Minority Influence

Created by

Josue C

Cards (14)

Minority influence (AO1)
A form of social influence where a minority persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes and behaviours
What are 3 ways of making minority influential?
Consistency - keeping a stable opinion over time
Commitment - must be dedicated to the cause and make a sacrifice
Flexibility - able to adapt POV and accept reasonable counter opinions
Snowball effect
When the minority viewpoint becomes bigger and bigger and eventually becomes the majority
Moscovici's research (AO3) +
Conducted research into the importance of consistency in minority influence
Had 172 women in groups of 6 asked to say whether slides were blue or green (36 slides)
In one condition (consistent) 2 confederates guessed all the slides as green
In another condition (inconsistent) 2 confederates guessed 24 slides green and 12 slides blue
In the consistent condition, the same wrong answer was given in 8.4% of the trials
In the inconsistent condition, the participants only said the same wrong answer in 1.25/1.3% of the trials
Consistency is vital for minority influence to occur and can help with social change
Lack of Mundane realism (AO3) -
Moscovici research involves participants identifying the colour of slides which is an artificial task and so does not reflect everyday situations
Why is this a weakness?
Therefore it cannot be applied to real world minority influence and lacks external validity
Ethical Issues in Moscovici study (AO3) -
He deceived participants and told them that they were taking part in an eye perception test when he was actually testing minority influence
This means that he did not gain fully informed consent and so research may be unethical
Cost Benefit Analysis
1. May have required deception
2. To gain valid results
3. To reduce demand characteristics
How is this a cost-benefit analysis?
The insight gained from such research was worth the short term cost to the participants
Deception can be dealt with use of debrief