Minority Influence

• Minority Influence


  a minority of people persuades others to adopt their beliefs attitudes or behaviours. Leads to internalisation
• Consistency


  • Minority must be consistent in their views over time

  • Consistency increases the amount of interest from others

  • Synchronic consistency - they are all saying the same thing

  • Diachronic consistency- they have been saying the same thing for some time

  • Makes others start to rethink their own views
• Commitment


  • Dedication to their position and views

  • Some engage in extreme activities that present risk to the minority

  • Majority groups will then pay even more attention
• Flexibility


  • Someone who repeats the same views can been seen as rigid

  Minorities need to be prepared to adapt their view and accept reasonable counter arguments
• Research in to Minority Influence


  • Group of 6 shown 36 blue coloured slides that varied in intensity

  • They had to say whether they were blue or green

  • In each group there was 2 confederates who constantly said they were green

  • The participants gave green on 8% of the trials

  • A second group had two confederates who were inconsistent. they said green 24 times and blue 12 times

  • The participants said green 1.25% of the trials

  Control group said green 0.25% of the time
• AO3 Minority Influence

  Strength

  P - There is research evidence demonstrating importance of consistency

  E -Moscovici blue green slide study showed a consistent minority opinion had greater effect on changing the views of others than an inconsistent opinion.

  C - this suggests presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority

   

  Strength

  P -there is evidence showing a change in majority’s position does involve deeper processing of minority’s ideas

  E -Martin et al presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured participation agreement. One group heard a minority agree and the other heard a majority agree and their attitudes were measured again. People were less willing to change if heard a minority group.

  C -minority message has been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect

   
• AO3 Minority Influence

  Weakness

  P - The tasks involved in the research are often artificial

  E - research is therefore far from how minorities try to change behaviour of majorities in real life. Such as jury decision making.

  C - This means the finding lack external validity and limited to what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real life situations

   

  Weakness

  P  - Minority influence may not be that powerful

  E - In Moscovici’s study the figure for agreement with a consistent minority was low (8%)

  C - suggests minority influence is rare and not a useful concept