Moscovici et al (1969)

    Cards (8)

    • Aim 
      • They aimed to investigate the influence of a minority upon a majority within a group
      • They investigated whether the consistency of the behaviour of a minority is a powerful source of influence
    • Sample 
      •  liberal arts, law and social science students (172 female americans)
      •  Female participants preferred ⇒ involvement in evaluating the colour of an object
      Decieved: told that this would be an experiment on colour perception (an explanation of the meaning of ‘light intensity’ was given
    • Each experimental group: four participants and two confederates
    • Took a polack test: elemination of participants with visual abnormalities / to emphasise to everyone that the group had normal vision.
    • Procedure 
      • participants were shown 36 slides that were different shades of blue and asked to state what colour the slide was. 
      • 2 individuals were confederates (minority) while 4 individuals were actual participants (majority) in each condition. 
      • In the consistent condition confederates answered green for all 36 slides (1).
      • In the inconsistent condition confederates answered green 24 times and blue 12 times (1).
      • Moscovici et al. (1969) used a control condition which involved no confederates, just six participants.
    • Results 
      • 8.42% of responses in the consistent minority condition were green (1)  
      • ⇒ Only 1.25% of responses in the inconsistent minority condition were green (1)
      • Participants were more likely to give similar responses to the confederates when light intensities were weak than when they were strong.
    • Validity 
      • Screened participants using polackparticipant variables controlled ⇒ high internal validity 
      • Control group indicates that manipulation of IV was what resulted in minority influence 
      • Lacks ecological validity ⇒ lab experiment ⇒ real life pressure group scenario 
      • Lacks population validity ⇒ only used females ⇒ not generalisable to males
    • Reliability 
      • Controlled variables such as light intensity ⇒ test-retest reliability can be measured 
      • Test-retest reliability ⇒ supporting evidence from Wood et al. (1994) whose meta-analysis with 97 studies ⇒ found that when minority is consistent ⇒ more likey to influence
      • Random allocation of participants ⇒ no experimenter bias ⇒ results reliable to understand minority influence 
      • Participants were split into groups of 6 ⇒ inter-rater reliability of similar results in minority influence
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