Minority Influence

• Minority influence is a form of social influence in which a minority 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
• Minorities need 3 traits in order to have influence on others

  1)consistency

  2)commitment - augmentation principle

  3)flexibility
• Consistency

  over time,consistency in the minorities view's increase the amount of interest from other people in 2 ways

  • people in the minority are all saying the same thing
  • they have been saying this for a long time consistency makes others rethink their own views
• supporting study for consistency is Moscovicic's blue slide,green slide study.Each group had 4 true p's and a minority of 2 confederates and were asked to judge the colour of slides they were shown.In the consistent condition the c's repeatedly called the blue slides green,in the inconsistent condition the confederates called two thirds of the blue slides green.There was also a control group with no c's.In the control group 0.25% of the answers were green on the blue slides. In the inconsistent group this was 1.25% and it went up to 8.42% in consistent condition. more consistent more influence
• commitment

  sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their cause. It is important that these activities are of some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause (augmentation principle)

  This increases the amount of interest further from other majority group members.
• There is also research to support the importance of commitment. Xie placed p's in chat rooms where they had their own opinions. When everybody had the same opinion,they were likely to change theirs,however if one confederate had a different opinion to the rest,the true p was less likely to change theirs. This suggests if one person is willing to go against the majority and risk ridecule others are too. The tipping point for a majority to have influence is 10%. Therefore, commitment is said to be an important trait for a minority to influence others.
• Flexibility

  Researchers have questioned whether being consistent alone is enough to cause minority influence, compromise is vital
• There is research support for the importance of flexibility. Nemeth (1986) constructed a mock jury in which there were 3 genuine p's and one confederate. They had to decide on the amount of compensation to give a ski lift accident victim. When the confederate would not change from a low amount,which seemed unreasonable,the majority stuck together. However,when the confederate changed his compensation offer a bit,so did the majority. This therefore shows that the minority should balance consistency and flexibility so they do not appear rigid. Therefore,flexibility is an important trait
• A weakness of research into minority influence is the use of artificial tasks. Studies such as Xie et al. make clear a distinctions between majority and minority influence but the tasks are artificial - real-life

  situations are more complicated. Most studies do not capture the commitment that minorities show towards their causes, including the social support that members give each other when majority hostility threatens to overwhelm them (e.g. Friends of the Earth, Gay Rights). Therefore research into minority influence can be seen as weak