Minority Influence & Social Change

• The two explanation for resistance to social influence are social support and locus of control
• Social Support is when others in a group support a person's beliefs which can reduce the pressure to conform
• Internal Locus of Control means that the person is less likely to be influenced by others because they believe they are responsible for their own actions
• External Locus of Control means that the person is more likely to be influenced by others because they do not take responsibility for their own actions
• The three factors affecting minority influence are consistency, commitment, and flexibility
• Synchronic consistency is where the minority presents a united front by all sharing the same message
• Diachronic consistency is where the minority continues to promote their message over a period of time
• Commitment is where the minority continues to promote their message when faced with social pressure or abuse
• Flexibility is where the minority must be willing to make compromises
• The Snowball effect is where the minority view gradually gains momentum and eventually becomes the norm
• The Augmentation Principle is where the majority group pays more attention to the minority when they engage in extreme activities as it shows greater commitment
• Moscovici et.al. carried out the blue/green slide study to investigate consistency in minority influence
• Moscovici used two groups of 6 people with 2 confederates in each, in group 1 the minority consistently said the blue slides were green, in group 2 the minority were inconsistent
• Moscovici found that group 1 agreed with minority on 8% of trials, while group 2 agreed on 1%
• Moscovici's control group with no confederates only said green 0.25% of the time
• A limitation of Moscovici's experiment is that it was an artificial task so lacks external validity
• The stages of social change are: drawing attention, consistency, deeper processing, the augmentation principle, the snowball effect, social crytpoamnesia
• Deeper Processing is where the attention drawn to the situation causes people to think more deeply about it
• Social Cryptoamnesia is where people have a memory that change has occurred but don't remember how it happened