Minority influence
- Created by: maddieecarr
- Created on: 07-04-22 15:02
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- Minority influence
- Definition: a form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. It leads to internalisationor conversion, in which their private attitudes and public behaviours change
- Consistency
- Definition: A minority is most effective in their influence if they keep the same beliefs over time (diachronic consistency) and across individuals (synchronic consistency)
- Flexibility
- Definition: A minority should be accepting of compromises to show flexibility to their cause. Relentless consistency with no flexibility would be counterproductive and would alienate the majority
- Commitment
- Definition: A minority is more powerful if they demonstrate dedication to their cause by making sacrifices etc. It shows they are not just acting out of self-interest
- Moscovici’s research into minority influence
- Procedure: 192 females were put into groups of six with two confederate. They were tasked to identify coloured slides as blue or green
- Consistent minority: confederate called slides green 2/3 of the time. Found 8.42% gave the wrong answer
- Inconsistent minority: confederates called slides green less frequently. Found 1.25% gave the wrong answer.
- Procedure: 192 females were put into groups of six with two confederate. They were tasked to identify coloured slides as blue or green
- Evaluation of minority influence
- Strengths
- Research supporting consistency by Moscovici and Wood
- Research support for deeper thought processing by Martin
- Research support for internalisationthrough a variation of Moscovici where participants wrote down their colour - higher conformity with the minority
- Weakness
- Artificiality of situations such as in Moscovici’s test means there is a lack of ecological validity
- Strengths
- The process of social change due to minority influence
- 1. Drawing attention to the cause
- 2. Consistency of the minority ([dia]synchronic)
- 3. Deeper processing of issue by majority
- 4. Augmentationprinciple
- 5. Snowball effect and many people now support the cause
- 6. Social cryptoamnesia - people forget about society before the change
- 5. Snowball effect and many people now support the cause
- 4. Augmentationprinciple
- 3. Deeper processing of issue by majority
- 2. Consistency of the minority ([dia]synchronic)
- 1. Drawing attention to the cause
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