Strengths

• 1. There is support for the role of consistency in minority influence.
• For example, Moscovici showed the importance of consistency when he found that in the consistent condition, 2.4% of ppts agreed with the minority.

  Inconsistent conditions, 1.3% of the ppts agreed with the minority.
• Wood et al(1994) also found: He carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who had been consistent with their views were the most influential.
• This suggests that consistency is an important factor in influencing the majority.
• P: Nemeth (1986):ppts in groups of four, had to agree on the amount of compensation they would give to a victim of a ski-lift accident.
• B: One of the participants in each group was a confederate and there were two conditions:

  1. when the minority argued for a low rate of compensation and refused to change his position(inflexible )
  2. when the minority argued for a low rate of compensation but compromised by offering a slightly higher rate of compensation (flexible).
• Nemeth found that in the inflexible condition, the minority had little or no effect on the majority, however in the flexible condition, the majority was much more likely to compromise and change their view.
• However, this only happened when they shifted LATE in the negotiations.
• S: This suggests that flexibility is an important aspect of minority influence as long as it is late because this shows flexibility rather than just caving in!