Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
MINORITY INFLUENCE., Control group, Consistent group, Inconsistent group,…
MINORITY INFLUENCE.
Consistency.
According to minority influence research, the influence of a minority is most effective when it is consistent:
- Intra-individual, where a person maintains a consistent position over time.
- Inter-individual, where there is agreement among members of the minority group.
Over time, the consistency in the minority’s views increases the amount of interest from other people.
Keywords:
Synchronic consistency: They are all saying the same thing.
diachronic consistency: Consistency over time - they have been saying the same thing for some time now.
Such consistency makes other people start to re-think their own views.
CONSISTENCY experiment.
Moscovici stated that being consistent and unchanging in a view is more likely to influence the majority than if a minority is inconsistent and chops and changes their mind.
Procedure:
- Moscovici conducted an experiment in which female participants were shown 36 blue slides of different intensities and asked to report the colours.
- There were two confederates (the minority) and four participants (the majority).
- In the first part of the experiment, the two confederates answered green for each of the 36 slides.
- They were totally consistent in their responses.
- In the second part of the experiment, they answered green 24 times and blue 12 times.
- In this case, they were inconsistent in their answers.
- A control group was also used consisting of participants only – no confederates.
Findings: When the confederates were consistent in their answers about 8% of participants said the slides were green. When the confederates answered inconsistently about 1% of participants Said the slides were green.
Commitment.
Minorities can exert influence by showing dedication, i.e. being willing to make sacrifices if necessary.
This gives the minority’s message credibility because people are unlikely to be prepared to suffer for a cause that is not worthwhile.
Gradually respect for the minority view grows and the majority is converted.
Sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme actives to draw attention to their views. It is important that these extreme actives are at some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause. Majority group members then pay even more attention. This is called the augmentation principle.
ie: ‘Wow, he must really believe in what he’s saying so perhaps I ought to consider his view’.
Flexibility.
Merely to adopt a rigid position could lead to the perception of the minority as being dogmatic and narrow minded.
Majority opinions shifts more if the minority is flexible.
Nemeth 1986
He argued that consistency is not the only important factor in minority influence because it can be interpreted negatively. Being extremely consistent and repeating the same arguments and behaviours, again and again, can be seen as rigid, unbending, dogmatic, and inflexible. This is off-putting to the majority and unlikely to result in any conversions to the minority positions.
Instead...
Members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable valid counter-arguments. The key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility.
Their experiment was based on a mock jury in which groups of three participants and one confederate had to decide on the amount of compensation to be given to the victim of a ski-lift accident. When the consistent minority (the confederate) argued for a very low amount and refused to change his position, he had no effect on the majority. However, when he compromised and moved some way towards the majority position, the majority also compromised and changed their view.
This experiment questions the importance of consistency. The minority position changed, it was not consistent, and it was this change that apparently resulted in minority influence.
Social change.
Social change occurs when a whole society adopts a new belief or behavior which then becomes widely accepted as the ‘norm’. Social influence processes involved in social change include minority influence, internal locus of control, and disobedience to authority.
All three factors make people think about the topic. If you hear something with agrees with what you already believe it doesn’t make you stop and think. If you hear something new, when you might think about it, especially, if the source of this other view is consistent and passionate. It is deeper processing which is important in the process of conversion to different, minority viewpoint.
Over time, increasing numbers of people switch from the majority position to the minority position. They have become ‘converted’. The more that this happens, the faster the rate of conversion. This us called the snowball effect. Gradually, the minority view has become the majority view and change has occurred.
The majority opinion then becomes law, and people have to obey this law. Once this happens, the minority opinion has become the dominant position in society, and people do often not even remember where the opinion originated from. This is a process known as crypto amnesia.
Participants were shown a series of 36 'blue' slides and asked either they were blue or green. The participants were placed in three groups.
Conclusion.
- Participants were all females (he thought that they would enjoy the task)- this gender bias.
- Lacks ecological validity as they were in a laboratory setting- not like real life.
- Lacks mundane realism – choosing colours has no real bearing on real-life consequences, people may take more care not to be influenced if it affected their life.
-
-
Consistent group
- 2/6 were confederates and answered green.
Inconsistent group
- 2/6 were confederates and answered green. 2/3 of the time were inconsistent.
Minority influence occurs when a small group (minority) influences the opinion of a much larger group (majority). This can happen when the minority behaves in the following ways.
-
-
-