Minority influence

Minority influence

when members of a majority group are converted to the views of a minority.

Factors of minority influence

consistency, commitment, flexibility

Describe consistency in minority influence

if members of the minority repeat the same message over time (diachronic consistency) and all group members give the same message (synchronic consistency), members of the majority group are more likely to consider the minority position and reconsider their own

Describe commitment in minority influence

if the members of a minority are willing to suffer for their views but still hold them, members of the majority will take the minority and their ideas seriously, as people consider the causes of behaviour. If the majority members know the minority is not acting out of self-interest, they carefully consider their position

augmentation principle

Describe flexibility in minority influence

if seen as dogmatic (stubborn), minorities will not be persuasive; they need the ability to appear to consider valid counterarguments and show they are reasonable by slightly compromising. This encourages majority members to move closer to the minority position

relationship between flexibility and consistency in minority influence

they seem to contradict each other, but a balance between these two factors is needed to appear reasonable and open-minded, as well as having a clear, thought-through and stable opinion

the snowball effect

minorities changing majority opinion starts as a slow process, as each person only converts a few members of the majority. However, this rate of conversion picks up speed as more and more of the majority convert. Also, the process of conversion also speeds up as the minority view improves in its acceptability

Augmentation principle

when people give more weight to a cause if there are obstacles or risks involved. For example, if someone stands up for their beliefs despite facing punishment, we see their commitment as stronger.

Moscovici (1969)

Aim: to see if a consistent minority could influence the majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception task

Method: 172 female participants who were told they were taking part in a colour perception task. They were placed in groups of 6 and shown 36 slides, which were all varying shades of blue. They had to state out loud the colour of each slide. 2 of the 6 participants were confederates and in 1 condition (consistent) the confederates said all slides were green; in the second condition (inconsistent) the confederates said 24 slides were green and 12 were blue

Findings: in the consistent condition, the real participants agreed on 8.2% of the trials, whereas in the inconsistent condition they only agreed on 1.2%

Conclusion: shows a consistent minority is 7% more effective than an inconsistent minority and consistency is important in minority influence

Nemeth (1986)

Aim: to see if flexibility was more important than consistency in minority influence

Method: in groups of 4, participants had to agree on the amount of compensation they would give someone victim to a ski-lift accident. 1 participant in each group was a confederate and there were 2 conditions:

1. when the minority argued for a low rate of compensation and refused to change their position (inflexible)

2. when the minority argued for a low rate of compensation but compromised by offering a slightly higher rate of compensation (flexible)

Results: inflexible condition = minority had little to no effect on the majority

flexible = majority members were more likely to also compromise and change their view

Conclusion: shows the importance of flexibility and questions consistency, showing it is good to have a balance of both

Wood et al. (1994)

P: Research support for consistency

E: Moscovici et al.’s study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion. Wood et al. (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential

C: This suggests consistency is a major factor in minority influence

Martin et al. (2003) + counterpoint

P: Research evidence to show a change to a minority position involves deeper processing of ideas

E: Martin et al. (2003) gave participants a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured their support. One group of participants then heard a minority group agree with the initial view while another heard this from a majority group. They were finally exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again. Found that people were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to the minority group rather than if they were shared with a majority group

C: This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect, supporting the central argument about how minority influence works

COUNTERPOINT

P: These studies make clear distinctions between the majority and minority. But, real world social influence situations are much more complicated.

E: E.g., majorities usually have a lot more power and status than minorities. Minorities are very committed because they often face hostile opposition. These features are usually absent from minority influence research - the minority is simply the smallest group

C: So Martin et al.’s findings are very limited in what they say about minority influence in real world situations

Artificial tasks

P: Tasks involved - such as identifying the colour of a slide - are as artificial as Asch’s line judgement task

E: Research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life. In cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning, the outcomes are vastly more important, sometimes even literally a matter of life and death

C: This means findings of minority influence studies are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real life social situations

Private agreement - Moscovici variation

P: In a variation of Moscovici’s blue-green slide study, participants were allowed to write their answers down, so their responses were private, rather than stated out loud

E:Private agreement with the minority position was greater in these circumstances. It appears that members of the majority were being convinced by the minority’s argument and changing their own views, but were reluctant to admit to this publicly. Moscovici thought that this was probably because they didn’t want to be associated with a minority position, for fear of being considered different or ‘weird’

C: supporting evidence that minority view can influence the majority

Issues and debates

Moscovici’s research can be criticised as being gynocentric since the results cannot be generalised to males