Minority Influence AO3

• +Research evidence demonstrates the importance of consistency in minority influence. Moscovici’s blue slide - green slide study showed that an unwavering minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of others than an inconsistent opinion. Wood carried out a meta- analysis on almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities that were seen as being consistent were most influential. This suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimal requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority.
• -The tasks involved in studying minority influence are usually just as artificial as Asch's line judgement task. Research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life. This means that findings of minority influence studies are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real-world social situations.
• +Evidence shows that a change in the majority’s position does involve deeper processing of the minority's ideas. Martin presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured participants agreement. One group was told the minority agree with the initial view and the other that the majority group agree with it. Participants were exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again.

  People were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group than if they had listened to a majority group.
• + Following the study suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed; it had a more enduring effect, supporting the central argument about how minority influence works.
• -Research studies (Martin) make clear distinctions between the majority and minority. Majorities usually have a distinct power and status advantage in real life than minorities. Minorities have to be very committed to their causes; they often face very hostile opposition. Therefore Martin’s findings are very limited in what they can tell us about minority influence in real world situations.