Minority Influence and Social Change

• Minority influence- a form of social influence where a minority of people (or just one person) persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours, likely to lead to internalisation (permanent change of behaviour)
• 3 main processes during minority influence- consistency, commitment, flexibility
• Consistency- the minority must be consistent in their views because this increases the amount of interest from others over time, causing them to rethink their views
• Synchronic consistency- everyone saying the same thing in a single moment- an agreement in a minority group
• Diachronic consistency- everyone has been saying the same thing for some time now- a consistency over a period of time
• Commitment- a committed minority projects certainty, confidence and courage. A minority will engage in extreme activities to draw attention to themselves, the element of risk shows a greater level of commitment, allowing the majority to take the minority more seriously and pay attention to them
• Flexibility- the minority is more effective at changing the majority opinion by adapting their perspective (Nemeth- suggested consistency can be off-putting to the majority). However, a minority that is too flexible might be seen as inconsistent
• Explaining the process of change- all three factors (consistency, commitment, flexibility) make people think about the minority view, leading to deeper processing of information (internalisation) which is important for the process of conversion to the minority viewpoint. Over time, more and more of the majority become converted to the minority view making the conversion rate faster (snowball effect)
• Moscovici's minority influence (1969):

  • 172 female pps took part in a colour perception task, split into groups of 6 and shown 36 varying shades of blue which were to be stated out-loud by each pps
  • 2/6 pps were confederates- consistent condition where confederates stated green, inconsistent condition where they said 24 were green and 12 were blue. Also a control group with no confederates
• Moscovici's minority influence (1969)- Findings:

  • Consistent condition (all green)- pps agreed 8.2% of the time
  • Inconsistent condition (24 green, 12 blue)- pps agreed 1.25% of the time
  • Shows that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority, and consistency is an important factor in minority influence
• Evaluation of Moscovici (1969):

  • Low population validity- bias sample of females used so results cannot be generalised to males
  • Lack of informed consent- pps were deceived, BUT pps did not show demand characteristics because they didn't know the true aim, increasing internal validity
  • High reliability- pps screened for colour blindness, limiting extraneous variables which increases internal validity
• Supportive evidence of minority influence:

  • Nemeth and Brilmayer (1987)- investigated flexibility. Group members discussed compensation for someone involved in an accident- confederate offered an alternative opinion and was rigid (no effect on other members), confederate compromised after being rigid (rest of group were influenced to change opinion)
  • Wood et al (1994)- meta analysis of 100 similar studies to Moscovici, found that consistency was the most influential factor and is a minimum requirement. BUT secondary data