SOCIAL INFLUENCE - minority influence

Question 1

what is minority influence?

Answer 1

A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuades another to adopt their beliefs, or behaviours. Leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.

Question 2

who studied minority influence?

Answer 2

Serge Moscovici

Question 3

what is consistency and its effect?

Answer 3

• minority must be consistent with their views
• consistency increases the amount of interest from other people
• synchronic = all say the same thing
• diachronic = say the same thing for some time
• consistent minority makes people rethink their own views

Question 4

what is commitment and its effect?

Answer 4

• when minority demonstrate their commitment and passion of their view
• can be extreme and put minority at risk = showing greater commitment = majority pay more attention
  ( augmentation principle)

Question 5

what is flexibility and its effect?

Answer 5

• Nemeth (1986) argued that consistent minorities may be seen as unbending and dogmatic
• Members of the minority must be prepared to adapt their POV and accept reasonable and valid counter arguments

Question 6

what is the process of change?

Answer 6

• when all 3 factors ( commitment, consistency and flexibility) make the majority think about the minorities view.
• deeper processing is important to the process of changing to a minority view point

Question 7

what is the snow ball effect?

Answer 7

When the rate of conversion increases
Majority position to minority position
gradually the minority view becomes the majority view.

Question 8

Outline the procedure of Moscovici et al (1969).

Answer 8

AIM - demonstrate minority influence
- a group of 6 people were asked to view a set of 36 blue slides that varied in intensity
- told to state whether the slides were blue or green
- 2 confederates in a group (1)- constantly said the slides were green
FINDINGS FOR GROUP 1 - the Ps gave the wrong answer in 8.42% of trials

-2ND GROUP - ps placed in an inconsistent minority ( confederates said both colours)
- FINDINGS OF GROUP 2 -agreement with the answer green fell to 1.25%

-3RD GROUP had no confederates
- FINDINGS FOR GROUP 3 - IN 0.25% OF TRIALS they got it wrong

Question 9

give the STRENGTHS of minority influence.

Answer 9

+ research support demonstrating the importance of consistency
eg Moscovici et al showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people than an inconsistent opinion.
This suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority.

+ research support for deeper processing in majority
eg Martin et al (2003) gave Ps a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured their support
One group of Ps heard a minority group agree with it and another heard a majority group agree with it
Ps then were exposed to a conflicting view and were measured again
FINDINGS - 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
this shows that minority message had been deeply processed.

Question 10

give LIMITATIONS of minority influence?

Answer 10

• real-world social influence situations are much more complicated.
  eg majority usually have a lot more power and status and minority. Minorities are very committed and often face opposition. These features are usually absent from minority influence research. Therefore Martin et al’s findings are very limited.
• Artificial tasks - real life situations are more complicated - findings lack external validity and therefore have limited real world applications.
• most studies do not capture the commitment that minorities show towards their causes.
• the effect of the minority may not be apparent as people may be reluctant to admit their ‘conversion’ publicly.
  eg. Moscovici found higher agreement with minority when Ps wrote down responses. This is a form of internalisation.