minority influence

• P: nemeth and brilmayer provided support for the role of flexibility in a stimulated jury situation

  E: group members discussed the amount of compensation to be paid to someone involved in a ski accident. when confederate said an alternative point of view and refused to change position, this had no effect on group members. confederate who compromised, exerted influence on rest of the group
• link for nemeth and brilmayer

  L: this suggests that flexibility is only effective at changing majority opinion in certain circumstances
• P: nemeth argues that dissent, in the form of minority opinion 'opens' the mind

  E: as a result of exposure to minority position, people search for information, consider more options, make better decisions, and are more creative. dissenters liberate people to say what they believe and they stimulate divergent and creative thought even when they are wrong
• link for nemeth

  L: this view is supported by dyne and saavedra who studied the role of dissent in work groups, finding that groups had improved decision quality when exposed to a minority perspective
• P: mackie argues that the views of the minority do not lead to greater processing, but rather it is the majority who are more likely to create greater message processing

  E: we tend to believe that the majority of group members share similar beliefs to ours. if the majority express a different view from the one we hold, we must consider it carefully to understand why this is the case
• link for mackie

  L: by contrast, people tend not to waste time trying to process why a minority's message is different, therefore, it tends to be less, rather than more, influential