minority influence

• Minority influence is when a person or small group of people persuade a larger group, the majority, to adopt their beliefs and behaviours. This leads to stronger forms of conformity like internalisation.
• The 3 factors that contribute to minority influence are consistency, commitment, and flexibility.
• Commitment involves showing dedication to a belief through personal sacrifice.
• Flexibility is the ability to accept some compromise and acknowledge other beliefs, to avoid appearing unreasonable.
• Consistency is when all people in a minority group hold to the same beliefs over time. This draws attention to their belief and creates uncertainty within the majority.
• Moscovici showed groups of 6 people 36 blue coloured slides that varied in intensity. The group was then asked to state what colour the slide is. In each group there were 2 confederates, who were the minority while the 4 genuine participants were the majority.
• In one of Moscovici's conditions, confederates consistently said all 36 slides were green. In another condition, they inconsistently answered green 24 times.
• Moscovici found that when the minority was consistent in their beliefs, 8 % of participants agreed with the minority and said the slides were green. When the minority was inconsistent, this dropped to 1 %.
• A limitation of Moscovici's research is that it lacks population validity. The sample was biased as it only consisted of female students. This means findings lack generalisability.
• A strength of Moscovici's research is that there is research support for the importance of consistency. Wood carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 studies similar to Moscovici and found that minorities that were the most consistent were the most influential.
• A limitation of Moscovici's research is that it lacks external validity as the task was artificial, and does not reflect the important situations in which minority influence occurs in real life. For example, political campaigns and social movements.