Minority influence

Describe minority influence

• When one person/small group influence beliefs & behaviours of other people

• Most likely results in internalisation - both public behaviour & private attitudes change

Consistency

• Minority must be consistent in views, consistency increases amount of interest from others

→ Synchronic - consistency - all believe in same views

→ Diachronic consistency - all saying same thing for some time

Commitment

• Augmentation principle

• Minorities demonstrate commitment to their cause/views

• Minorities engage in extreme behaviour that poses a risk to themselves, presenting greater commitment

Flexibility

• Charlan Nemeth 1986 argued consistency portrays minority group as rigid, unbending & dogmatic, which solely is unlikely to gain many converts to minority position

• Instead, minority group members need to adapt their point of view & accept reasonable & valid counter-arguments, creating a balance between consistency & flexibility

• Snowball effect - Over time, increasing numbers of people switch from majority to minority position, speeding up conversion rates. Gradually, minority view has become the majority view & social change has occurred

Evaluation - research support for consistency

• One strength is research evidence demonstrating importance of consistency

• Mosivici et al.s blue/green slide study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect of changing views than an inconsistent opinion

• Wendy Wood et al (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of 100 similar studies & found that minorities seen as most consistent were most consistent were most influential

• This suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for minority influence

Evaluation - research support for deeper processing & counterpoint

• One strength is evidence showing that a change in majority’s position involves deeper processing of minority’s ideas

• Robin Martin et al (2007) presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint & measured participants’ agreement

• One group of participants then heard a minority group agree with initial view whilst another group heard a majority group agree

• Participants exposed to conflicting views and attitudes measured again

• People less willing to change opinion if they listened to minority rather than majority

• Suggests minority message more deeply processed & more enduring effect, supporting central argument of minority influence

• Counterpoint: Research studies e.g Martin et al’s make clear distinctions between majority & minority, but real-world situations are more complicated e.g majorities have more power & status, This feature is usually absent in controlled studies therefore Martin et al. findings lack ecological validity

Evaluation - Artificial tasks

• One limitation is artificial tasks, including Mosoviciet al’s task of identifying colour of slide

• In cases e.g jury decision making, political campaigning, outcomes are more serious, implying findings of minority influence studies lack in external validity are limited in ecological validity