Minority influence and social change

What is minority infuence?

• When members of a majority are converted to the views of a minority group

• The effectiveness of a minority can be affected by consistency, commitment and flexibility

What is consistency?

• 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 ad reconsider their own

What is commitment?

• 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

What is attribution theory?

• Describes the processes people use to assign motives to behaviour, both their own and others

• One feature outlined by Kelley is he augmentation principle, which suggests that if the someone performs an action Despite costs and risks, the augmentation principle, which suggests that if someone performs n action despite costs and risks, the underlying motive or attribute driving that action is considered particularly

What is flexibility?

• If seen dogmatic, minorities will not be persuasive; they need the ability to appear to consider valid counterarguments and show they are reasonable by slightly compromising

• This flexibility encourages majority members to move closer to the minority

• This flexibility encourages majority members to move closer to the minority position

Flexibility and Consistency

While flexibility and consistency contradict each other, 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

What is the snowball effect?

• Minorities changing majority opinions 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

• Additionally, the process of conversion also speeds up as the minority view improves in its acceptability

Evaluations of minority influence- consistency

• Consistency has been shown to help minorities influence members of the majority

• Moscovici 1969: displayed 36 blue sides of different shades to groups of four real ppts and two confederates- if the confederate minority consistently claimed every slide was green, ppts agreed on 8% of trials but only 1% trials when the minority was incosistent

• However, even in the consistent consistent condition, 68% of ppts never conformed t the minority

• This may mean that few people are receptive to the influence of a consistent minority group

Evaluations of minority influence- flexibility

• Flexibility has been shown to help minorities influence members of the majoriy

• Nemeth (1987) asked three real ppts and one confederate to act as a mock jury and decide on the level of compensation for the victim of an (imaginary) serious ski left accident

• When the confederate was inflexible, arguing for a low level of compensation ($50,000) and not changing position during negotiations, they were less able to convince members of the majority to lower their offers, than when they showed flexibility by increasing by increasing their offer to $100,000 during the negotiation

Lab-based studies on factors are highly artificial and results may not be generalisable

Real-examples of minority groups using commitment, flexibility and consistency

• Real life examples: The suffragettes showed commitment by going on hunger strike, and the leaders of the civil rights movement delivered speeches with consistent message of equality

• The LGBTQ+ rights movement campaign for civil partnerships, a strategic (flexible) compromise that ultimately led to the ultimate goal

What is social change?

When a view held by a minority group challenges the majority view and is eventually accepted by the majority- then whole societies (not just individuals) adopt new attitudes, beliefs or behaviours

The role of minority influence processes

• Minority groups are more successful in creating social change when they show consistency, commitment and flexibility in their views

• Gradually, the minority turns into the majority due to the snowball effect

Obedience

• Members of the government are a minority group that can enact dramatic social change by creating laws

• When laws are created, societies change to avoid punishment

• Examples include making in public places like pubs

Conformity

• NSI: Behaviours or views can become the norm within a minority group, such as recycling; those who go against this norm risk rejection- this norm can spread to the broader society

• ISI: Members of a minority group can provide information to the majority, such as the effects of climate change- wider society changes its behaviour because it accepts this new

What is social crypto-amnesia?

Describes how many society adopts ideas from a minority group;

• Once the mainstream accepts these ideas and they become the norm, the sacrifices made by the minority group in initiating these positive social changes are not acknowledged but are forgotten over time

The role of social influence processes in social change

• Leaders and activist in the civil rights movement in the US demonstrated consistency and commitment in their fight against racial segregation and for equality

• They presented a consistently unified front through nonviolent protests, sit-ins, and marches

• In many cases, they suffered abuse at the hands of law enforcement- these committed actions led many white Americans to reconsider their beliefs on segregation, and ultimately this movement led to significant social change- including the passing of the civil rights and voting acts

• Has practical applications- such as helping governments understand how to change people’s behaviour

• Social change often occurs over extended periods; deals with highly sensitive topics, such as inequality- the sum of interactions of millions of members of society; highly controlled experimental laboratory research on social change is not possible meaning clear cause-and-effect relationships can’t be established