Minority Influence and Social Change

How can minority influence be quite powerful?

1. Obviously, people don’t always go along with the majority- if they did, nothing would ever change

2. Sometimes small minorities and even individuals gain influence and change the way the majority thinks

3. In minority influence, it seems that a form of internalisation is taking place. Members of the majority actually take on the beliefs and views of a consistent minority- rather than just complying

Who did research on minority influence and why its stronger if the minority is consistent?

Moscovici et al (1969)

What was the method used by Moscovici et al?

This was a laboratory experiment into minority influence using 192 women. In groups of 6 at a time, participants judged the colour of 36 slides. All of the slides were blue, but the brightness of the blue varied. Two of the six participants in each group were confederates.

What did the confederates do in the first condition?

In one condition the Confederates called all 36 slides ‘green’ (consistent)

What happened in the second condition?

They called 24 of the slides ‘green’ and 12 of the slides ‘blue’ (inconsistent). A control group was also used which contained no Confederates

What were the results of Moscovici et al’s research?

In the control group, the participants called all the slides ‘green’ 0.25% of the time. In the consistent condition, 8.4% of the participants adopted the minority position and called the slides ‘green’, and 32% of the participants called the slides ‘green’ at least once. In the inconsistent condition, the participants moved to the minority position of calling the slides ‘green’

What was the conclusion of Moscovici et al’s research?

The Confederates were in the minority but their views appear to have influenced the real participants. The use of the two conditions illustrated that the minority had more influence when they were consistent in calling the slides ‘green’

What was the evaluation of Moscovici et al’s research?

This study was a laboratory experiment, so it lacked ecological validity because the task was artificial. The participants may have felt that judging the colour of the slide was a trivial exercise- they might have acted differently if their principles were involved. Also, the study was only carried out on women, so the results can’t be generalised to men. However, owing to the use of a control group, we know that the participants were actually influenced by the minority rather than being independently unsure of the colour of the slides. In a similar experiment, participants were asked to write down the colour rather than saying it out loud. In this condition, even more people agreed with the minority, which provides more support for minority influence

How can minority influence be stronger if the minority is flexible?

Nemeth et al (1974) repeated Moscovici’s experiment but instructed participants to answer with all the colours they saw in the slide, rather than a single colour. For example, they could answer ‘blue-green’ rather than ‘green’

What were the variations of answers in Nemeth et al’s study?

1. Said all of the slides were ‘green’

2. Said the slides were ‘green’ or ‘green-blue’ at random

3. Said the brighter slides were ‘green-blue’ and the duller slides were ‘green’ or vice-versa

What did the confederates do?

They always answered ‘green’, or varied their response randomly (so they were inconsistent, they did not affect the participants’ responses. But in the condition where the confederates’ responses varied with a feature of the slides (the brightness), the confederates had the most significant effect on the participants’ responses

How much influence did the confederates have?

They had the most influence when they were consistent but flexible- Nemeth proposed that rigid consistency (always answering ‘green’) wasn’t effective because it seemed unrealistic when more subtle responses were allowed

What is the majority influence?

• People compare their behaviour to the majority (social comparison) and change their behaviour to fit in without considering the majority’s views in detail

• So majority influence involves compliance- it doesn’t always cause people to change their private feelings, just their behaviour

What is the minority influence?

• When a minority is consistent people may actually examine the minority’s beliefs in detail because they want to understand why the minority sees things differently

• This can lead to people privately accepting the minority view- they convert to the minority position

• Social pressure to conform may mean their behaviour doesn’t actually change, at least at first

What happened during Moscovici’s conversion therapy?

1. Initially, minority views can be seen as wrong, because they don’t match up with what’s considered the norm

2. But by being consistent the minority group shows it has a clear view of what it’s committed to, and isn’t willing to comprise (i.e the minority isn’t willing to give in to the pressure to conform)

3. This creates a conflict- when you’re faced with a consistent minority you have to seriously consider whether they might be right, and if you should change your view. Moscovici called this the validation process

4. If there’s no reason to dismiss the minority view (there doesn’t seem to be an error in their perception or reasoning, they’re not acting out of self-interest, and so on), then you begin to see things as the minority does

Why is minority influence necessary for social change to take place?

1. If some people in a group start to agree with a minority view then the minority becomes more influential. This results in more and more people converting to the minority view. Eventually, the minority becomes a majority. Van Avermaet (1996) described this as the snowball effect

2. For this to happen people need to go from privately accepting the minority view to publically expressing it

3. One explanation of why this might happen is social cryptoamnesia- this means public opinion changes gradually over time until the minority view is accepted as the norm, but people forget where the view originally came from