minority influence

• minority influence: refers to a situation when one person or small group influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people.
• consistency: the minority must be consistent in their views, overtime the consistency increases the amount of interest from other people.
• synchronic consistency: everyone is saying the same thing
• diachronic consistency: people have been saying the same thing for some time now
• commitment: they may engage in extreme activities to draw attention to their views - mostly with high risks to show more commitment.
• augmentation principle: when members of a group pay more attention and consider their view
• flexibility: members need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter arguments
• snowball effect: gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occured
• strength: Wood et al carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential - suggesting maintaining a consistent minority view can be effective
• limitation: Moscovici research may be artificial, meaning findings are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about minority influence in real-world situations.