Social influence: Minority influence Flashcards
Background
Greta Thumburg
- Challenges world leaders to take immediate action against climate change
- Student strikes took place every week
Environmental organisations:
- Extinction rebellion- global environmental movement- uses non violent civil disobedience to compel government action on climate change.
- Just stop oil- aim of stopping new fossil fuel extraction projects and drawing attention to the imports and service calls.
Minority influence
assumptions=
Societies are not typically static
– marked by innovation, change and development
If only majority influence, where would change come from?
– influence of minorities
However, many minorities lack power
– How can (initially) powerless minorities come to exert influence?
How have these been challenged?
- Moscovici challenged this view in the late 60s- He argued that if the majority was indeed all powerful, we would all end up thinking the same. But we know societies can be changed in many ways.
- If majority influence is the only way for us to push people to change their opinions and beliefs, then where with innovation and change come from. One possibility is majorities change together in the face of new dramatic circumstances (such as a natural disaster or an economic disaster). But this is not enough to explain social change.
- Movements have been used (eg. religious or LGBTQ+ movements)
- Having an initial minority advocate a certain position that differs from the majority seems important for achieving social change.
- Changes in the way we think about things can come from people with passing beliefs that are different from the majority.
Social influence definitions
- Majority influence
- Minority influence
- Majority influence (conformity)
“Social influence resulting from exposure to the opinions of a majority or the majority of one’s group” - Minority influence (innovation)
“Situation in which either an individual or a group in a numerical minority can influence the majority”
What are the 4 behavioural style characteristics minorities should adopt according to Moscovici (to achieve social change)
- Consistency (over time and between members)- important because for the audience that is viewing and listening to this minority, this consistency inspires certainty and confidence in this position. Convinces them, elicits more trust.
- Investment (significant personal or material sacrifice)- in order to uphold their beliefs, they gain more attention and respect. The sacrifices leave the observers question ‘why are these people going to such great lengths to advance their positions?’
- Autonomy (no ulterior motives)- less likely to open up to a minorities position if we think that they are not autonomous
- Rigidity (not dogmatic, yet consistent …)
Conversion theory
- what did Moscovici develop?
- what does it propose?
- majority
- minority
- Moscovici developed a conflict model - provoke conversion
- Proposes minority influence is qualitatively different from majority influence (because majority influence primarily operates through compliance- we go along with the majority because we are afraid to stand up against the majority)
— Majority - primarily induces compliance (public conformity) through comparison processes (low attention to the issue). We can agree with the majority purely through the fear of ostracisation.
— Minority - private change through cognitive conflict and restructuring through validation processes (high attention to the issue)- they’re pushing us to validate and reexamine our own views which can induce change on a private level.
sum- Moscovici’s analysis proposes a dual process of social influence whereby majority and minority influence operate differently. For example- when we’re exposed to majority that shows consensus on a certain issue we are unlikely to give it much attention but when we are exposed to a minority that disagrees with us, we tend to think about the issue more deeply.
What did Moscovici argue for when minorities express deviant views?
Moscovici argued that when minorities express deviant views, they provoke us and create a psychological conflict within us. As they insist in our views, they can get on our nerves and we may reject what they’re saying but we’re starting to have to think about their message.
Example of the kind of experiments moscovici set up
Blue slide
Participants asked what colour is this slide?
(most people will say blue)
How would you respond if you were in a group and some of the other members said this slide was green?
Moscovici, Lage & Naffrechoux (1969)
Explain the experiment
- 4 naïve and 2 confederates
- pp’s would have to say out loud the colour of a set of slides one by one
3 conditions:
- Colour perception task - actually blue slides that varied in intensity
- Consistent condition - confederates called all slides green
- Inconsistent condition - confederates called two-thirds of the slides green, one-third blue
Moscovici, Lage & Naffrechoux (1969)
Results
- 0.2% green responses in control condition
- 1.1% green responses in inconsistent condition
- 8.2% green responses in consistent condition
Colour thresholds
Procedure
- Ostensibly a second experiment - a different experimenter administered a standardised test of colour discrimination
- Each participant tested alone
- they were shown slides of different colours but they were slides which were both blue and green (they varied in intensity)
- experimenters interested in whether now that pp’s were being tested alone and had no external pressure, at what point would they say a blue slide is actually green. Would their threshold of perception change and would they show a lower threshold after being exposed to this minority.
Colour thresholds
Results
- Both experimental groups showed lower threshold for green than the controls (this showed there was a lasting effect of being exposed to the minority)
- Minority - not just public behaviour but also private, cognitive changes
- Surprisingly, this effect was greater for pp’s who were resistant against minority (the pp’s who did not publicly call the blue slides green when they were with the others, once they came to do the task alone, those are the ones that lowered the threshold the most).
Moscovici & Lage (1976)
Procedure
- 5 conditions
- Compared minority and majority influence
- consistent minority (2 confederates; 4 naive)
- inconsistent minority (2 confederates; 4 naive)
- A single consistent confederate
- Unanimous majority (3 confederates; 1 naïve)
- Non-unanimous majority (4 confederates; 2 naïve)
Moscovici & Large (1976) Results- minority influence
- Minority influence
- Overt responses
– Two consistent confederates (10% green)- consistent minority giving an incorrect response succeeds in changing 10% of the responses.
– Two inconsistent confederates (< 1% green)- this results in almost no change of the pp’s responses
– A single consistent confederate (1% green)- this results in almost no change of the pp’s responses
So we are changing opinions only when confronted with consistent minority
Moscovici & Large (1976) Results- compared minority and majority influence
- Compared minority and majority influence
- Overt responses
– Two consistent confederates (10% green)
– Unanimous majority (40% green)
– Non unanimous majority (12% green )
Majority influence was the largest- resulted in 40% of responses turning out to be green. But when the majority is non unanimous (most people saying green but one maybe saying blue) we find conformity rates drop and become 12%.
The consistent minority was just as effective as non unanimous majority in changing the responses (10% and 12%).
- But only the consistent minority condition shifted participants’ colour thresholds. (the pp’s actual perception only changes when they’re exposed to the consistent minority).
These results are taken as evidence for Moscovicis idea that minority influence is better at inducing deep lasting change rather than near superficial public conformity.
Latent or indirect effects
Conversion theory (1980)
- Attention to arguments > Private acceptance (When exposed to disagreeing minority eventually you start to pay attention to their arguments and this can lead you to get persuaded by them if they are powerful enough. So this can lead to private acceptance)
- Latent (time) and indirect effects (indirect effects= minority influence may not initially succeed at affecting the exact opinion you are trying to influence but it may succeed at changing another opinion that is related to it)
