Minority Influence

• Minority influence


  When minority group influences belief and behaviour of others, most likely leads to internalisation
• Main processes in minority influence

  • Consistency
  • Commitment
  • Flexibility
• Consistency


  • Have to remain consistent in their views, diachronic consistency - saying same thing for long time, synchronic consistency- they all saying same thing
• Commitment


  • Extreme activities that pose risk to group to draw attention to what they are saying, called augmentation principle
• Flexibility


  • Minority group need to be able to adapt view and accept reasonable and valid counterarguments, if don't bend views bit then seen as rigid and people don't like this
• Hearing something new


  Makes you deeply think it and deep processing is important in conversion to minority viewpoint
• Over time minority view becomes majority one

  Called snowball effect
• Research support for consistency: Moscovici blue/green slide study showed consistent minority opinion had greater effect on changing views
• Research support for deeper processing: Martin presented certain viewpoint to students, one group of participants heard minority agree with it, while another group participants heard majority viewpoint agree, participants then exposed to conflicting views, people less willing to change if listened to minority than majority, shows minority view more deeply processed and more enduring effect
• However, in real life majority have more power and minority have to be committed as they face hostile conditions, these features usually absent from minority research, Martin finding limited in what they can tell us about minority influence in real life
• Minority influence tasks artificial, findings of these studies lacking in external validity and can't tell us about real situations