Minority Influence A03

Question 1

What is one strength for minority influence?

Answer 1

-P: there is research supporting consistency.
-E: Moscovici et al found a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on people than an inconsistent opinion, Wood et al supported this, conducting a META ANALYSIS finding almost 100 similar studies.
-E: Confirms that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.

Question 2

What is another strength for minority influence?

Answer 2

-P: Research is showing a role of deeper processing.
-E: Martin et al - gave participants a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured attitudes towards it, they heard all different views of it.
- showed that participants were less likely to change their opinions to new view if they had listened to minority than majority group.
-E: suggests that the minority message had been processed deeper than majority, increasing validity of this research.

Question 3

What is one limitation of minority influence?

Answer 3

-P: One limitation is that minority influence research often involves artificial tasks.
-E: Moscovici’s et al task was identifying the colour of a slide, this is different to how minorities try to actually change the majorities opinion.
-E: Lack external validity and are limited to what they tell us about how minority influence works in real -life situations.

Question 4

What is another strength of minority influence?

Answer 4

P: The power of minority influence.
E: Agreement with the minority was only 8% in Moscovi et al (so it was quite weak), BUT it was found that the participants agreed more in private, therefore the view from the minority had been internalised.
E: Minority influence is clearly very valid, and can change people’s views very powerfully.