Minority influence

• Minority influence: A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs. Leads to internalisation.
• Consistency: If the minority keeps the same beliefs over time it is more likely that other individuals will begin to join them, it draws attention to them.
• Commitment: If the minority demonstrates dedication to their position by making personal sacrifices then they are more likely to get others attention. It shows the minority is not acting out of self-interest.
• Flexibility: Relentless consistency could be seen as too unreasonable so if they can accept other positions then they are more likely to gain support from others.
• Evaluation (strength):

  Research support for consistency- Moscovici showed a consistent minority opinion had a greater affect on opinions than a changing view. Wood did a meta-analysis and found that most showed that consistency was key to changing opinions.
• Evaluation (strength):

  Research support for deeper processing- A change in the majorities position does involve a deeper processing of the minorities ideas. Martin found that people were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group. This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed.

  Counterpoint: Martin made a clear distinction between the minority and majority, this may not be applicable to the real world.
• Evaluation (limitation):

  Artificial tasks: Minority influence research uses tasks that are very artificial and do not reflect the real world. The finding lack external validity and are limited in what they can generalise to the actual world.