Minority Influence

• What are the 3 criteria that a minority group need to convince the majority?

  • Consistency
  • Commitment
  • Flexibility
• Who studied minority influence using blue/green slides?

  Moscovici
• What was the role of the confederates in Moscovici’s study?

  They acted as the minority influence convincing the naive participants that the blue slides were green
• What were the two conditions of the blue/green slide study?

  A consistent minority and an inconsistent minority
• What did Moscovici find in his study?

  Participants were more influenced by the consistent minority that the inconsistent one
• What are the strengths of explaining minority influence?

  • Real life cases - Civil rights protests
  • Controlled lab experiment
• What are the limitations of explanations for minority influence?

  • Artificial task
  • Majority‘s opinions are usually more influential
  • The explanation is inconsistent within itself - committed and flexible at the same time
• What are 4 key factors of social change through minority influence?

  • Deeper processing of the issue
  • The augmentation principle - the minority’s willingness to suffer for their belief
  • The snowball effect - gradual changes occurring
  • Social cryptomnesia - don’t remember how change eventually happened
• What are the strengths of social change due to minority influence?

  • Real life cases - Suffragettes, civil rights
  • Real-life application
  • Research support - Moscovici
• What are the limitations of social change through minority influence?

  • Augmentation principle - may make the minority appear worse e.g. Suffragettes
  • Majority causes deeper processing more than the minority
  • Research support is artificial