Minority influence

• What is it ?

  • following the behaviour or beliefs of one person or a small group
• How does minority influence work ?

  1. Consistency
  2. commitment
  3. flexibility
• What is consistency ?

  • Increase the interests of others if the views are consistent
  • makes the message clear and avoids confusion
• What are the two waysa minority can be consistent ?

  Diachronic

  synchronic
• What is diachronic and synchronic ?


  Diachronic - same mesaage over time

  synchronic - all members give the same message
• What is committment ?

  • extreme activities to draw attention to their beliefs
  • e.g suffraggettes infront of horse
  • prepared to die for their belief
  • augmentation principle
• What is the augmentation principle ?

  • minority willing to make sacrifices to put them selves at risk for their cause
• what is flexibility ?

  • constancy can have a negative effect
  • must be willing to alter their believe to accept counter arguments
  • must have a balance between consistency and flexibility
• How does change occur ?


  Snowball effect

  • hear something new
  • think about it
  • deep processing
  • increase minority numbers
  • become converted
  • increase rate of conversion
• What did moscovici do ?


  first to identify process of minority influence and how it explains innovation

  • when society adopts a new behaviour or belief
  • to be effective the minority must be consistent committed and flexible
• What did moscovi do study ?

  Investigate consistency on minority influence
• Procedure ?

  • show women 32 blue slides and asked what colour
  • groups of 6 with 2 confederates
  • said slide was green on either every or 2/3 of time
• Findings ?

  • when consistent pp said Green 8% of trials
  • when incosistent only 1% of time
• Evaluation of study ?

  1. High control
  2. standardised procesure
  3. low ecological validity
  4. sample size
• evaluation of minority influence ?

  1. Research support
  2. wood et al
  3. reduxtionist
• Wood et al ?


  meta analysis

  • 100 studies
  • found consistency was most influential
• Reductionist

  • ignored other factors e.g characteristics or minority