Minority influence

• Minority influence is a form of social influence in which a minority rejects the established norm of the majority of group members and persuades the majority to move to the position of the majority. This leads to internalisation.
• Consistency is the first- where the minority needs to keep the same beliefs over time (diachronic) and their members need to share the same beliefs (synchronic where they are all saying the same thing). This draws attention to their minority views and makes the majority rethink their existing views due to their consistent behaviour.
• The next is commitment- sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their case. It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause. Augmentation principle: increases the amount of interest further from other majority group members as they show they are not acting out of self-interest
• Flexibility- Researchers have questioned whether being consistent alone is enough to cause minority influence. Flexibility refers to the way in which minority influence is more likely to occur if the minority is willing to compromise. This means they cannot be viewed.
• All three factors contribute to internalisation (conversion) where the majority have publicly and privately changed their attitudes and behaviours. This is because they have thought about the message more carefully as it conflicts with their own (deeper processing). As much more and more people start to become persuaded (the snowball effect) until the majority's viewpoints align with that of the minority.
• Moscovici et al (1969)

  Aim: to find out whether a minority could exert an influence and minority.
• Moscovici et al (1969):

  Procedure:

  • eye tests to make sure they were not colour blind. There were 6 ppts consisting of 4 ppts and 2 confederates. They were shown 36 slides which were different shades of blue and they were asked to state the colour of each slide (blue or green) out loud.
  • In the 1st group the 2 Confederates answered green for each slide. They were consistent with their responses.
  • In the 2nd group they answered green 24 times and blue 12 times, they were inconsistent in their answers
  • The third part, a control group
• Moscovici et al (1969) Findings:

  • 0.25% of the control groups responses were green, the rest were blue
  • Experimental group, 1.25% of the ppts answers were green when the confederates gave inconsistent answers
  • rose to 8.42% responding with green when the Confederates were consistent in their response
• Moscovici et al (1969) Conclusion:

  • suggests that minorities can influence majorities
  • indicates that this influence is much more effective when the minority are considered in their responses
  • minority gave inconsistent answers, they were largely ignored by the majority
  • drawn attention to the three processes involved in minority influence
  • research can confirm findings
• Strength: supporting evidence for the role of consistency in minority influence from research studies. For example, Moscovici et al found that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion. Also a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies found that minorities who were seen to be consistent were most influential. This supports that consistency is an important factor in the effectiveness of minority influence, suggesting that theory has some validity in explaining the minority influence.
• Limitation: Moscovici et al's study involved artificial task. For example the task involved identifying the colour of a slide which is far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of the minority in real life. The consequences of minorities in real life are often more important. E.g. jury decision-making can mean life/death for the defendant. This is a limitation of minority influence as it suggests that findings such as Moscovici et al's study are lacking external validity and so are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real life situations
• Weakness:they are much more complicated than studies where the minority is quantitatively defined. E.g. majorities have more power and status than minorities. Minorities are committed to their cause and have to be due to the very hostile opposition that they face. They can be tight groups who know each other well. Meaning that research into minority influence is unrepresentative of the complexity of real life minority influence,so results aren't externally valid and so may only tell us about minority influence in contrived situations. The results are limited in terms of real world application.
• Strength:further research shows the impact on minority influence. E.g.Moscovici's research was completed where ppts were exposed to minority influence but were able to give answers privately, they found even higher levels of agreement with the minority than in the original research. It's a strength because minority influence was genuine as when giving private answers, ppts still gave minority viewpoints, suggesting that it wasn't a superficial agreement with the minority. If ppts weren't influenced by the minority when giving answers privately, these answers wouldn't reflect the minority view