Minority influence

What is minority influence?

A form of social influence which occurs when an individual or small group of people influence a larger group to change their attitude or behaviour towards an issue.

How does minority and majority influence differ?

Minority influence differs from majority influence as a process of conversion happens as opposed to compliance. With conversion, people will scrutinise the message (which they don’t tend to do in compliance). As a result, when conversion occurs the level of process is deeper and it tends to outlast the groups presence.

What did Moscivici propose?

four behavioural styles, which if a  minority group has, they are likely to be more successful in converting the majority

What are the behaviour styles?

Consistency

● Commitment

● Flexibility

● Relevance to societY

What is consistency?

Over time, consistency in the minority’s views increases the amount of interest from other people. Consistency makes others rethink their own views

What are the two types of consistency?

• Synchronic consistency – people in the minority are all saying the same thing

• Diachronic consistency – they have been saying the same thing for a long time

What is commitment?

• Commitment is important in the influence process because it suggests certainty, confidence and courage in the face of a hostile majority

• However, it can be hard to do without appearing inflexible

• To join a minority the degree of commitment is generally higher, as is the cost to the individual, than staying with a majority

• Due to this greater degree of commitment, the minority are more likely to persuade the majority group members to take them seriously or even convert to the minority position

• This increases the amount of interest further from majority group members - the augmentation principle

What is flexibility?

• It is argued that the key is how the majority interprets consistency

• If the consistent minority are seen as inflexible, rigid, uncompromising and dogmatic, they will be unlikely to change the views of the majority

• However, if they appear flexible and compromising, they are likely to be seen as less extreme, as more moderate, cooperative and reasonable

• As a result, they will have a better chance of changing majority views

• Nemeth (1986) argued that if the minority is seen as being inflexible and uncompromising then

• the majority are unlikely to change. The minority should balance consistency and flexibility so they do not appear rigid

What is the process of change?

• All three of the factors (consistency, commitment, flexibility) make people think about the topic

• Over time, people become ‘converted’ and switch from the minority to the majority – the more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion (the snowball effect)

• Gradually the minority view becomes the majority and social change has occurred

What is the relevance to society?

• It has been suggested that society has to be ready to accept the change the minority group are championing

• For example same-sex marriage could not have been accepted by the majority in the 1950’s as being gay was still classified as a mental illness

Moscovici (1969) - ‘blue slide, green slide’ study: aim

• to investigate the effects of a consistent minority on a majority

• 172 female participants were initially given eye tests to ensure they were not colour blind

• They were then placed into groups consisting of 4 participants and 2 confederates

Moscovici (1969) - ‘blue slide, green slide’ study: procedure

The groups were shown 36 slides of varying shades of blue and asked to state the colour out loud.

○ Condition 1: The confederates were consistent and answered green for every slide.

○ Condition 2: The confederates were inconsistent and answered green 24 times and blue 12 times

Moscovici (1969) - ‘blue slide, green slide’ study: findings

○ Condition 1 (consistent) – ppts agreed with the confederates on 8.42% of the trials

○ Condition 2 (inconsistent) – ppts agreed with the confederates on 1.25% of the trials

○ In the control group (no confederates) ppts identified the colour of the slide incorrectly on just 0.25% of the trials

Moscovici (1969) - ‘blue slide, green slide’ study: conclusion

A consistent minority is more effective than an inconsistent

minority. Consistency is an important factor in minority influence

Evaluation of Moscovics research

• Sample of 172 female participants from America

• Unable to generalise the results to other populations

• Cannot conclude that male participants would respond to minority influence in the same way (females are more likely to conform)

• Moscovici has also been criticised for deceiving his participants, as participants were told that they were taking part in a colour perception test

• This also means that Moscovici did not gain fully informed consent. Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Moscovici’s experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results

(1986) study which suggests the importance of flexibility

• Nemeth investigated the idea of flexibility in which participants, in groups of four, had to agree on the amount of compensation they would give to a victim of a ski-lift accident

• One of the participants in each group was a confederate and there were two conditions:

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

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

• Nemeth found that in the inflexible condition, the minority had little or no effect on the majority, however in the flexible condition, the majority was much more likely to compromise and change their view

• Nemeth’s research highlights the importance of flexibility but questions the idea of consistency

• On the one hand, Moscovici shows that minorities need to be consistent, whereas Nemeth shows that minorities need to be flexible

Xie’s (2011) study which supports the importance of commitment

• Xie et al. (2011) found 10% of committed opinion holders was necessary to 'tip' a majority into accepting the minority position

• However, the minority was only successful if they were also consistent in their viewpoint

• This shows that commitment and consistency are both needed if minority

• influence is to be effective

Evaluation of MI Research

Evaluation of MI Research

• Sampson (1991) is particularly critical of laboratory research on minority influence

• He makes the following points.

• The participants in laboratory experiments are rarely 'real groups'

• More often than not they are a collection of students who do not know each other and will probably never meet again

• They are also involved in an artificial task

• As such they are very different from minority groups in the wider society who seek to change majority opinion

Issue & Debate - Nomothetic

• Research is nomothetic

• General laws to predict minority behaviour - useful

• However, ignores individual difference