minority influence

• Minority influence - a form of social influence where a minority rejects the established norm of the majority of group members and persuades the majority to move to the position of the minority.
• Minority influence is likely to lead to internalisation where both public behaviour and private beliefs are changed.
• moscovici (1969) aim - to test whether a minority group were more likely to influence a majority group into giving the incorrect answer on a colour perception test if they were consistent in their views
• moscovici (1969) procedure:

  • 172 female participants who had their eyesight tested to ensure they were not colour blind
  • Each test involved a group of 6 people with 4 participants and 2 confederates
  • presented with a series of 36 slides which were clearly different shades of blue & asked to state what colour each slide was.
  • condition 1: the confederates stated out loud that the blue slides were green, giving an incorrect answer every time (consistent condition)
  • condition 2: the confederates answered green 24x and blue 12x. (inconsistent condition)
• Findings:

  • In the inconsistent condition, 1.25% of the participants’ answers were green
  • In the consistent condition, 8.42% of the answers were green
  • In the control group with no confederates, 0.25% of the incorrect answers were green.
• Conclusion:

  If a minority group wants to influence the majority group, they need to be consistent in their views.
• moscovici's study drew attention to 3 processes involved in minority influence:

  • consistency
  • commitment
  • flexibility
• CONSISTENCY –A minority group in society is more likely to influence the majority group in society if they are consistent in their views. consistency in the minority’s views increases the amount of interest from other people. It makes others rethink their own views.
• Synchronic consistency – people in the minority are all saying the same thing
• Diachronic consistency – they have been saying the same thing for a long time.
• COMMITMENT – sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their cause. It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause. This increases the amount of interest further from other majority group members – the augmentation principle.
• FLEXIBILITY – Nemeth argued the minority need to adapt their POV & accept reasonable counter-arguments. Minority influence is more effective if they show flexibility - willingness to compromise. The study was a mock jury & confederate who had to decide on an amount of compensation. When the confederate would not change from a low amount which was unreasonable, the majority stuck together at a higher amount. when the confederate changed his compensation offer, so did the majority. This therefore shows that the minority should balance consistency and flexibility so they do not appear rigid.
• All three factors make people think about the topic.

  Over time, people become converted and switch from the minority to the majority – the more this happens the faster the rate of conversion (the snowball effect)

  Gradually the minority view becomes the majority and social change has occurred.
• a strength of minority influence is Research support for consistency. Moscovici demonstrated that when the majority are consistent in their responses they can influence the majority. When the minority gave inconsistent answers in Moscovici’s study, they were generally ignored by the majority. Later research has largely confirmed these findings.
• a strength is Research support for depth of thought. Martin gave ppts a message supporting a viewpoint and measured their support. a group of ppts then heard a minority group endorsing the same view. group 2 of ppts heard a majority group endorsing the initial viewpoint. Ppts were exposed to a conflicting view and their support was measured. People were less willing to change their opinions to the new conflicting view if they had listened to the minority group. This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed & had a more enduring effect.
• a weakness of minority influence is Artificial tasks. The tasks given in studies are artificial and real-life situations are more complicated. This means the findings lack external validity and therefore have limited real-world applications.
• a weakness of minority influence is The effect of the minority group may not be apparent. People may be reluctant to admit their conversion publicly. Moscovici found higher agreement with the minority when ppts wrote down their responses. This shows internalisation took place