Minority Influence AO3

• Evidence to support from lab experiments (Moscovici et al) - consistency
• Aims (Moscovici et al) - can a minority change opinion of a majority by being consistent?
• Method (Moscovici et al) - Lab experiment
• Procedure (Moscovici et al)

  • group of 6 participants, all females, two confederates, describing the colour of 36 slides
  • consistent condition, confederates say green to all slides
  • inconsistent condition, confederates say 24 is green and the rest is blue
• Results (Moscovici et al)

  • control group - none (indicated that the slides are not ambiguous)
  • consistent condition - 8% moved to adopt the minority position
  • inconsistent condition - 1.25% -> conformed
• Conclusion (Moscovici et al)

  • the minority can influence the majority - more effective when the minority is consistent
• P - Low Ecological validity when trying to study minority influence in lab conditions

  E - Task too trivial, saying a blue slide is green

  C - Saying the blue slides is green have no consequence, if a murderer is on trial and the minority tries to convince you there is far more at stake
• P - The theory is too simplistic

  E - The idea of majorities and minorities is reduced to group size e.g. 2 vs 4

  C - This ignores important variables like power, status and commitment to the view point, in schools for example the headteacher is the minority yet heavily influences the majority
• P - Research support for consistency

  E - Wood et al (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 consistency research studies and found that minorities who were seen as consistent were most influential

  C - This suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence
• P - Evidence to support from real-life examples that minorities can change views overtime

  E - Martin Luther King, Suffragettes

  C - It is useful to look at the underlying similarities as this allows researchers to identify variables that are important for minorities to succeed like commitment, consistency and flexibility, this can be used to know how to spread a message e.g. smoking and LGBTQ