Minority Influence

• What is minority influence?

  A small group changes majority attitudes
• How does minority influence differ from conformity?

  Minority influences the majority, not vice versa
• What is more likely to result from minority influence?

  Internalisation of beliefs and attitudes
• What are the three main processes of minority influence identified by Moscovici?

  Consistency, Commitment, Flexibility
• What effect does consistency have on minority influence?

  It makes people consider the minority cause
• What is the Snowball Effect in minority influence?

  Increasing numbers convert from majority to minority
• What is diachronic consistency?

  Minority maintains the same beliefs over time
• What is synchronic consistency?

  All individuals in the minority hold the same beliefs
• What is the Augmentation Principle?

  Extreme actions show true commitment to beliefs
• Why is flexibility important for minorities?

  It helps adapt and accept valid counter opinions
• What was the aim of Moscovici's (1969) study?

  To see if consistency increased minority influence
• How many participants were in Moscovici's study?

  6 female participants
• What was the consistent condition in Moscovici's study?

  Confederates always said slides were green
• What were the findings of the consistent condition in Moscovici's study?

  Participants gave the wrong answer 8.4% of trials
• What were the findings of the inconsistent condition in Moscovici's study?

  Participants gave the wrong answer 1.25% of trials
• What were the findings of the control condition in Moscovici's study?

  Participants gave the wrong answer 0.25% of trials
• What did Nemeth (1987) study about minority influence?

  Minority's flexibility influenced majority decisions
• What was the outcome when the confederate was flexible in Nemeth's study?

  Majority lowered their compensation demands
• What does research support for consistency suggest?

  Consistent minority opinions are more influential
• What did Wood et al (1994) find in their meta-analysis?

  Consistent minorities were most influential
• What did Martin et al (2003) find about minority influence?

  Minority messages are more deeply processed
• What is a limitation of Martin et al's (2003) findings?

  Real-world social influence is more complex
• Why are tasks in minority influence research considered artificial?

  They do not reflect real-life situations
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of minority influence research?

  Strengths:

  • Research supports consistency's role
  • Deeper processing of minority messages

  
  

  Weaknesses:

  • Low validity in real-world contexts
  • Artificial tasks limit external validity
• AO3 - What is a strength for Minority Influence?

  Research Support for Consistency

  • Moscovici et al (1969) study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people than an inconsistent opinion
  • Wood et al (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential
  • This suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority
• AO3 - What is a strength for Minority Influence?

  Research Support for Deeper Processing

  • Martin et al (2003) showed a message supporting a viewpoint and measured agreement, in which one group then heard a minority group agree with it, while another group heard a majority group agree with it
  • Participants were then exposed to a conflicting view and results show that people were less willing to change their opinions had they listened to a minority group
  • This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed, supporting the central argument about how minority influence works
• AO3 - What is a limitation for Minority Influence?

  Low Validity

  • Real-world social influence are much more complicated than as shown in Martin et al (2003)
  • Minorities are very committed to their causes as they have to be because they often face oppression from the majority, while these features are usually absent from minority influence research
  • Therefore Martin et al’s (2003) findings are very limited in what they can tell us about minority influence in real world situations