Social change through minority influence

• If an individual is exposed to a persuasive argument under certain conditions, they may change their views to match those of the minority
• Minorities can bring about social change by drawing the majorities attention to an issue. if their views are different to those held by the majority it creates a conflict that they’re motivated to reduce
• A minority creates a conflict in the minds of the majority between what’s currently believed and what the minority believes
• Minorities will be more successful in bringing about the social change they seek by showing consistent, committed but flexible attitudes to their cause
• If a minority appears willing to suffer for their views, theyre seen as more committed and so taken more seriously by others
• Minority influence has a relatively small effect but it spreads more widely as more and more people consider the issues being promoted
• The minority becomes the majority and people start to forget that there was ever a debate about the issue
• The role played by minority influence may be limited since minorities like the suffragettes rarely bring about social change quickly because there’s a strong tendency for human beings to conform to the majority position, people are more likely to maintain the status quo rather than engage in social change which suggests that the influence of a minority is frequently more latent than direct
• Dejong et al (2009) tested the effectiveness of social norms marketing campaigns to drive down alcohol use in students across 14 different college sites. Despite receiving normative information that corrected their misperceptions of subjective drinking norms, students in the social norms condition didn’t report lower self-reported alcohol consumption as a result of the campaign. It appears that not all social norms interventions are able to produce social change
• The potential for minorities to influence social change is often limited because they’re seen as ‘deviant‘ in the eyes of the majority. Members of the majority may avoid aligning themselves with the minority because they don’t want to be seen as deviants. The message of the minority would then have very little impact because the focus of the majority’s attention would be the source of the message rather than the message itself. minorities face the double challenge of avoiding being portrayed as deviants and making people directly embrace their position