AO3

• Consistency Supporting research- Moscovici (1969)

  • Participants - Randomly selected participants and confederates
  • Aim To observe how minorities can influence a majority
• Consistency Supporting research- Moscovici (1969) Procedure

  • Participants were in a group where there were two confederates (the minority) and four participants (the majority).
  • Everyone was shown 36 blue slides, each with a different shade of blue.
  • Confederates deliberately said they were green on two-thirds of the trials, thus producing a consistent minority view.
  • The number of times that the real participants reported that the slide was green was observed.
  • A control group was also used consisting of participants only – no confederates.
• Consistency Supporting research- Moscovici (1969) Findings

  • When the minority was consistent 32% of participants gave the same answer as the minority on at least one trial, and the wrong answer was given by participants on 8.4% of trials. This compares to only 1.25% of trials where the wrong answer was given by participants when the minority was inconsistent, proving that consistency was vital.
  • As 68% of participants never agreed with the minority, perhaps only some people are receptive to minority groups.
•  The picture of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk burning himself on a street in Saigon in 1963 to protest the unfair treatment of Buddhist in Vietnam. The picture was so popular that in Europe it was sold as postcards, and copies of the image were distributed by the Chinese. Before this picture the plight of the Buddhists in Vietnam was barely known about worldwide, but as the picture was so powerful in demonstrating that the Buddhists were so upset that they were willing to burn themselves to get their cause heard it had a great effect in turning world opinion against the government in Vietnam.
• •  Supporting research- Nemeth (1986) looked at flexibility. He used a group of 3 participants and one confederate in two conditions of a mock jury situation. In the first the confederate (the minority) would show inflexibility, arguing for a low level of compensation for the imaginary victim of a ski lift accident and not changing from that level. In the second the confederate showed flexibility by raising his offer slightly. In this flexible condition the majority were much more likely to lower their compensation level closer to that of the confederates than in the inflexible condition.