Minority influence

Minority influence

• A form of social influence in which a minority (sometimes just one person) persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviors

  Leads to internalisation, in which we agree publicly and privately with the minority view, happens gradually over time (snowball effect)

• Use of consistency, commitment and flexibility is crucial to minority influence

Consistency

Synchronic consistency: All members of the group agree and back each other

Diachronic consistency: Consistency over time of position and reasoning

Example:

Greta thumberg’s consistent message of the climate crisis and never deviating from her position that something needs to be done (Diachronic)

Commitment

If the minority keep staying true to their message then they will be committed, more committed they are the more people are likely to listen due to the sacrifice they’re putting in

Example:

Greta thumberg sacrificed her education by not going to school on Fridays to protest against climate change, this shows how committed she is to the cause

Augmentation principle: Personal sacrifices that makes people think your point must mean something if you’re willing to undergo hardship to make it

Flexibility

When the group is flexible to who joins it makes you seem like a reasonable and nice person so people are less likely to think you’re attacking their views

Example: Greta sent a tweet aimed at the older generation, who normally criticise her for her serious and confrontational views on climate change, saying that she understood the difficulty in understanding the troubles of change. Presenting flexibility as her audience wasn’t her normal one

Support for consistency

Moscovici (1969)-

When showing female participants 36 slides of different blues they found that the control group, where confederates said blue, the pt’s chose blue for all.

Whereas in the other group where confederates always said the slides were green, the pt’s said the slides were green 24 times and blue 12 times

this presents that the minority has the power to influence the majority and are more influential if the views are consistent

However study is gynocentric as the pt’s were all women so the case may be different with men

Support for flexibility

Nemeth (1986)-

Investigated the idea of flexibility in which participants in groups of four had to agree on the amount of compensation they would give a victim of a ski lift accident

One participant in each group was a confederate and there was 2 conditions, minority argued for low rate of compensation and refused to change, argued for low rate and was swayed to a higher rate

Unchanging meant they paid no attention to their view but swayed led to a compromise, highlights the importance of flexibility

Research +

• A strength of minority influence is that there is research to support the theory

• Moscovici’s study found that participants were significantly more likely to conform to a minority if the participants around them were consistent in their view. Moscovici found that in the consistent condition the real participants agreed on 8.4% of the trials whereas in the inconsistent condition the real participants only agreed on 1.3% of the trials

• This shows that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in minority influence

• This means that being consistent and unchanging in their view as a minority is more likely to influence a majority than if they chop and change their mind

Alternative -

• There is alternative research for minority influence, suggesting that the process is more complex

• Identification depends on the group, homosexuals fighting for homosexual rights were not as effective as heterosexuals fighting for homosexual rights

• Due to heterosexual majority identifying with the homosexual minority

• This suggests that majorities are influenced by minorities in a more complex way then originally thought

Explanatory power -

• One issue is that minority influence could be considered to have lox explanatory power

• In real life members of womens, gay and animal rights movements and other protests are different from participants in lab experiments due to often facing more determined opposition and are committed to the cause and know each other in their groups personally

• This suggests that due to the difference between a highly controlled lab experiment and real life protesters we cannot use the research on minority influence to accurately explain minority influence in real life

• Implies this argument may not be fully representative of real minority groups

Applications +

• Research into Minority influence has lead to positive practical applications

• For example the gay rights movement, where homosexuals were seen as a minority has allowed for change where homosexuals are more widely accepted, overall addressing the inequality

• This is seen through the legalisation of homosexual marriages and acceptance through pride festivals and representation in media

• This means that the minority influence has been to useful to society due to changes in rights and laws