Social influence - minority influence Flashcards
Minority influence
Minority of people persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours
Leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours
Three factors which affect minority influence
Consistency
Commitment
Flexibility
Consistency
The consistency in the minorities views increases the amount of interest from other people. Such consistency make people rethink their own views as they may believe that they may have a point by continually repeating the same message about such and such
Outline and explain the two types of consistency
Synchronic - people in the minority are all saying the same thing
Diachronic - they’ve been saying the same thing for some time
Commitment
- Sometimes the minority will engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their cause
- It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause
- e.g. Rosa Parks – willing to be arrested
- e.g. Nelson Mandela – prepared to die, his sacrifice was imprisonment for 27 years for his resistance to the Apartheid
- Augmentation principle, majority pay even more attention
- Explaining how they are making a personal sacrifice
Flexibility
Only being consistent can make the minority group look rigid and unwilling to compromise
This is off-putting to the majority and instead members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter arguments
Nemeth argued that being consistent and repeating the same arguments and behaviours is seen as rigid and off-putting to the majority
The minority should balance consistency and flexibility so they don’t appear rigid and dogmatic
Listening to the other members…and agree to a compromise.
Process of minority influence
- snowball effect
Individuals think deeply about the minority position because it is new/unfamiliar
Overtime more people become ‘converted’, switch from minority to majority (snowball effect)
The more this happens the faster rate of conversion
Gradually minority view becomes the majority and social change has occured
Moscovici – Factors effect minority influence (Consistency)
- method
- results
Moscovici – Factors effect minority influence (Consistency)
Method
* A group of 6 were asked to view 36 blue coloured slides, which varied in intensity. They were asked to state whether the slides were blue or green
* Each group had confederates who consistently said slides were green on two thirds of the trials
* The second group were exposed to an inconsistent minority
* The third group had no confederates (control group)
Results
* They found that when the minority consistently gave the incorrect answer, participants gave the incorrect answer as well 8.4% of the time
* This dropped to 1.25% incorrect answers when the minority were inconsistent with their answers
* 32% of the participants gave at least one of the same answers as the minority
* The control group only said green 0.25% of the time
Three strengths of minority influence
Research supporting consistency
Research supporting the role of consistency
Research support for deeper processing
EVALUATION: Research supporting consistency
P - One strength of research into minority influence is that it has supporting evidence for the role of consistency
E - For instance, Wood et al.’s meta-analysis of 100 similar studies revealed that the most influential ones were the ones that were consistent.
E - This is an advantage since the conclusions that are made provide credibility to the idea that a majority is largely influenced by consistency. Moreover, given that this is a meta-analysis, it implies that this is a borderline consensus in the field as opposed to a research finding.
L - Therefore, this strengthens the case for consistency as a variable influencing minority influence.
EVALUATION: Research supporting the role of consistency
P - One strength of research into minority influence is that it has supporting evidence for the role of flexibility from Nemeth
E - In this study Nemeth created groups and of three participants and one confederate who had to decide how much compensation to pay a victim of a ski lift accident. When a consistent confederate argued for a low amount and refused to change his position, he had no effect on the majority. However, when he compromised a little and suggested a slightly higher amount, the majority changed their opinion to the lower amount
E - This shows that minorities have to also be flexible to be persuasive
L - This increases the validity of flexibility as a factor that affects the influence of the minority on the majority
EVALUATION: Research support for deeper processing
P - Another strength is evidence showing that a change in the majority’s position does involve deeper processing of the minorities ideas
E - - Martin et al presented participants with a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured their agreement. One group then heard a minority group agree with the initial view while another group heard a majority group agree with it. Finally, an opposing perspective was presented to the participants, and attitudes were once more assessed.
E - It was found that people were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group than if they had listened to a majority group
L-This supports the main claim about how minority influence operates by indicating that the minority message had been more thoroughly understood and had a longer-lasting impact.
COUNTERPOINT TO MARTIN ET AL
P - Having said that, research studies including the one by Martinet al. clearly distinguish between the majority and minority. Minority influence research has an advantage in that it can do this in a controlled manner, but social influence situations are far more complex in the actual world.
E - For instance, majorities typically hold far greater status and power than minority. Minorities must have a strong sense of commitment to their cause since they frequently encounter strong opposition.
E - Minority influence research typically lacks these characteristics because the minority is only the smallest group.
L - As a result, there is very little that matin et al.’s findings can teach us about minority impact.
Two limitations of minority influence
Research often involves artificial tasks
Research into minority influence lacks population validity
EVALUATION: Research often involves artificial tasks
P - A weakness of the studies used to support factors such as consistency and flexibility in minority influence research is that they use highly artificial tasks
E - For instance, asking participants to assess the Moscovici slides’ colour
E - This significantly lowers the study’s ecological validity, making it impossible to use the findings in real-world situations. Specifically, these tasks are very dissimilar from real-world minority advocacy efforts to sway the majority opinion (such as during jury trials). In contrast to Moscovici’s task, where the results have little effect on other individuals, in instances such as these, the outcomes can be quite significant.
L - This reduces the credibility of the studies that back up elements like minority influence consistently.
