minority influence and social change

• Minority influence


  A person or small group (the minority) influencing the behaviour and beliefs of a majority
• Conversion

  1. Majority internalise the minorities view

  2. Changing attitudes of majority
• Changing attitudes of majority:

  • conflict - disagree with minorities view

  • understanding - consider and listen to minority

  • validity - accepting and internalising minorities view
• Strengthening minority influence

  • Consistency - remain consistent with their views + agreement on views within the minority
  • Commitment - committed to their cause + risky activities to get the attention of the majority (augmentation principle)
  • Flexibility - compromise + accept reasonable counter-points from the majority
• Research support for consistency
• Moscovici found that the consistent group minority influenced the majority 8.2% of the time, compared to 1.25% with inconsistent minority
• Wood et al. did a meta-analysis of 100 similar studies and found similar results
• Artificial tasks in minority influence research lack mundane realism and ecological validity and tells us little about real life minority influence
• Moscovici research of identifying the colour of a slide has little everyday importance
• Power of minority influence, In Moscovici's study, the agreement of the consistent minority was only 8%, so is a rare, unuseful concept
• Process of social change

  1. Draw attention to the issue

  2. Consistent with their views

  3. Deeper processing

  4. Augmentation principle - putting themselves in their message

  5. Slowly side with their
• Social change


  Minorities change attitudes and behaviours in society, causing a change to social norms
• Minorities

  Groups within a society that are different from the majority
• Augmentation principle

  Putting themselves at risk to reinforce their message
• Snowball effect


  People slowly side with the minority at a faster rate
• Social cryptomnesia


  People have the memory that change has occurred but don't remember how it happened
• NSI

  When a minority is now the majority, some still disagree but conform to fit in with society
• Gradual commitment


  When small instructions are obeyed, it is harder to resist bigger ones
• minority influence supports social change
• Nemeth claimed social change is due to engagement with the minority view
• Minorities stimulate new ideas that are important
• Social change can be resisted
• Bashir et al found that people were less likely to act in an environmentally friendly way as they didn't want to be associated with environmentalists
• therefore resisting social change
• 1. Support from NSI
• Nolan put notes about energy saving on doors of homes
• 1. one note said residents were reducing their energy usage
  2. the other said to try and decrease energy used with no mention of other behaviour
• more decrease in energy from people who received first note
• NSI and conformity can lead to social change so it is a valid explanation