Minority influence

• minority influence: situations where one person or a small group influences the beliefs and behaviour of others (majority).
• consistency: when a minority repeatedly defends and advocates for their position over time. this shows stability in the position and agreement among members of the minority.
• Commitment: the degree to which members of a majority are dedicated to a cause. This includes partaking in an extreme act to show commitment, the greater the personal sacrifice, the greater the influence had.
• Flexibility: A willingness to be flexible and compromise when expressing a position. Minorities must show they can be reasonable so the majority accepts their position.
• The snowball effect in social influence: when a minority applies the factors, their group gradually increases in size, growing in significance until there is a powerful outcome and an impact is made.
• how does social influence lead to social change?

  Moscovici states that if an individual is exposed to a persuasive argument from a minority, they may change their views to coincide with the minority group. This process is called ‘conversion‘ and is a necessary prequisite for social change.
• Moscovici’s experiment procedure: female, lab study, four ppts and two confederates. They were shown slides and asked to judge whether the slide was green or blue. Inconsistent and consistent experiments where the minority either answered green consistently or varied their answers Throughout.
• Social cryptoamnesia: a failure to recall the origin of social change but know that a change has occurred.
• Moscovici’s experiment results: the consistent minority group caused the majority to say green on over 8% of the trials, whereas the inconsistent minority group did not exact much influence, so only around 2% answered green.