minority influence

• minority influence refers to how one person or small group influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people. The minority may influence just one person, or a group (majority) which is different from conformity where the majority does the influencing
• the 3 processes in minority influence are:

  • consistency
  • commitment
  • felxibility
• consistency- refers to the minority’s view gains more interest consistency makes other rethink their own views. Synchronic consistency is when people in the minority are all saying the same thing. Diachronic consistency is when people in the minority have been saying the same thing for a while
• commitment helps gain attention and shows deep involvement. Acitivites must create some risk to the minority to demonstrate commitment to the cause. The augmentation principle refers to the majority paying even more attention
• flexibility refers to the minority adapting their point of view and accept reasonable counterarguments. Nemeth argued that being consistent and repeating the same arguments and behaviours is seen as rigid and off-putting to the majority
• One strength of consistency is research support. Moscovici et al. found a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion. Wood et al. conducted a meta-analysis of almost too similar studies and found that minorities seen as being consistent were most influential. This confirms that consistency is a major factor in minority influence
• One limitation is minority influence research often involves artificial tasks. Moscovici et al.‘s task was identifying the colour of a slide, fat removed from how minorities try to change majority opinion in the real world. In jury decision-making and political campaigning, outcomes are vastly more important, maybe a matter of life or death. Findings of studies lack external validity and are limited in what they tell us about how minority influence works in real world situations