Minority influence

• minority influence


  A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours.
• why can minority influence become more powerful and longer lasting than a lot of majority influence?

  - informative social influence- something they think deeply about- ideas are changed which leads to internalisation
• what three things are necessary for minority influence to work?

  consistency, commitment, flexibility
• What was Moscovici's aim in his study of consistency on minority influence in 1969?

  to see whether a consistent minority of participants would influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception test.
• what were the participants of Moscovici?

  172 female participants ( more common for men to be colour blind), 4 naive participants and 2 confederate participants.
• what was Moscovici's task and three conditions?

  All slides blue but of different intensities. 6 participants were asked at a time to estimate the colour (blue or green) of 36 slides. The three conditions were consistency of minority saying green, inconsistent minority of 24 green and 12 blue, control with no confederates.
• what were Moscovici's findings and conclusions?

  consistent - 8.4% yielded inconsistent - 1.3% yielded control - 0.25% yieldedminorities can influence a majority when the minority is consistent.
• what is it called when the majority takes minority views more serious?

  augmentation principle
• what is it called when the minority wins over members of the majority?

  snowball effect
• research support for consistency

  Wood et al - carried out a meta analysis of almost 100 similar studies. Consistent minorities were most influential.
• Research support for flexibility

  Nemeth - mock jury of three participants and one confederate. Deciding on compensation of a ski - lift accident. Argued for a low amount. When compromised and moved slightly to majority, the majority also compromised to his view.
• Research support for internalisation

  Moscovici variation - people more likely to agree with the minority when they wrote their answers privately.
• limitations to moscivici and nameth

  both have limited external validity and moscivici limited ecological validity.