minority influence

refers to situations where one person or a small group influences the beliefs and behaviours of other people. most likely to lead to internalisation

consistency - where the minority keeps the same beliefs over time and between all individuals in the minority. this draws attention to the minority and makes people start to rethink their own views - 'maybe they've got a point in they keep saying it/ if they all think this way'

commitment - when minorities engage in extreme activities that pose a risk to them to demonstrate the cause is important and to make the majority pay more attention to them (the augmentation principle)

flexibility - where members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their arguments so minorities are not seen as unbending or inflexible. repeating the same arguments can be seen as rigid which is off putting to the majority. members of the minority need to be able to adapt their argument and compromise.

synchronic consistency - all saying the same thing

diachronic consistency - been saying the same thing for some time

the process of change

if you hear something new you are more likely to think about it especially if the source is passionate and consistent

deeper processing is important in the process of conversion to a minority viewpoint

overtime increasing numbers of people switch from majority to minority - they have converted. the more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion.called the snowball effect where what started out as the minority has now become the majority

key study - Moscovici et al

  • group of 6 asked to view a set of 36 coloured slides that varied in intensity and state whether the slide was green or blue
  • 2 confederates in each group who consistently said the slides were green on 2 out of 3 trials.
  • participants gave same wrong answer on 8.42% of trials and 32% gave same answer as minority on at least one trial
  • the second group were exposed to an inconsistent minority and agreement fell to 1.25%
  • the third group had no confederates and all participants had to do was identify the colour of each slide. they got the answer wrong on just 0.25% of the trials.

evaluation

strength - there is evidence that demonstrates the importance of consistency. Moscovici et al's study showed that consistency had a greater effect on other people than a consistent opinion. also wood et al carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were the most consistent were the most influential. this suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence, showing that a consistent minority can influence the opinion of a majority

strength - there is evidence to show that a change to a minority position involves a deeper processing of ideas. Martin et al gave participants a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured their support. one group of participants heard a minority group agree with the initial statement and the other heard this from a majority group. they were all exposed to a conflicting view and Martin et al found that people were willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group rather than the majority. this shows the minority message was more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect.

limitation - application of minority influence is limited. studies make a clear distinction between minority and majority but this is much harder to do in real life situations. minorities in the real world usually have less power and status and therefore cannot get their message across as easily as majorities.

limitation - artificial tasks are often used in research. participants in the moscovici experiment were asked to identify the colour of slides which lacks mundane realism. this research. is far removed from how minorities change behaviour in the real world where there are real consequences