minority influence

• Minority influence is when one person or small group influences beliefs/behaviours of other people
• There are 3 main processes in minority influence:

  • consistency
  • commitment
  • flexibility
• Consistency: the minority needs to be consistent in their views and across time
• consistency can cause the majority to think about their views
• Commitment: sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views. These activities should cause some risk to the minority so the majority group then pays more attention
• Flexibility: the minority does not want to be seen as too rigid
• Minority members should be prepared to adapt their view and accept counter arguments
• The key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility
• the snowball effect - the fast rate of conversion from minority to majority
• Nemeth and Brilmayer (1987) - jury discussed the amount of compensation to be paid for someone involved in a ski-lift accident. They found someone who refused to change his position had no effect on the jury. However, someone who compromised had an influence on the group
• Moscovici asked a group of 6 people to view a set of 36 blue-coloured slides and state whether the slides were blue or green. In one group, 2 confederates consistently said the slides were green. 32% gave the same answer as the minority at least once. In the second group, the 2 confederates were inconsistent and agreement fell to 1.25%
• findings of minority influence studies such as Moscovici are lacking in external validity because they use artificial materials so they are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real life social situations