Zusammenfassung der Ressource
1.9 Minority Influence
- Occurs when a minority/small group of people have
the ability to influence others to adopt their beliefs
and behaviours. This leads to internalisation or
conversion. Private beliefs, like public, are changed.
- 3 processes
- Consistency
- Minority must be consistent
- Synchronic consistency
- All saying the same thing
- Diachronic consistency
- Have been saying the same thing for some time now
- A consistent minority makes
other people rethink their own
views
- Commitment
- Augmentation principle
- Minorities engage in extreme activities to draw
attention and present risk to highlight
commitment.
- Flexibility
- Charles Nemeth (1986)
- Consistency can be off-putting. May be seen as
rigid, dogmatic and unbending.
- Instead minorities should adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and
valid counter-argument. To balance flexibility.
- Process of change
- Hearing something you agree with
doesnt make you stop and think, it is
something new that will make you
think deeply.
- Snowball effect
- Deeper processing leads to the process of
conversion, overtime rate of conversion
increases and "gathers more snow"
- Evaluation
- Strengths
- Research support for consistency
- Moscovici et al
- Blue/green slide study showed that a
consistent minority opinion had a
greater effect on changing the views
of other people.
- Wendy Wood et al (1994) carried out a
meta-analysis of 100 similar studies and found
that consistent minorities were most influential
- Research support for deeper processing
- Martin et al (2003) presented a message
supporting a viewpoint and measured the
participants agreement. 1 group then heard a
minority agree with the initial view and
another heard a majority.
- Participants were exposed to
a conflicting view then
measured their views and
attitudes. Less willing to
change their view if they had
heard a minority influence.
- Minority message had been more deeply
processed and had a more enduring effect.
- Weaknesses
- Artificial tasks
- Research is removed from how minorities
attempt to change the behaviour of
majorities in real life. Jury decision making
and political campaigning has vastly more
important outcomes.
- Findings of minority influence studies lack external
validity so are limited in telling us how the world
works.
- Real world is more complicated
- Majorities in the real world are more
powerful and hold a lot more status.