minority influence

• Minority influence


  One person or a small group influences the beliefs and behaviours of other people
• Minority influence is not conformity which is sometimes majority influence
• Minority influence


  Leads to internalisation, minorities gradually influence changes in group opinion
• Historical examples of minority influence

  • Darwin (turned Victorian world views upside down)
  • Gandhi (helped India gain independence)
• Majority is unlikely to comply to minority views
• Minority influence


  Based on converting majority's views (internalisation)
• Influence


  Power to change group opinion
• Informational social influence


  Result: Internalisation
• Three main processes in minority influence

  • Consistency
  • Commitment
  • Flexibility
• Consistency


  Minority must be consistent in their views, increases the amount of interest from other people, takes two forms: synchronic and diachronic
• Commitment


  Minorities take part in extreme activities to draw attention to their ideas, must present some risk to show they are willing to suffer for the cause, this gains more attention from the majority (augmentation principle)
• Flexibility


  Consistency alone is unlikely to gain converts to the minority position, the minority need to adapt their views and accept counterarguments, they need to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility
• Process of change


  Over time increasing numbers of people switch from the majority position to the minority position (conversion), the more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion (snowball effect), eventually the minority view becomes the majority view
• Procedure


  1. Naïve participants randomly assigned to 3 conditions: consistent, inconsistent, and control

  2. 4 naïve (majority), 2 confederates (minority), control had 6 naïve

  3. Participants asked to say the colour of 36 blue slides

  4. IV: consistent - 2 confederates said all were green, 8% complied (diachronic consistency), highest conformity

  5. IV: inconsistent - 2 confederates said 24/36 were green, rest blue, 1.25% complied

  6. IV: control - no confederates, all naïve said blue, 0% complied

  7. DV: Percentage of naïve participants that conformed to confederates calling blue slides green
• Conclusion: Minority has influence over majority, however, influence is greater when the minority is consistent
• Research support for consistency

  • Moscovici et al's blue/green slide study demonstrated consistent minority opinion had greater effect, Wood et al. meta-analysis found consistent minorities most influential, suggests consistent view necessary for minority to influence majority
• Research support for deeper processing

  • Martin et al found people less willing to change opinions when listening to minority group, suggests minority message had been more deeply processed, but research limited as it cannot tell us about minority influence in real world
• One problem of minority influence research is that the tasks are artificial, like Asch's line judgements, far removed from real life, and lack external validity</b>
• Situations like jury decision making have important real-world outcomes, so minority influence findings are limited in telling us how it works in real-world social situations
• The majority may adopt the minority's position if they perceive it as more attractive than their own
• Minority influence is the process by which a small group can change the attitudes or behavior of a larger group.
• Research suggests that minority influence does involve deeper processing of ideas and concepts. Martin et al presented viewpoint and measured agreement of ppts. One group heard the majority agree and the other group heard the minority agree. They found that people were less willing to change their opinion when listening to the minority. This supports minority influence as it suggests that minority message was deeply processed.