Minority influence

• Minority influence-

  Effecting factors-

  Consistency-

  • Increases the interest of others, and makes others rethink their own beliefs and debate joining the group.
  • Synchronic consistency is when they’re all saying the same thing/within the group.
  • Diachronic consistency is when they’ve been saying the same thing for a consistent amount of time.
• Minority influence-

  Effecting factors-

  Commitment-

  • Engaging in activities to draw attention to their views, can be extreme.
  • Having an extreme activity brings lots of attention to the group and their beliefs as well as showing a lot of commitment to their view (augmentation principle).
• Minority influence-

  Effecting factors-

  Flexibility-

  • Overly consistent behaviour can be seen as dogmatic, making it important for the group to adapt their behaviour (Nemeth 1986).
  • The members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their view and behaviour reasonably while accepting counterpoints.
• Minority influence-

  Process of change-

  • If the source you hear from is consistent, committed and flexible you are more likely to process their information deeply.
  • The snow-ball effect is when overtime more and more people have been converted into taking the view of the minority.
• Minority influence- The blue-green slides – Moscovici et al 1969-

  • Each group of 4 naïve participants and 2 confederates shown 36 blue slides, asked what the colour was
  • In ‘consistent’ conditions confederates repeatedly called blue slides green.
  • In ‘inconsistent’ conditions they called 2/3 of the slides green.
  • In the control there was 6 naïve participants who called each slide blue.
  • ‘Consistent’ condition had 8% conform to the wrong answer, 32% gave the same answer as the majority at least once.
  • ‘Inconsistent’ condition had conformity at 1.25%. Control had 0% incorrect answers.
• Minority influence- The blue-green slides – Moscovici et al 1969-

  S- Moscovici shows the importance of consistency in changing the view of the majority – wood et al (1994) did a meta-analysis over 100 similar studies finding that consistency had the most influence.

  W- Artificial task, Moscovicis task isn’t something that expel come across in real life, so they lack external validity.
• Minority influence- The blue-green slides – Moscovici et al 1969-

  CPS- Martin et al (2003) proved that people process more deeply through the minority agreeing with the initial view, majority agreeing to another group, then exposed to inflicting views – people were less likely to change their opinions if they listened to the minority than the majority.

  CPW- Clear distinctions between the minority and the majority, making it lack real world application due to them being more complex and having more commitment due to the hostile oppositions of the world which can’t be replicated.