Social Influence-Minority influence Flashcards
Minority influence and Behavioural style
Definition of minority influence?
A form of social influence where members of the majority group change their beliefs or behaviours as a result of their exposure to a persuasive minority
Three ways the minority’s can be effective?
Consistency, Commitment, Flexibility
Con/Com/Flex
What does consistency do in regard to influence?
What trait does it show
Get others to reassess the situation and consider the issue more carefully.
Confidence in view (Nemeth 2010)
What did Wood et al. (1994) find in his meta analysis of 97 minority’s influence studies?
Minorities who were perceived as being especially consistent in expressing their position were particularly influential
In what study was consistency investigate in?
Moscovici et al. (1969)
What does commitment suggest?
Certainty and devotion to a cause or activity
The greater the perceived commitment =
= the greater the influence
What does Mugny (1982) suggest about flexibility?
It is more effective at changing majority opinion that rigidity of arguments
How did Mugny argue a rigid minority that refuse to compromise are perceived?
They risk being perceived as dogmatic (narrow-minded) refusing to appreciate other justified opinions
How would an overly flexible minority who are too prepared to compromise be perceived?
They risk appearing inconsistent
Mugny claims that some degree of flexibility is more effective that none at all
Mugny claims that some degree of flexibility is more effective that none at all
Key study:
Moscovici et al. (1969)
Procedure -
How many people in a group
How many were naive participants
How many were minority confederates
6 per group
4 naive participants
2 minority confederates
What were they shown in Moscovcis (1969) study?
Series of blue slides that varied only in intensity
What were ppts asked to do?
Judge the colour of each slide
What happened in the consistent experimental condition?
The two confederates repeatedly called blue slides “green”
🍀 said green on every trial
What happened in the inconsistent condition?
Confederates called slides green on 2/3’s of trials and on the remaining 1/3 of trials called slides blue
What happened in the control condition?
6 naive participants with no confederates and called they called the slides blue through-out
Moscovci et al. (1969)
Findings:
What percent of trials had the consistent minority influenced the naive participants to say green on?
Just over 8%
What affect did the inconsistent minority and control have? 🌾
Exerted very little influence
After the main study what was ppts asked to do?
Sort 16 coloured discs from either blue or green
What was interesting about 3 blue and 3 green discs
What was the case with the remaining 10 discs?
3 were unambiguously from the blue end of the spectrum and another 3 were unambiguously from the green end
They were ambiguous and could be considered either blue or green
What was the case with those participants in the consistent condition sorting the discs in comparisons to those in the inconsistent condition?
Where was the effects greater and what did it suggest?
Judged more chips to be green than those in the inconsistent condition
With ppts who hadn’t gone along with minority during experiment suggesting influence was more private than public
Evaluation of minority influence:
Research support for flexibility
What did Nemeth and Brillmayer (1987) do to research flexibility?
Stimulated jury situation discussing the amount of compensation to paid to someone involved in a ski-lift accident with either a rigid confederate and a compromised confederate
What effect did the rigid confederate have?
No effect on other group members
What effect did the compromising confederate have?
Exerted an influence on the rest of the group
But when was negotiation most effective
Those who shifted later in negotiations which showed flexibility rather than caving in to majority
Evaluation-
Real value of minority influence
What does Nemeth (2010) argue the minority opinion does?
Opens up the mind leading people to search for information and consider more options to make better decisions.
How was the liberating effect of minority influence supported by Van Dyne and Saavsdra (1996)
Studied role of dissent in work groups finding that groups had improved decision quality when exposed to minority perspective.
Evaluation:
Do we really process the minority message more?
What did mackie (1987) argue that minority’s didn’t do?
Their influence did not necessarily lead to greater processing
Why did Mackie (1987) believe this?
And what does this mean about minority influence?
We believe the majority hold a similar view than us hence when the majority hold an alternative view we will consider it more carefully to understand why
(therefore minority message is less influential due to people not wasting time to understand its difference)
