Minority influence

• what is minority influence?

  A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours, motivating people to reject established majority group norms.
• what three factors affect minority influence?

  consistency, commitment, flexibility.
• what are the two types of consistency?


  synchronic and diachronic.
• what is synchronic consistency?

  consistency within the group.
• what is diachronic consistency?

  consistency over time.
• what is the augmentation principle?

  when extreme activities that present risk are used to show commitment.
• how does flexibility affect minority influence?

  consistency can be off putting and viewed as rigid, unbending, and dogmatic. a balence between consistency and flexibility must be found where the group are prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter arguments.
• what is the snowball effect?

  when a growing amount of the majority are converted to the minority through internalising the new perspective of beliefs, gradually the minority becaomes the minority and social change has occurred.
• What is social cryptoamnesia?


  When over time the people who have participated in this change slowly forget that their views were ever different to what they are now.
• what study supports the idea of consistency increasing the influence of the minority?

  Moscovici blue green slides - 1969 - 2 groups of 6 participants viewed 36 blue slides that varied in intensity, and were asked to state weather they were blue or green.- one group had 2 confederates who consistently said the slides were green, participants agreed on 8.42% of the trails. - One group had 2 confederates that inconsistently said they were green, participants agreed on 1.25% of trials. - In a control group with 0 confederates, participants said the wrong answer on 0.25% of trials.
• what is deeper processing?


  when we think more about views that are new and we'll argued.
• What are the strengths of minority influence?

  Additionally to Moscovici's study that showed consistency increases the power of minority influence, Wendy Wood (1994) conducted a meta analysis of nearly 100 studies and found that synchronic consistency has a greater influence on the minorities power than inconsistency.
• What are the weaknesses of minority influence?

  However in Moscovici's study the figure for agreement with a consistent minority was still low (8.42%) suggesting that minority influence due to consistency alone is rare and not a comprehensive explanation. Furthermore, Moscovici's data may lack ecological validity as artificial conditions do not reflect real world scenarios questioning the generalisability of the results. Moreover there is a high risk of demand characteristics as participants may alter their behaviour based on their interpretation of the purpose of the experiment. Finally, Moscovici's experiment had a limited sample size in terms of diversity, as his participants consisted of 172 American females. In order to provide a comprehensive explanation for minority influence, a more diverse sample was needed e.g. gender and culture to ensure the results can be generalised to society as a whole rather than American male students, for example America is an individualist country (where conformity is less common) so results could differ in collectivist cultures like Asia. Furthermore, volunteer sampling has weaknesses as particular dispositions may be more inclined to volunteer.