Minority influence

• Minority influence refers to how one person or small group influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people.

  Minority may influence one person or a group - conformity is where the majority does the influencing.
• Minority inf. leads to internalisation - both public and private beliefs are changed. There are 3 processes that lead to internalisation.
• Consistency: Always doing the same thing. Minority view gains more interest. Makes others rethink their own views.

  • Synchronic consistency: people in the minority are all saying the same thing.
  • Diachronic consistency: they've been saying it for some time now.
• Commitment: Showing deep involvement. Helps gain attention, e.g through extreme activities. Some risk to the minority to demonstrate commitment.

  Augmentation principle - majority pay even more attention.
• Flexibility: Showing willingness to listen to others. Minority should balance consistency and flexibility so they don't appear rigid.
• The process of minority influence: Individuals think deeply about the minority position because it is new. Snowball effect - more people 'converted' with time. Switch from minority to the majority. The more this happens, faster rate of conversion. Once minority view becomes majority, social change has occurred.
• ++Research supporting consistency. Moscovici et al.(1969) found consistent minority opinion had greater effect on others than inconsistent, in his green-blue slide study. Wood et al. (1994) conducted meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies, found minorities seen as consistent were most influential. This confirms that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.
• ++Research showing role of deeper processing. Martin et al. (2003) gave participants a msg supporting a particular viewpoint, and measured attitudes. Then heard an endorsement from either a majority or minority. Finally, heard conflicting view, attitudes measured again. Participants less willing to change to conflicting view if they had listened to minority group. This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect.
• --Minority influence research often involves artificial tasks. Moscovici et al.'s task was identifying colour of a slide, far removed from how minorities try to change majority opinion in the real world. Findings of studies lack external validity and are limited in what they tell us about how minority influence works in real world situations.
• --Power of minority influence. Agreement with minority was only 8% in Moscovici et al.'s study - minority influence must be quite rare so perhaps not a useful concept.