Minority Influence

• A minority influence rejects the established norm of the majority of group members and persuades the majority to move to the position of the minority
• Minority influence is most likely to lead to internalisation- both public behaviour and private beliefs are changed in the process
• Consistency

  • Increases the amount of interest from other people
  • Makes others rethink their own view points
• Synchronic consistency- people in the minority are all saying the same thing
• Diachronic consistency- they have been saying the same thing for a long time
• Commitment

  • Extreme activities draw attention to the cause
  • Needs to be some level of risk to show commitment
  • Increases the amount of interest from other majority group members- the augmentation principle
• Flexibility

  • Nemeth showed that if the majority is too stubborn, the majority are not likely to change
  • Need to balance consistency and flexibility so they don't appear rigid
• cryptoamnesia- the snowball effect; people claim an idea as their own, forgetting where they originally heard it
• The Process of Change

  • Over time people switch to the minority's view point- the more this happens, the faster the rate of conversation
  • The minority view gradually becomes the majority view and social change has occurred
• Moscovici

  • Varying shades of blue
  • 2/6 participants were confederates
  • Consistency- 8.2% agreement
  • Inconsistency- 1.25% agreement
• Moscovici shows that the minority is most affective when consistent
• STRENGTHS

  • Real life evidence: MLK and Nelson Mandela
  • Supporting Research: Moscovici
• WEAKNESSES

  • Artificial task: is not meaningful to participants
  • Lacks ecological validity: Ignores complex factors (Latane and Wolf)