Minority influence

• what is minority influence?


  a form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. It leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.
• Give research support for minority influence (consistency)


  Moscovici - group of 6 people asked to view 36 blue-coloured slides that varied in intensity and state whether the slides were blue or green. Each group had two confederates who consistently said the slides were green. Genuine participants gave wrong answers on 8.42% of the trials. However, when the minority (confederates) were inconsistent (said green for a third of the slides), agreement with the answer 'green' fell to 1.25%.

  When there were no confederates, participants gave the wrong answer on 0.25% of the trials
• what 3 factors affect minority influence?


  Consistency, commitment and flexibility
• how does consistency affect minority influence.

  Synchronic consistency - when they are all saying the same thing- and diachronic consistency - when they've been saying the same thing for a while- can increase the amount of interest from other people. A consistent minority makes other people start to rethink their own views
• how does commitment affect minority influence?

  Minority must show commitment to their views, which can be done by engaging in extreme activities to draw attention to their views. These extreme activities should present some risl to the minority as this shows greater commitment and causes majority group members to pay more attention. This is called the augmentation principle.
• how does flexibility affect minority influence?


  Nemeth argued consistency isn't the only important factor as it can be off-putting. Someone who is consistent by repeating the same arguements can behaviours can be seen as rigid and dogmatic. This approach on its own is unlikely to gain many converts to the minority position. Instead, minority members should be prepared to adapt the point of view and accept reasonable and valid counterarguements. They key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility.
• How do the three factors affect minority influence?


  Hearing something new may cause you to think more deeply about it, especially if he source of this view is consisted, commited and flexible. It is this deeper processing which is important in conversion to a different minority viewpoint. The more people that convert to a minority viewpoint , the faster the rate of conversion - the snowball effect.The minority view gradually become the majority view and change has occured
• give research support for consistency

  Moscovici et al's blue/green study is evidence demonstrating the importance for consistency. It showed that a consistent minorities opinion had a greater influence on changing the views of others.

  Wood et al. carried out a met-analysis of 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were consistent were most influential. This suggests a consistent view is necessary for a minority trying to influence a majority
• give research support for deeper processing 


  Martin et al. presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured participant's agreement. One group listened to a minority group agree with the initial group while another listened to a majority group agree. They were then exposed to a contradicting view and were measured again. People were less willing to change their views if they had listened to a minority group than a majority group. This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect.
• give a counterpoint for deeper processing

  Martin et al's findings are limited in what they can tell us as his experiement was controlled, making a clear distinction between minoirty and majority, (a strength of minority influence research.) However, real-life social influence situations are more complicated. (low mundane realism). Majorities have more power and status than minorities, who are be commited to their causes (they have to be as the ace hostile opposition. These features tend to be absent from minority influence research, where the minority is just the smallest group.
• what is a limitation of minority influence research?


  The tasks involved are often artificial. Eg Moscovici's colour identification task. Research is therefore far removed from hoe minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life. This means that findings from minortiy influence research have low external validity and are limited in what they can tell us abour minority influence ine real-world social situations.
• What power does the minority influence have?


  In Moscovici et al's findings, only around 8% of participants agreed with the consistent minority, suggesting that minority influence is quite rare and not a useful concept. However, when participants were asked to write their answers anonymously in private, they were more likely to agree with the minority view. This suggests that views expressed by people in public are only the 'tip of the iceberg'