Minority influence

• Minority influence refers to situations by one person or a small group of people influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people
• The blue green slide study

  Procedure

  all participants had an eye test, ensure they werent colourblind and put into groups with four other participants and 2 confederates

  they were shown 36 sides of different shades of blue and had to state the colour out loud

  1st - the 2 confederates aswered green for every slide, they were consistent

  2nd - the 2 confederates answered 24 green, 12 blue, they were inconsistent

  Control group with no Confederate, so no minority influence
• Results

  0.25% of control group said green

  1.25% of inconsistent group said green

  8.42% of consistent group said green

  Conclusion

  suggests minorities can influence majorities, however its more effective when they are consistent
• consistency

  The minority must be consistent in the views

  Overtime consistency increases the amount of interest in other people and make them rethink their own views

  synchronc- all saying same thing

  diachronic- saying same thing for a long time
• commitment

  Minority must demonstrate commitment to their cause or views

  sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention.

  It’s important to present some risk to the minority, because this shows greater commitment, and increases attention from majority

  this is the augmentation principal
• flexibility

  If minority is seen as inflexible and uncompromising, the majority are unlikely to change their views

  If they aren’t flexible, they may be seen as rigid unbending and dogmatic

  members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept a reasonable and valid counter argument. The key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility.
• process of change- snowball effect

  deeper processing is important in the process of conversion to a different minority viewpoint

  Overtime, increasing numbers of people switch from the majority position to the minority position they have become converted

  The more this happens the faster the rate of conversion. This is a snowball effect.

  Gradually, the minority view has become the majority view and change as a card.
• The strength is research evidence for the importance of consistency

  The blue green slide study shows that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people and an inconsistent opinion

  A meta analysis of almost 100 similar studies found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential

  suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority
• A limitation of minority influence research is that the tasks involved are often artificial.

  Research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life

  In cases, such as jury decision-making and political campaigning, the outcomes are vastly more important, sometimes even literally a matter of life or death

  This means 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.