Minority Influence Flashcards
What is minority influence?
A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours.
Leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.
What is the difference between minority influence and majority influence?
Minority influence refers to situations where one person or a small group of people influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people. This is distinct from majority influence where it is the majority doing the influencing.
With majority influence people identify with the majority and try to ‘fit in’ without question the message.
Minority influence creates a conversion process whereby people question the message and want to understand why the minority hold this position and internalise the minority’s point of view.
What type of conformity creates conversion?
Internalisation
What three factors are important in achieving minority influence?
Consistency, commitment and flexibility.
Describe the role of consistency in minority influence
Why is it effective
This consistency might be agreement between people in the minority group (they’re all saying they same thing),
consistency over time (they’ve been saying the same thing for some time now).
maybe they’ve got a point if they all think this way
maybe they’ve got a point if they have kept saying it
Effective:
—> increases the amount of interest / Draws attention from other people.
Explain the role of commitment in minority influence
Why is it effective
Sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views. It is important that these extreme activities pose some risk - (sacrifice) to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause
Majority group members then pay even more attention (‘wow, he must really believe in what he’s saying so perhaps I ought to consider his view’). This is called the augmentation principle. - personal sacrifice
—> minority not acting out of self interest (+more attention)
Describe what role flexibility plays in minority influence
Why is it effective?
Willing to compromise and reasonable and accept counter arguments
Too much consistency can be seen as rigid, unbending and inflexible.
This is off-putting to the majority and unlikely to result in any conversions to the minority position
—> to not be seen as dogmatic/rigid (put off majority)
What study provides supporting research evidence for the importance of CONSISTENCY in minority influence?
Moscovici et al:
6 people asked to view a set of blue- coloured slides that varied in intensity.
Then state whether they were blue or green
6 people: 4 real 2 confederates
Consistent condition:
2 Confederates called the blue slides green on every trial.
Inconsistent condition
2 confederates called the slides green on 2/3 of the trials and blue on the remaining trials.
Control condition there were no confederates and all they had to do was identify the colour of each slide.
findings:
consistent
minority influenced the real participants to say ‘green’ on 8% of the trials
inconsistent
minority exerted very little influence and did not differ significantly from the control group.
Conclusion Consistency does have an effect on majority
—> Supports role of consistency in minors influence.
What research study provides support for FLEXIBILITY in minority influence?
Nemeth and Brilmayer’s jury simulation
Describe Nemeth and Brilmayer’s study and how it supports flexibility
Nemeth and Brilmayer studies the role of flexibility in a simulated jury situation where group members had to discuss how much compensation they were going to pay someone who had been in a ski lift accident. When a confederate, acting as a consistent minority, argued for a low amount and refused to change his mind, he had no effect on the majority.
However when he compromised a little and moved to offering slightly more, the majority changed their opinion to a lower amount. This shows that minorities need to be flexible to be persuasive.
EVALUATION of the importance of consistency for, commitment and flexibility on minority influence.
S
S
L
L
S- Research evidence - consistency (MOSCOVICI)
S-Reseach eveidence - Flexibility
(Nemeth and Brilmayer)
L- Research relies on artificial tasks
L limited real work application
Evaluation of minority influence research:
use of artificial tasks
tasks involved such as identifying the colour of a a slide are highly artificial.
In cases such as jury decision making the outcomes are vastly more important, sometimes even literally a matter of life or death.
Research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life.
This means findings of minority influence studies such as Moscovici’s and Nemeth are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real-life social situations.
Evaluation of minority influence research:
Limited practical application
Research studies usually make a very clear and obvious distinction between the majority and the minority.
But a significant limitation is that real life social influence situations are much more complicated than this.
There is more involved in the difference between a minority and a majority than just numbers.
For example, majorities usually have a lot more power and status than minorities.
Minorities are very committed to their causes - they have to be because they often face very hostile opposition.
This is is a limitation as it is hard to apply these concepts to real life as it is more complicated therefore limits its application.
Jenny is a psychology teacher who works with six other teachers in the department. Jenny believes strongly that homework should not be graded as it distracts students from reading verbal feedback on their work. She would like her colleagues to stop grading work. The other members of the department do not agree but have told Jenny they are willing to have a meeting about it.
Using your knowledge of minority influence, explain how Jenny might be able to persuade
the rest of the department to accept her view.
[6 marks]
Jenny should demonstrate CONSISTENCY OF POSITION by not deviating from her view that not grading work is a good idea despite social pressure – she could point out that this is a view that she has held throughout her teaching career
Jenny should demonstrate COMMITMENT by placing herself at some risk/inconvenience – she may volunteer to field criticisms from students, parents, other departments, etc.
This will draw more attention to her ‘cause’ (AUGMENTATION PRINCIPLE)
Jenny should demonstrate FLEXIBILITY by adapting her view/accepting other valid counterarguments. Perhaps some pieces of work could be ungraded but not all – for instance, grading mock exams but not homework
over time, the rest of the department may become ‘converted’ (SNOW BALL EFFECT ) – for example, if Jenny’s students start to perform particularly well
