Minority Influence

The type of social pressure that was studied by Asch is known as majority influence. 

There is a second type of conformity that occurs when a single person or a small group of people changes the views of a larger group, effectively converting others to their position. This is known as minority influence.

Minority influence is most likely to lead to internalisation- where both public behaviour and private beliefs are changed.

Moscovici et al (1969) demonstrated minority influence in a study where a group of six people were asked to view a set of 36 blue-coloured slides that varied in intensity and then state whether the slides were blue or green,

In each group, tow confederated consistently said the slides were green on two-thirds of the trials. The participants gave the same wrong answer on 8.42% of trials, 32% gave the same answer as the minority on at least one trial.

A second group of participants were exposed to an inconsistent minority and agreement fell to 1,25%.

For a third control group there wew no confederates and all participants had to do was identify the colour of each slide. They got this wrong on just 0.255% of the trials.

This study and other research has drawn attention to the main process in minority influence.

Over time, the consistency in the minority's views increases the amount of interest from other people.

The consistency might be agreement between people in the minority group (known as synchronic consistency- all saying the same thing), and/or consistency over time (known as diachronic consistency- they have been saying the same thing for some time).

Such consistency makes other people start to rethink their own ideas.

Sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views.

It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause.

Majority group members then pay even more attention and this is called the augmentation principle.

Nemeth (1986) 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 argue=ments and behaviours again and again can be seen as rigid, unbending and inflexible.

This is off-putting to the majority and is unlikely to result in any conversations to the minority position.

Instead, members of the minority need to be prepared to apapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter-arguments.

The key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility.

All of the three factors outlined make people think about a topic.

If you hear something which agrees with what you already believe it doesn't make you stop and think, but if you hear something new then you might think about it, especially if the source of this other view is consistent and passionate.

It is this deeper processing that is important in the process ofo conversion to a different, minority viewpoint.

Over time, increasing numbers of people switch from the majority psoition to the minority position. they have become 'converted'.

The more that this happens, the faster the rate of conversion. Thisis called the snowball effect.

Gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occured.

STRENGTH

Reasearch evidence demonstrates the importance of consistency as Moscovici et al (1969) found that a consistent minority opinion had greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion.

Wood et al (1994) conducted a meta analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities seen as being consistent were more influential.

This confirms that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.

STRENGTH

Research evidence shows change to the minority position involves deeper thought.

Martin et al (2003) gave participants a message supporting a particular viewpoint, and the attitudes were measured.

They then held an endorsement of the view from either a minority or a majority.

Finally, they heard a conflicting view: attitudes were measured again.

People were less willing to change their opinions to the new conflicting view if they had listened to a majority group than if they had listened to a minority group.

This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect.

LIMITATION

The minority influence research often involves artifical tasks such as Moscovici's slide colour identification which was far removed from how minorities try to change opinion in real life.

During jury decision-making and political campaigning, outcomes are vastly more important, maybe a matter of life of death.

Findings from studies lack external validity and are more limited in what they tell us about how minority influence works in real-life situations.

LIMITATION

The applications of minority influence research are limited.

Studies make a clear distinction between majority and minority, but real-life situations are more complicated. 

The differnce is about more than just numbers, majorities usually have power and status where as miniorities are committed and tight-knit groups whose members know and support each other.

Minority influence research rarely reflects the dynamics of these groups so findings may not apply to real-life minority influence situations which exert a more powerful influence.

STRENGTH

Research supports the involvement of internalisation in minority influence.

Moscovici varied his study: participants wrote their answers down, so their responses where private.

Agreement in the minority was greater which shows that internalisation took place.

Members of the majority had been reluctant to admit their 'conversion' publicly which shows that people may be influenced by a minority but don't admit it therefore meaning that the effect of the minority is not apparent.