Minority influence

• What are the 3 factors involved in minority influence?

  Consistency

  Commitment

  Flexibility
• What is minority influence?

  • Where one person or a small group of people influences the beliefs and behaviours of others
  • Most likely to lead to internalisation
• Moscovici et al's BLUE-GREEN SLIDE STUDY procedure

  • Group of 6 people
  • Shown 36 blue slides, varied in intensity
  • Asked whether the slides were blue or green
  • 2 confederates in each group, said slide was green
  • Further groups exposed to an inconsistent minority and a group with no confederates
• Moscovici's findings

  • 32% conformed to wrong answer on at least 1 trial
  • 8.42% of trials ppts gave wrong answer
  • INCONSISTENT GROUP- conformity of 1.25%
  • NO CONFEDERATE- incorrect on 0.25% of trials
• How is consistency involved in minority influence?

  • Consistency in minority view increases interest from other people
  • Synchronic consistency- saying the same thing within the minority group
  • Diachronic consistency- saying the same thing for a matter of time within a minority group
  • Consistency will lead others to rethink their own views (e.g. maybe they have a point since they kept) saying it
• How is commitment involved in minority influence?

  • Engaging in extreme activities to draw attention to beliefs
  • Sometimes activities are risky to demonstrate commitment to cause
  • AUGMENTATION PRINCIPLE- majority group members will pay more attention due to the severity of situation
• Augmentation principle

  • A feature of commitment where majority group members will pay more attention to the minority due to the sheer commitment to the belief
• How is flexibility involved in minority influence?

  • Minority groups must adapt their point of view and accept reasonable/valid counter-arguments
  • This is in counter to consistency being interpreted negatively, if too extreme behaviours can become off-putting and seem dogmatic to majority
  • Strikes a balance between consistency and flexibility
• What is the 'snowball effect' as a process of change?

  • Hearing something new may make you think about it especially if consistent and passionate
  • Deeper processing is required to convert to a different view point
  • Overtime, more people switch from majority to minority (conversion)
  • The more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion
  • Minority becomes majority, change has occurred
• What research supports the idea of consistency? (AO3)

  • Moscovici's study
  • Further supported by Wood et al's meta analysis of 100 similar studies
  • Found minorities seen as being consistent were most influential, therefore consistency is a major factor in MI
• What research supports deeper processing? (AO3)

  • Martin et al
  • Gave ppts a message supporting a viewpoint and measured support
  • One group heard minority group agree with initial view vs another group hearing majority view agree
  • Ppts were then exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were remeasured
• Martin et al findings (AO3)

  • People were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group
  • Suggests minority message had been more deeply processed and elicited a change in opinions
  • Supports overall process of MI
• What is a limitation with MI research? (AO3)

  • Artificial stimuli
  • Tasks involved to not reflect real-life situations where MI may occur, therefore lacks mundane realism
  • May not be reliable measure of MI processes and therefore results cannot effectively be generalised to external situations (lack of ecological validity)
  • E.g. political campaigns where outcomes are more important and detrimental than choosing a colour of slide