Minority influence

• Minority influence

  = form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours

  -leads to internalisation or conversion in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours
• Consistency

  =must be consistent in their views

  • over time consistency increases the amount of interest from other people
  • consistency can take the form of agreement between people in the minority group
  • synchronic consistency= they’re all saying the same thing
  • diachronic consistency= they have all been saying the same thing for a while
  • a consistent minority makes other people start to rethink their own views.
• Commitment

  =must show commitment to their cause or view.

  • sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views
  • important that these extreme Activities present some risk to the minority because it shows greater commitment
  • majority group members then pay even more attention = augmentation principle
• flexibility

  = Nemeth argued that consistency is not the only important factor in minority influence because it can be off-putting

  -it can be seen as unbending and unreasonable

  • instead members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counterarguments
  • balance consistency and flexibility
• Process of change

  = hearing something new might make you think more deeply about it, especially if the source of this other view is consistent, committed and flexible

  • process of conversion, over time increasing numbers of people switch from the majority to the minority.
  • the more this happens the faster the rate of conversion = snowball effect
  • gradually the minority view has become the majority view.
• Evaluation- research support for consistency

  =Moscovici blue/green slide study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people than an inconsistent opinion.

  • wood carried out a meta- analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential
  • suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority
• Evaluation

  Research support for a deeper processing
• Showing that a change in the majority's position does involve deeper processing of the minority's ideas
• Study procedure

  1. Martin presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured participants agreement

  2. 1 group of participants then heard a minority group agree with initial view, another group heard a majority group agree with them

  3. Participants were exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again
• People were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group


  Than a majority group
• This suggests the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect, supporting how minority influence works
• Evaluation- counterpoint

  = research studies eg: Martins make clear distinctions between the majority and the minority.

  -doing this in a controlled way is a strength of minority influence research. But in real world social influence situations are much more complicated

  • eg: majorities usually have a lot more power and status than minorities.
• Continued-

  • eg: majorities usually have a lot more power and status than minorities.
  • minorities are very committed to their causes, as they often face very hostile opposition. These features are often absent from minority influence research- the minority is simply the smallest group.
  • findings are limited in what they can tell us about minority influence in real life.
• Evaluation- artificial tasks

  Limitation= the tasks involved are often just as artificial as Aschs line judgement task.

  • includes Moscovici task of identifying the colour of a slide.
  • so research is far removed from how minorities attempt to change behaviour of majorities in real life.
  • in cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning, the outcomes are vastly more important.
  • so findings of minority influence studies are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in the real world