Minority influences

• Minority influence


  A minority changes behaviour and private beliefs are changed
• Minority influence leads to internalisation


  Both public behaviour and private beliefs are changed
• Three processes of minority influence

  1. Consistency

  2. Commitment

  3. Flexibility
• Consistency


  Means the minority's view gains more interest
• Commitment


  Helps gain attention (e.g. through extreme activities)
• Flexibility


  The minority should balance consistency and flexibility so they don't appear rigid
• Consistency


  Makes others rethink their own views
• Synchronic consistency


  People in the minority are all saying the same thing
• Diachronic consistency


  They've been saying the same thing for some time
• Activities must create some risk to the minority


  To demonstrate commitment to the cause
• Augmentation principle


  Majority pay even more attention (Wow, he must really believe in what he's saying, so perhaps I ought to consider his view)
• Nemeth (1986) argued that being consistent and repeating the same arguments and behaviours is seen as rigid and off-putting to the majority
• Instead, the minority should adapt their point of view


  And accept reasonable counter-arguments
• Snowball effect


  The minority becomes the majority over time as more people 'convert'
• Key study: Moscovici et al. (1969) The blue-green slides


  • A group of six people viewed a set of 36 blue-green coloured slides and stated whether they were blue or green
  • The study had three conditions: confederates consistently said the slides were green, confederates were inconsistent about the colour, and a control group with no confederates
• Consistent minority condition


  • Participants gave the same wrong answer on 8.42% of trials; 32% gave the same answer on at least one trial
• Inconsistent minority condition


  • Agreement fell to 1.25%
• Control group


  • Participants wrongly identified colour 0.25% of the time
• Consistency


  • Research evidence demonstrates the importance of consistency
  • Consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion
• Research evidence


  • Serge Moscovici et al. (1969) found
  • Wood et al. (1994) conducted a meta-analysis
• Minority position involves deeper thought


  People were less willing to change their opinions to the new conflicting view if they had listened to a minority group than if they listened to a majority group
• The minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect
• Minority influence research often involves artificial tasks
• Moscovici's task was identifying the colour of a slide, far removed from how minorities try to change majority opinion in real life
• In jury decision-making and political campaigning, outcomes are vastly more important, maybe a matter of life or death
• Findings of studies lack external validity and are limited in what they tell us about how minority influence works in real-life situations
• Participants wrote their answers down, so their responses were private

  Agreement with the minority was greater
• This shows that internalisation took place. Members of the majority had been reluctant to admit their 'conversion' publically
• This shows people may be influenced by a minority but don't admit it, therefore the effect of the minority is not apparent
• Studies make a clear distinction between majority and minority, but real-life situations are more complicated
• Majorities usually have power and status. Minorities are committed and tight-knit groups whose members know and support each other
• Minority influence research rarely reflects the dynamics of these groups so findings may not apply to real-life minority influence situations which exert a more powerful influence