Minority Influence

• Consistency:


  • Confronted with a consistent opposition, members of the majority will sit up and take notice.
  • Synchronic consistency:
  • People in the minority are all saying the same thing.
  • Diachronic consistency:
  • They have been saying the same thing for a long time.
• Commitment:


  • Sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their cause.
  • This increases the amount of interest further from other majority group members.
  • This is known as the Augmentation Principle.
• Flexibility:

  • If they appear as flexible and compromising, they are likely to be seen as less extreme.
  • This may make it easier for them to change the majority views.
• Flexibility: Nemeth (1986):

  • Constructed a mock jury with 3 real participants and 1 confederate.
  • They had to decide on the amount of compensation to give a ski lift accident victim.
  • The confederate did not change from a low amount, seeming unreasonable.
  • When he did this, the majority stuck at a high amount.
  • But when the confederate changed his offer, so did the majority.
• The Process of Change:

  • The Snowball Effect:
  • Over time, people become converted and switch from the majority to the minority.
  • Social Crypto Amnesia:
  • At some point, the majority will forget that the view was ever that of a minority.
• Minority Influence: Moscovici (1969):

  • They were shown 36 slides which were different shades of blue.
  • Two confederates answered green for each of the 36 slides.
  • In the second part of the experiment, they answered green 24 times and blue 12 times.
  • In this case they were inconsistent.
  • In condition one it was found that the consistent minority influenced the majority (8.42%).
  • Compared to an inconsistent minority (1.25% said green).
  • A third of the participants judged the slide to be green at least once.
  • Minorities can influence majorities but only when they are consistent.
• Minority Influence: Wood et al (1994):

  • This study was a meta-analysis of 100 other similar studies and found that often, minorities who were seen as being inconsistent did not have effects that were as influential as consistent behaviour.
• Minority Influence AO3: Strength:

  • Research Evidence Supporting Consistency:
  • Moscovici (1969): Consistent minority → 8.42% of the majority agreed the slides were green.
  • Inconsistent minority → Only 1.25% agreed.
  • Highlights a significant decline in influence when consistency is absent.
  • Wood et al. (1994): Meta-analysis of 100 studies.
  • Consistent minorities were significantly more influential than inconsistent ones.
• Minority Influence AO3: Weakness:

  • Internalisation leads to changes in both public behaviour and private beliefs:
  • Seen in a variation of Moscovici’s study:
  • Participants gave private responses (writing answers down).
  • Private agreement with the minority was significantly higher than public agreement.
  • Therefore, majority members were convinced by the minority’s argument.
  • Publicly withheld agreement due to fear of being perceived as "radical."
  • Shows that minority influence effectively leads to deeper belief changes, beyond surface-level compliance