Social influence: Minority influence

Question 1

What is minority influence?

Answer 1

When a member of a minority group influences the majority to accept the minority’s beliefs or behaviour.

Question 2

What does minority influence create?

Answer 2

It creates a conversion process, where people scrutinise the message itself. people want to understand why the minority have this position. conversion tends to be deeper and longer-lasting, as people have internalised the message.

Question 3

What are the 3 important factors for minority influence to be influential?

Answer 3

• Consistent
• Commitment
• Flexibility

Question 4

What is consistency?

Answer 4

Being consistent and unchanging in a view is more likely to influence the majority than if a minority is inconsistent and chops and changes their mind.

Question 5

What is commitment?

Answer 5

The degree to which members of a minority are dedicated to a particular cause of the activity. The greater the perceived commitment, the greater the influence.

Question 6

What is flexibility?

Answer 6

A willingness to be flexible and to compromise when expressing a position.

Consistent minorities who are inflexible, rigid and uncompromising in their beliefs and behaviour will not be persuasive. If they are seen to be flexible by demonstrating an ability to be moderate, co-operative and reasonable, then they will be persuasive. Successful minority influence, therefore, seems to require the minority to compromise and be slightly inconsistent in its position.

Question 7

What was the key study by Moscovici?

Answer 7

• His sample consisted of 172 female participants
• A group of six people was asked to view a set of 36 blue-coloured slides that varied in intensity and then state whether the slides were blue or green. In each group, there were four real participants and two confederates (so the confederates were the minority).
• In the consistent condition the two confederates 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 blue on the remaining one-third of the trials.
  In the control condition, there were no confederates and all they had to do was identify the colour of each slide.

Question 8

What were the findings of Moscovicis’s study

Answer 8

• The findings showed that the consistent minority influenced the real participants to say ‘green’ in 8% of the trials. The inconsistent minority exerted very little influence and did not differ significantly from the control group.
• So we can conclude that although a small figure, the finding in the consistent condition is significantly higher than the inconsistent condition and supports the role of consistency in minority influence.
• 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. This shows that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in minority influence.

Question 9

What research study provides support for flexibility?

Answer 9

Nemeth and Brilmayer’s jury simulation

Question 10

Describe Nemeth and Brilmayer’s study and how it supports flexibility.

Answer 10

Studied the role of flexibility in a simulated jury situation where group members had to discuss how much compensation they were going to pay someone who had been in a ski lift accident. When a confederate, acting as a consistent minority, argued for a low amount and refused to change his mind, he had no effect on the majority.
However, when he compromised a little and moved to offer slightly more, the majority changed their opinion to a lower amount. This shows that minorities need to be flexible to be persuasive.

Question 11

What research study provides support for consistency?

Answer 11

Nemeth, Wood et al 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.

Question 12

A03: Minority influence

Answer 12

+ Demonstrates the impact of minority influence
- Ethical issues
- Lacks ecological validity
- Gynocentric

Question 13

A03: Demonstrates the impact of minority influence

Answer 13

Further research demonstrates the impact of minority influence. For example, an adaptation of Moscovici’s research was completed where participants were exposed to minority influence but were able to give answers privately. They found even higher levels of agreement with the minority than in the original research. This is a strength because the research demonstrates that the minority can be a powerful influence on the attitudes and behaviours of others, but more specifically that consistency is the key to successful minority influence.

Question 14

A03: Ethical issues

Answer 14

Moscovici has been criticised for breaching ethical guidelines during his study. He deceived his participants, as they were told that they were taking part in a colour perception test when in fact it was an experiment on minority influence. This also means that Moscovici did not gain fully informed consent. Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Moscovici’s experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results, as if the participants were aware of the true aim, they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently. Thus, a cost‐benefit analysis would deem that the insight gained from such research was worth the short‐term cost to the participants which could be dealt with by means of a debrief following the study.

Question 15

A03: Lacks ecological validity

Answer 15

Moscovici’s research can be criticised for lacking ecological validity. For example, Moscovici’s study is conducted in the artificial setting of a laboratory in which participants are aware that they are being observed and that their behaviour is being recorded. This is a weakness because the investigation isn’t assessing real-life minority influence and so the results can’t be generalised beyond the research to represent real-life minority influence and therefore lacking mundane realism

Question 16

A03: Gynocentric

Answer 16

Moscovici’s research can be criticised for being gynocentric. For example, the sample was populated by female participants which means that only the female response to minority influence was assessed during the investigation. This is a weakness because the results cannot be generalised beyond the research to men, this is because a man may respond differently to minority influence, it is recognised that typically women are more conformist, and so the results lack population validity.