Psychology, Minority influence: Consistency, Commitment and Flexibility

What is Minority Influence?

When members of a majority group are converted to the views of a minority. The effectiveness of a minority can be affected by consistency, commitment and flexibility.

What is Consistency?

Consistency is 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 majority position and reconsider their own.

What is Commitment?

Commitment is when 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 Flexibility?

Flexibility is seen as 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 position.

What is Attribution theory?

Attribution theory is the process people use to assign motives to behaviour, both their own and others. One feature outlined by Kelley is the augmentation principle, which suggests that if someone performs an action despite costs and risks, underlying motives or attribute driving that action is considered particularly strong.

What is the snowball effect?

The snowball effect is when minorities change majority opinions start 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.

What do flexibility and consistency have in common?

While flexibility and consistency seem to contradict each other, a balance between these two factors is needed to appear reasonable and open minded, as well as having a clear, thought-though, and stable opinion.

Evaluation Points for Minority influence?

Strength - Flexibility has been shown to help minorities influence members of the majority. Nemeth (1987) asked three real participants 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 their offer to £100,000 during the negotiation.

Limitation - Lab based studies on factors affecting minority influence, such as Moscovici and Nemeth, are highly artificial and may not be valid when generalised to real world minority influence. In real life, those trying to convince us are often friends and family, and the topics are likely to be important social issues, not meaningless tasks like stating the colour of a slide.

Strength - There are many real life examples of minority groups using commitment, flexibility and consistency to influence members of the majority population. For example, the suffragettes showed commitment by going on hunger strike, and the leaders of the civil rights movement delivered speeches with a consistent message of equality.

What is social change?

Social change is 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.

What is the 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.

What is obedience in the context of social change?

Obedience is when 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 smoking in public areas like pubs, illegal, anti discrimination laws, and regulating behaviour during a pandemic.

What is Conformity in the context if social change?

Normative social influence - Behaviours or views can become the norm within a minority group, such as recycling, vaping, or fitness in younger people; those who go against this norm risk rejection. This norm can then spread to the boarder society.

Informational social influence - Members if a minority group can provide information to the majority, such as the effects of climate change. Wider society changes its behaviour because this new evidence.

What is Social Crypto Amnesia?

Social Crypto Amnesia describes how society adopts ideas from a minority group, however, 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.

AO3 Evaluations for the role of social influence processes in social change

Strength - The LGBTQ+ rights movement has used a combination of consistency in its core message of equality and rights, alongside flexibility to influence societal change. For example, the gay community successfully campaigned for civil partnerships, a strategic (flexible) compromise that ultimately led to the full legalisation of same sex marriage.

Limitation - Social change often occurs over extended periods, deals with highly sensitive topics, such as inequality, discrimination, or social unrest and its the sum of the interactions of millions of members of society; for this reason, for this reason highly controlled experimental laboratory research on social change is not possible.

Strength - Social influence research as practical applications, such as helping governments understand how to change peoples behaviour. For example, persuading people to eat healthily or take sensible social distance precautions during a pandemic.