social influence - minority influence Flashcards
What is the definition of minority influence?
- form of social influence
- where members of majority group
- change their beliefs or behaviours due to the minority influencing their decision
- usually leads to internalisation
- minority must be consistent, committed and flexible
What is meant by consistency?
- minority keeps repeating the same beliefs to the majority over time (diachronic synchrony)
- between all individuals who form the minority (synchronic consistency)
- majority reassesses situation and considers minority idea more carefully
What is meant by commitment?
- minority must show dedication
- by making personal sacrifices
- may engage in quite extreme activities e.g. protesting
- to draw attention to views
- if these activities present risk to the minority, shows greater commitment
- majority groups may then pay more attention (augmentation principle)
What is meant by flexibility?
- too much consistency can be seen as dogmatic and rigid
- may stop the majority moving to minority viewpoint
- minority needs to be prepared to adapt their views
- accept reasonable counter arguments
- balance between flexibility and consistency
AO1 research on consistency and committment - Moscovici’s study
- 172 female ppts (lab experiment)
- two conditions
- condition 1: minority group of two people inconsistently called set of blue slides “green”
- little committment
- little effect on majority (1% changed their minds)
- condition 2: minority called all blue sides green
- minority were consistent and committed
- 8% majority changed answers to be in line with minority
- demonstrates importance of staying consistent and committed when minority tries to influence majority
What is the result of staying conisistent, committed and flexible?
- minority consistent, flexible and committed
- majority internalise ideas
- move over to the minority viewpoint
- starts to build momentum
- more people move over to the minority viewpoint (snowball effect)
Research to support consistency - AO3
Moscovici et al
P - research to support comes from Moscovici et al
E - 2 confederates (minority) sat with majority group of 6 ppts
- shown slides that differed in intensity and had to state colour
E - minority consistently called blue slides ‘green’ ppts said same wrong answer 8% of the time
- minority inconsistently called blue slides ‘green’ majority changed answer 1% of the time
L - supports consistency importance of when influencing majority
Criticism of Moscovici et al’s research - AO3
Lacks mundane realism
P - research lacks mundane realism
E - unrealistic task such as stating colour of slides
- difficult to generalise how minorities influence majority groups to real life social situations
- where outcome more important
E - e.g. when jury deciding on verdict
L - lowers external validity
Research to support flexibility - AO3
Nemeth and Brilmayer (1987)
P - Nemeth and Brilmayer (1987)
E - created mock jury situation
- to decide on amount of compensation to be paid to someone involved in ski-lift accident
E - when confederate put forward alternative point of view and refused to change his view
- no affect on other members
- when confederate who compromised did have affect on the rest of the group
L - when confederate was flexible he was able to change minority opinion
- shows flexibility is important feature
Real life evidence to support consistency, flexibility and commitment - AO3
Suffragette movement
P - research to support consistency, commitment and flexibility
- suffragette movement
E - showed dedication, consistency and flexibility
E - showed consistency by keeping the same view that women should have equal rights between all members
- over long period of time
- commitment by going on hunger strikes
- flexibility by accepting women can vote at 30 whereas men were 21
- continued to campaign finally winning equal rights
L - shows how minority can influence majority in the real world
What is meant by social change?
- change in attitudes/behaviours/laws
- on large scale e.g. social norms
- e.g. suffragette movement in UK won campaign for women’s right to vote in 1920’s
Social change process
minority influence —> consistency, commitment and flexibility —> majority —> internalisation —> snowball effect –> social crypto-amnesia —> social change
social change - step 1
commitment, consistency, flexibility
- minority has idea
- must stay consistent (keep same beliefs between all individuals over period of time)
- committed (show dedication by making personal sacrifices)
- flexible (not too dogmatic/rigid and show compromise to change majority opinion)
social change - step 2
internalisation, snowball effect
- minority stay consistent, committed, flexible
- majority publicly and privately change views (internalisation)
- few majority members move over to minority viewpoint
- minority gains momentum
- more ppl pay attention
- minority idea becomes majority idea (snowball effect)
social change - step 3
social crypto-amnesia
social change
- majority remembers the minority idea
- but not that the idea came from the minority group (social crypto-amnesia)
- the two become separated
- socia change has occurred
- change in society’s laws/behaviours/attitudes
