Mod 3 minority influence

Minority influence

Specificaton:

Minority influence including reference to consistency. Commitment and flexibility

Minority influence

Serge Moscovici

Minority influence

• Hitler and the Nazi party were a minority that influenced the majority of Germans to change their attitudes, beliefs and behaviour.

Minority influence

Moscovici thought that social psychologists had failed to recognise that a minority could influence the majority to produce social change.

Minority influence

Minority social influence is a form of social influence where a persuasive minority exerts pressure to change the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviours of the majority.

Minority influence: Moscovici’s blue/green slide study (1969)

• To find out how a minority can influence a majority to change their beliefs Moscovici designed a repeated measures lab experiment based on Asch’s line experiments.

• Instead of lines he used 36 blue slides.

Moscovici’s blue/green slide study (1969)

Aim:

To see whether a consistent minority of participants could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception task.

Procedure:

172 participants were involved. All had good eyesight.

Six participants at a time were asked to estimate the colour of 36 slides.

All the slides were blue, but of differing brightness.

Moscovici’s blue/green slide study (1969)

Procedure:

•Two of the six participants were confederates of the experimenter.

•There were two conditions:-Consistent: the two confederates called all 36 slides green .-Inconsistent: the two confederates called the slides green 24 times and blue 12 times.

Blue/green slide study (1969)

Read p.40 of the social influence booklet.

1. What did Moscovici find?

2. What did Moscovici conclude?

3. Were the findings caused by normative social influence or informational social influence?

4. Why did Moscovici test the eyesight of the participants?

5. State one limitation of a repeated measures design.

6. State one strength of a repeated measures design.

Minority influence: consistency

Moscovici concluded that a minority had to be consistent in their opposition to the majority if they were to influence the majority and produce social change.



• Moscovici also concluded that minorities use informational social influence to persuade those in the majority to change their views.

• He argued that minorities are aiming for conversion rather than compliance. They hope by focussing on the issue, the majority will come to examine the arguments proposed by the minority. In turn this may start the process of conversion.

Evaluation: consistency

•Moscovici’s blue/green slide study was a lab experiment.

•The artificiality of the lab setting and task is unlike real-life situations where minorities such as pressure groups exert their influence on the prevailing majority opinion.

•However, later research has backed up Moscovici’s conclusion that consistency is important in helping a minority to influence a majority to change it’s viewpoint.

Evaluation: consistencyTwelve Angry Men study (1994)


• Clark conducted a more realistic study to find out if consistency was important in helping a minority to influence a majority and change its viewpoint.

• 270 college students were asked to role play the part of jurors and read a summary of a court case presented in the film 12 Twelve Angry Men.

• The students had to decide whether or not the accused was guilty.


• Clark found that participants were most persuaded when they heard consistent persuasive arguments from the minority jury members and when they learned more than one juror had defected from the majority position.

• Clark concluded it was convincing consistent arguments that resulted in the minority exerting the greatest influence.

Minority influence: commitment




• Hogg and Vaughan (1998) have argued that minorities are more likely to be influential if they:

• Appear to be acting from principle (not out of self-interest).

• Are seen to have made sacrifices in order to maintain their position.

• This demonstrates the commitment of the minority to their cause.

• Commitment amplifies the effect of the minority on the majority – this is called the augmentation principle.

Minority influence: flexibility

• Nemeth (1986) reviewed Moscovici’s research and concluded that it was not just consistency that made a minority influential.

• The minority needed to be flexible and adapt their arguments to the majority position to be persuasive.

Flexibility: evaluation

•Nemeth (1986) conducted research to test the hypothesis that a minority had to be flexible in the presentation of their arguments if they were to be persuasive.

•Nemeth designed a study that used a mock jury to pass judgement on a compensation case.


•Four participants took part.•One of the participants was a confederate.•The confederate made a very low offer of compensation to an accident victim.


•The three true participants made a much higher offer of compensation.•When the confederate made a small increase in their offer the majority shifted their position and lowered the amount they offered in compensation to the accident victim.•Nemeth concluded that flexibility is important in making a minority influential.


•Nemeth (1986) backs up flexibility as an important variable in making a minority more persuasive in changing the beliefs and attitudes of a majority.

•One way to get AO3 marks is to use the findings of research as evidence to back up or challenge a theory, explanation, or the role of a variable in changing the way people think, feel and behave.

3. Flexibility

Education

Mod 3 minority influence