Minority and Majority influence

• Minority influence is a form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes and behaviours
• What type of conformity does minority influence lead to?

  Internalisation
• Examples of minority influence include: civil rights, environmentalism and suffragettes
• What are the three things the minority have to do to be effective?

  Consistency, flexibility and commitment
• Consistency increases the amount of interest from others and can take the form of agreement between people in the minority group (synchronic) or consistency over time (diachronic)
• Commitment could mean the minority engaging in extreme activities to show greater commitment, the majority group will pay more attention and consider the minorities view if they appear serious - augmentation principle
• The minority need to be flexible in order to be prepared to adapt point of view and accept valid counterarguments
• If you hear something new you think more deeply about it, which is an important process in conversion and over time increasing numbers of people will switch from majority to minority. This will create a snowball effect.
• Moscovici's aim was to investigate the process of innovation by looking at how a consistent minority affect the opinions of a larger group, possibly creating doubt and leading to them to question and alter their views
• What were Moscovici's procedures?

  1. Female participants given an eye test to ensure they aren't colour blind
  2. Place into a group of 4 participants and 2 confederates
  3. Shown 36 slides different shades of blue and asked to state the colour
  4. In the first group confederates would answer green consistently
  5. In the second group confederates were inconsistent and answered green 24 times and blue 12 times
• What were Moscovici's findings?

  In the consistent group 9% of trials resulted in participants answering green (agreeing with the minority) and 32% of participants agreed at least once. In the inconsistent group 2% of trials resulted in participants answering green
• Moscovici's conclusions were that minorities can change the opinion of the majority particularly if consistent
• What were the strengths of Moscovici's study?

  1. demonstrates importance of consistency
  2. suggests presenting a constant view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority
• What are the limitations of Moscovici's study?

  1. minority research is that the tasks involved are often artificial
  2. research done is far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of the majorities in real life
  3. In cases such as jury duty, the outcomes are important and it means the findings of the studies lack external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real-world social situations
• The minority influence cause social change through:

  Drawing attention to an issue

  Cognitive conflict

  Consistency of position

  The augmentation effect

  Snowball effect

  Social crypto amnesia
• It draws attention to an issue if the minority views are different as it creates conflict
• What is cognitive conflict?

  Where the conflict created it will require members of the majority to think deeply about the issues as their views are challenged
• Moscovici showed that consistency of position increases the chances of changing majority's views
• The augmentation effect is where the minority appears willing to suffer for their cause so is taken more seriously by the majority
• The snowball effect is where the minority converts a small group of people, then this group converts other people. Over time minority view becomes the majority view.
• Social crypto amnesia is where the minority ideas are assimilated into the majority viewpoint without those in the majority remembering where the ideas came from
• What does Charlie Nemeth claim in response to how minority influence brings about social change?

  She claims that social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire, when people consider minority views they engage in divergent thinking. Nemeth argues this leads to better decisions and more creative solutions to social issues. This shows why dissenting minorities are valuable and stimulate new ideas in a way majorities can't.
• One limitation of Moscovici's study was that all the participants were female, so it's hard to generalise the findings to males and has low population validity
• One limitation of Moscovici's study was that it was a laboratory experiment so lacks ecological validity
• One limitation of Moscovici's study was that it might have been unethical as he told them they were doing a study on perception when he was actually studying minority influence
• How did the Suffragettes become the majority?

  Lord Grey piloted a highly controversial great reform act using the word "male" instead of "people" to exclude women from voting. In 1847, suffragette societies cropped up around the country and Emmeline and Christabel got arrested for showing commitment - internal locus of control.
• How did the suffragettes show consistency?

  By protesting for a long period of time
• How did the suffragettes show flexibility?

  they agreed to postpone campaigning to help with the war effort
• How did the suffragettes show commitment?

  hunger strikes and getting arrested
• How did the suffragettes start a snowball effect?

  other women started to fight and the rule was abolished in 1928
• If people perceive something to be the norm, they tend to alter their behaviour to fit that norm
• What was the "Most of us don't drink and drive" intervention?

  This is a social norms intervention designed to reduce drinking and driving amongst young adults in Montana. An initial survey found that 20% of young adults reported driving within 1 hour after consuming alcohol in the previous month. 90% of respondents believed that the majority of their peers had done so. A simple message was sent out that "4/5 young adults don't drink and drive". This reduced drinking and driving by 13.7%
• Strengths of the "Most of us don't drink and drive" study on majority influence

  It changes personal attitudes

  Reduction of risky behaviour
• Limitations of the "Most of us don't drink and drive" study on majority influence

  People could lie

  Could encourage people who haven't drink and driven before to do it to rebel