the prisoners rebelled by ripping their uniforms, swearing, and shouting at the guards. One prisoner went on hunger strike and they punished him with solitary confinement. Participants appeared to forget they were acting, and despite being watched, they still conformed to their social role. The prisoners became increasingly passive and 5 had to be released due to extreme actions: signs of anxiety, crying and rage.
The study was terminated after 6 days.

Question 20

Conformity to social roles: Zimbardo
Evaluation

Answer 20

• Behaviour of the guards: Zimbardo claimed that the guards’ behaviour was an automatic process, it was a consequence of them embracing their social roles. This led to them being unable to engage with the fact that their behaviour was wrong. However, some Psychologists have questioned this as the behaviour of the guards varied: while some were sadistic, some were ‘nice’ and did small favours for the prisoners. Therefore it was been argued that they chose to conform to their social roles, rather than a subconscious process.
• Lack of researcher support: Reicher and Haslam (2006) conducted a replica study: the BBC study. However, their findings were different to Zimbardo’s. The prisoners ruled the prison and subjected the guards to harassment. They use the Social Identity Theory to explain this as the guards failed to form a group identity but the prisoners did.
  Ethical issues: the prisoners were not pre-informed of the psychological as well as physical abuse they would be subjected to.

Question 21

Situational Variables Affecting Obedience: Milgram
Procedure

Answer 21

40 participants took part in a series of conditions where situational variables occured to see if they affected obedience. the study was conducted in a psychology lab at Yale University in 1963. PPs were told the study was to see how punishment affects learning. The real pp was always the teacher and the confederate was always the learner. the learner was sat in another room, so the teacher couldn’t see him, but could hear him. the teacher was testing the learners ability to learn word pairs. every time they got the answer wrong, the teacher would administer electric shocks. it started at 15 volts, and increased in 15 volt incriments up to 450 volts. after 315 volts, the learner refused to answer and would shout in pain. if the teacher asked to stop at any point, the experimenter would tell them “it is absolutely essential that you continue.” “you have no choice you must go on.”

Question 22

Situational Variables Affecting Obedience: Milgram
Findings

Answer 22

Prior to the study, Milgram asked various groups of people what they believed the highest voltage that would be given. they predicted very few would go beyond 150 volts.
26/40 (65%) administered upto 450 volts. all PPs administered up to 300 volts, with only 5 (12%) stopping here. The shock generator was labelled ‘Danger: Severe Shock’ at 420 volts, and ‘XXX’ at 450 volts.
This was known as the ‘Voice Feedback Study’

Question 23

Situational Variables Affecting Obedience: Milgram
Situational Variables

Answer 23

Proximity: in the proximity study, the tescher and learner were seated in the same room and obedience levels fell to 40% due to seeing the learners anguish. when the experimenter left the room, and gave his orders over the phone, only 21% continued to the maximum shock. Some PPs repeatedly gave the weakest shock despite telling the experimenter they were increasing the voltage.
Location: Milgram moved the study to a run-down office in Bridgeport, Connecticut after being told the location gave the study prestige and confidence. Obedience rates dropped slightly to 48%.
Power of Uniform: in the original study, Milgram wore a grey lab coat. in a variation, the experimenter was replaced with an ‘ordinary man wearing everyday clothes’. Obedience dropped to 20%.

Question 24

Situational Variables Affecting Obedience: Milgram
Evaluation

Answer 24

Ethical Issues: Baumrind (1964) stated Milgram deceived the PPs by not telling them the real reason of the study so they did not make an informed decision to take part. Also, the PPs were not fully aware of their right to withdraw due to the experimenters ‘prod’ to continue.
External Validity: In Poland, 1942, men in the Reserve Police Battalion 101 received orders from Major Trapp to carry out mass killing of the Jews. Trapp told the men that those who ‘didn’t feel up to it’ could be assigned to other duties. Despite the men being close to the victims (proximity) the vast majority carried it out without protest.
Individual Differences: Milgram did a study where the PPs were female. they self-reported more tension when administering the maximum shock however the obedience rates were the exact same. this challenges the assumption that women are more susceptible to social influence than men.

Question 25

The Agentic State

Answer 25

The process where you shift responsibility for your own actions onto someone else. You move from being an autonomous person to acting as an agent for someone else, usually an authority figure. Therefore, you are carrying the wishes of someone else, not yourself and so are not responsible. Milgram’s PPs when asked why they had obeyed, replied “I wouldn’t have done it myself. I was just doing what I was told”. The individual feels no responsibility for their actions but feels responsible toward the authority directing them. The person can shift between autonomous and agentic.

Question 26

The Agentic State: Self-image

Answer 26

In Milgram’s study, the white t-shirt man asked the experimenter “Who is responsible?”. Once he was told it wasn’t him, he carried on with the shocks.

Question 27

The Agentic State: Real-life application - My Lai

Answer 27

LT William Calley was a platoon commander who ordered his men to murder over 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers. At his trial, he denied murder claiming to have carried out the orders of his superior officers.

Question 28

The Agentic State: Binding Factors - Social etiquette

Answer 28

the PPs have made a committment to the experiment so to act against it would be rude. Milgram also stated that his PPs blamed the learner for volunteering and denied the damage caused.

Question 29

Legitimacy of Authority

Answer 29

a legitimate authority figure is someone who is perceived to be in a position of social control within a situation. Milgram believed that the power of a legitimate authority comes from a person’s perceived position in a social situation. He stated that in his experiment the participant enters the room with the expectation that someone will be in charge. It is the experimenter who is the first person to present themselves and fulfill this role. They are giving instructions to the participant so they have an ‘air of authority’ and the participant believes they are in charge and does not question it.
The PP then allows the authority figure to reassure them that it is okay to shock the learner through prompts and the participant feels a commitment to the authority figure. If the authority figure commands something to occur that is potentially harmful, the perceived authority must operate within an institution or structure (university, military). However, as Milgram’s variation showed it doesn’t have to be a reputable or distinguished institution, the fact that it is a scientific laboratory is enough.

Question 30

Legitimacy of Authority
Evaluation

Answer 30

Legitimate authority can explain many instances of real-life obedience. Some of these can be positive e.g. following the orders of a policeman in an emergency. However, others can have severe consequences. If a person gives the authority figure the power to make judgments for them about what is appropriate they no longer feel their own values are relevant so in such situations they are more likely to engage in immoral actions.
Tarnow supported this by studying aviation accidents. He studied data from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for serious aircraft accidents between 1978-1990, where the flight voice recorder was available and the flight crew had been a contributing factor in the crash. He found excessive dependency on the captain’s authority and expertise. One second officer claimed that although he believed the captain was taking a risky approach he said nothing as he assumed the captain must know what he was doing. It was found that the NTSB found a lack of ‘monitoring errors’ contributed to 19/37 accidents investigated.

Question 31

Agentic State: Real Word Application

Answer 31

1969 US police dept, California
Navy blue paramilitary style uniforms were discontinued and replaced with civilian style uniforms to help community relations
Assaults on officers doubled
after 8 years, it was returned to the traditional style uniform.
assaults dropped

Question 32

Agentic State
Evaluation

Answer 32

+
When students were shown a film of Milgram’s study, they were asked who they thought was responsible for the harm to the learner, they stated it was the experimenter as the legitimate authority figure.
-
In Auschwitz, doctors went from caring to performing lethal experiments on helpless prisoners. This suggests that their behaviour is gradual and irreversible, and therefore not agentic

Question 33

Dispositional Explanations for Obedience: The Authoritarian Personality
Procedure

Answer 33

Adorno (1950) studied 2000 middle class, white Americans in relation to their unconscious attitudes toward other racial groups. Several scales were developed to investigate this, one being the F-scale which was used to investigate potential fascism and is still used to measure the Authoritarian Personality.
Agreeing with statements with such statements was indicative of having an Authoritarian Personality

Question 34

Dispositional Explanations for Obedience: The Authoritian Personality
Findings

Answer 34

Individuals who scored highly on the scale were rigid thinkers who obeyed authority. They saw the world as ‘black and white’ they had distinctive stereotypical views about other groups and would strictly follow social rules and hierarchies. There was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
These people had been raised by parents who used an authoritarian parenting style, including physical punishment. Parents were harsh with expectations of extreme loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticisms of failing. they also show conditional love, dependant on the behaviour of the child. This system of parenting made the child grow into an adult whom believed this behaviour to be the norm, they learnt vicariously through observing and imitating the behaviour.
The child feels resentment and hostility but can’t direct this at the parent due to fear or reprisal and so displaces this onto others they perceive to be weaker, they scapegoat. This explains the obedience to a higher authority and a dislike and even hatred for people considered inferior or who belong to other social groups.

Question 35

Dispositional Explanations for Obedience: The Authoritian Personality
Authoritarian Characteristics

Answer 35

• obedient to authority
• extreme respect for authority and are submissive to it.
• display highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race, and gender.
• show contempt to those they believed to be inferior in social status
• no grey areas, not comfortable with uncertainty
• believe countries need strong leaders to enforce values

Question 36

Explanations of resistance to social influence
Why do people resist social influence?

Answer 36

• morally wrong
• people may be more independent
• want to be different
• prove a point
• educated students are more likely to resist
• younger people are very conformist
• older people more likely to resist

Question 37

Explanations of resistance to social influence
Why is it hard to resist social influence?

Answer 37

• not following the norm
• the natural desire to be liked
• punishment/consequences
• agentic state
• authoritarian personality
• Zimbardo
• normative social influence
• Asch
• Milgram

Question 38

Explanations of resistance to social influence: social support and resisting conformity

Answer 38

Asch found that the presence of social support helps individuals to resist pressure to conform from the majority.
Asch’s unanimity of PPs - conformity dropped from 33% to 5.5%.
Social support breaks the unanimous position of the majority.

Question 39

Explanations of resistance to social influence: social support and resisting obedience

Answer 39

Authority figures can make a harmful action seem acceptable and so it can be hard to resist obedience. Individuals are more confident in resisting obedience if they can find an ally who will join them in opposing the authority figure. Disobedient peers therefore act as role models on which others can model their behaviour. In a variation of Milgram’s experiment, three PPs were testing a learner. two of these PPs were confederates, who one by one withdrew from the study refusing to shock the learner. The defiance that they showed influenced the real PPs with only 10% continuing to the maximum shock level.

Question 40

Explanations of resistance to social influence: social support and resisting obedience and conformity
Evaluation

Answer 40

Allen and Levine 1969 looked at if the position a person is responding in during an Asch-type experiment has an effect. in one condition a confederate answered first giving the right answer, whilst other confederates all gave the same wrong answer. The real PP was always the last to answer. In the second condition, the confederate answered 4th, after the other confederates, giving the correct answer. it was found that condition 1 provided more social support for the real PP. It was suggested that a correct 1st answer confirmed the PP’s own judgment and produced an initial commitment to the correct response that endures even though other group members disagreed.
in another variation, Allen and Levine got confederates to wear extremely thick glasses so they were in a position to accurately judge the length of the lines. Conformity still reduced showing that support allows people to feel free from the pressure to conform even if the support is not valid/accurate. However, conformity didn’t decrease as much when the confederates had normal vision and so was seemed to be valid and accurate.
The Rossentrasse Protest in 1943 was a group of German women where the Gustappo were holding 2000 Jewish men. Most of the women were married to non-Jewish or born to families of mixed origins. The women demanded the release of their husbands/dads etc. Eventually, the men were set free. the disobedient peers gave people to courage to resist authoritative orders.

Question 41

Explanations of resistance to social influence: Locus of control

Answer 41

this is ‘how in control’ we believe we are over our own behaviour. it is measured on a scale of ‘high internal’ to ‘high external’ control, with most people being in between both extremes. if a person has a strong internal locus of control they will believe that they can control events in their life, what happens to them is due to their own abilities and efforts. they will be independent in their thoughts and behaviour and rely little on the opinions of others. Consequently, they are more able to resist social influence. people with an external locus of control believe what happens to them is due to external factors such as the influence of others. they believe things just happen to them and are out of their control. they have a passive and fatalistic attitude taking less personal responsibility for their actions. they display less independent behaviour and are more likely to be influenced by others.

Question 42

Explanations of resistance to social influence: Locus of control
Evaluation

Answer 42

Spector 1983 measured locus of control and predisposition to normative social influence in 157 undergraduates. A significant correlation was found between the locus of control and predisposition to normative social influence, externals were more likely to conform to this type of influence than internals. However, no relationship was found for the predisposition to informational social influence, locus of control didn’t appear significant.
Holland 1967repeated Milgram’s experiments and measured whether PPs were internals or externals. He found that 37% of internals didn’t continue to the highest shock level whereas only 23% of externals didn’t continue, therefore internals showed a greater resist

ance to authority.
Twenge 2004 analysed data from American obedience studies over 40 years and found that people have become more resistant to obedience but also more external. this therefore challenges the link between an internal locus of control and resisting obedience.

Question 43

Minority influence including: consistency, commitment, and flexibility
MOSCOVICI: procedure

Answer 43

a group of 6 people were tested, consisting of 4 naive PPs (majority) and a minority of 2 confederates. they were shown a series of 36 blue slides, which varied in intensity, and were asked to judge the colour of each slide. the 2 confederates consistently said the slides were green on every trial. this was known as the consistent experimental condition.
in a 2nd condition known as the inconsistent experimental condition, the 2 confederates said the slides were green on 2/3 of the trials, but blue for the remaining slides.
in a control condition which consisted of 6 naive PPs and no confederates, PPs said the slides were blue throughout.

Question 44

Minority influence including: consistency, commitment, and flexibility
MOSCOVICI: findings

Answer 44

consistent trials - when the 2 confederates were consistent with their responses with their responses of green they influenced the majority of PPs in over 8% of trials (statistically significant).
inconsistent trials: they had very little influence over the majority of the naive PPs - 0.25% across the trials. these didn’t differ much from the control condition.

Question 45

Minority influence including: consistency, commitment, and flexibility
MOSCOVICI: evaluation

Answer 45

Real life application: the suffragettes were a minority group, but when they were consistent in their views that women should get the vote, they influenced the majority and got the laws changed so that women could vote. This therefore supports Moscivici’s study into minority influence as it is applicable to real life situations, therefore has high ecological validity.
Wood 1994 carried out a meta-analysis of 100 similar studies to that of Moscovici and found that minorities who were consistent, were also the most influential, showing the importance of consistency in minority influence.

Question 46

define social change

Question 47

stage 1 of social change and example

Answer 47

DRAW ATTENTION TO THE ISSUE: aim to reduce the conflict that this causes.
suffragettes: educational, political, and militant tactics were used to achieve this. they drew attention to the fact women were denied the same votes.

Question 48

stage 2 of social change and example

Answer 48

COGNITIVE CONFLICT: conflict between minority and majority makes the majority think more deeply about the issues being raised.
suffragettes: made the majority think about the status quo. Some went on to challenge it and move to the minority position.

Question 49

stage 3 of social change and example

Answer 49

CONSISTENCY OF POSITION: minorities need to be consistent over time and together.
suffragettes: consistent in attitudes despite hardships they faces.

Question 50

stage 4 of social change and example

Answer 50

THE AUGMENTATION PRINCIPLE: minority influence is more powerful (augmented) if the minority are willing to suffer, seen to be committed, and taken seriously.
Suffragettes: went on hunger strikes, and risked imprisonment and death.

Question 51

stage 5 of social change and example

Answer 51

THE SNOWBALL EFFECT: initially there is a small effect but this spreads widely until a tipping point is reached. This is a significant amount of people support the minority, leading to social change.
Suffragettes: support grew until the majority of people in the UK agreed with the suffragettes’ cause and universal suffrage. All adult citizens having the vote was accepted.

Question 52

Social Influence Processes in Social Change: social change through majority influence (conformity)

Answer 52

Behavioural choices are often related to group norms and so are affected by normative social influence. the social norms approach believes if people believe something to be the norm, they will tend to alter their behaviour to fit into that norm and will conform (Asch). behaviour is therefore based upon what others think and do. E.g. if university students believe that heavy drinking is the norm, they will drink heavily. therefore they will conform based on what others think - the perceived norm, rather than what they believe - the actual norm. the gap between perceived and actual norms is known as the misperception and correcting this is the basis for what we call social norms interventions.

Question 53

Social Influence Processes in Social Change: Social Norms Interventions

Answer 53

you identify a misperception of a behaviour. an example may be how young adults generally misperceive how often and how much alcohol their peers drink. consequently, they develop norms to justify their own heavy drinking. perception correction strategies can then be used to communicate to the target population what the actual norm is.

Question 54

Social Influence Processes in Social Change: Majority Influence Evaluation

Answer 54

in Montana, USA a social norms intervention program was run to aim to lower the number of drink-driving incidents occurring in young adults aged 21-34. an initial survey found that 20.4% of this age range reported having driven within 1 hour of consuming 2 or more alcoholic drinks over 1 month. 92% of these respondents believed their peers had done the same. the intervention program corrected this norm with the message “MOST Montana young adults 4/5 don’t drink and drive” After the campaign, the reported prevalence of drink-driving dropped to 13.7%.
Research has shown that some interventions can be very effective in changing social behaviour, however others have not worked so well. DeJong (2009) researched the effectiveness of a marketing campaign to reduce alcohol consumption among students across 14 different college sites. Postal surveys were conducted at the beginning of the stfu and 3 years after the campaign had finished. Despite receiving normative information that corrected their misperceptions of subjective drinking norms, students in the social norms condition didn’t show lower perceptions of student drinking levels nor did they report lower self-reported alcohol consumption as a result of the campaign.
Nolan (2008) investigated whether social influence processes led to a change in energy consumption in a community. They hung messages on the front door of houses in San Diego, California every week for a month. The message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. Some residents had a different message that asked them to save energy but didn’t refer to anyone else. It was found that there was a significant decrease in the energy consumption of the 1st group supporting the theory of social norms interventions.

Question 55

Social Influence Processes In Social Change: Minority Influence
Evaluation

Answer 55

Minorities have been argued to provide the potential for social change rather than actually bringing about social change. This is because such change doesn’t happen quickly, but rather a much slower process which could take hundreds of years. This is because we tend to follow the majority do not to disrupt the status quo. This therefore challenges how directly influential the minority are in social change.
In addition to this, social change can be affected by the minority being seen as deviant as the majority would not want to associate with deviant behaviour themselves. Therefore the message of a deviant minority can be lost as the majority focus on their actions rather than the message. The start of communism addressed this by stating they had no separate interest from the majority, they emphasises that they were party of the proletariat and their struggle was with the bourgeoisie.