Minority Influence

Question 1

Minority Influence

Answer 1

• a form of social influence in which a minority of poeple persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours
• leads to internalusation or conversion in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours

Question 2

Consistency

Answer 2

• the minority group must be consistent in their views- over time this consistency increases the amount of interest from other people
• consistency can take the form of agreement between people in the minority group and/or consistency over time
• a consistent minority makes other people start to rethink their own views

Question 3

Commitment

Answer 3

• the minority must demonstrate commitment to thier cause or views
• sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views- important that these extreme activities pose risk which shows greater commitment
• majority group members then pay even more attention- augmentation principle

Question 4

Flexibility

Answer 4

• Reletntless consistency could be counter productive if seen by the majority as unbending and unreasonable
• therefore minority influence is more effective if the minority show flexibility by accepting the possibility of compromise

Question 5

Explaining the process of change

Answer 5

• deeper processing of committed, flexible yet consistent views that is important in the process of conversion to a different viewpoint
• the more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion- the snowball effect
• gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occurred

Question 6

Research support for consistency

strength

Answer 6

• Moscovici’s blue/green slide study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people than an inconsistent opinion
• Wendy Wood carried out a meta-analysis of 100 similar studies and found that minorities that were consistent were most influential
• this suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority

Question 7

artificial task

limitation

Answer 7

• Moscovici’s task of identifying the colour of a slide is far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life
• in cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning the outcomes are vastly more important
• this means the findings of minority influence studies are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real world social situations