Minority Influence (AQA AS Psychology)

Commitment

• Minority Influence occurs when a small group of people or even an individual changes the attitudes/behaviours/beliefs of the majority

• Minority influence is likely to lead to internalisation because it is not as easily achieved as majority influence i.e. it is more meaningful

• The processes at work in minority influence include:

  • commitment

  • consistency

  • flexibility 

• The minority has to show full commitment to their message/ethos and not be put off by naysayers and critics

  • The above is particularly difficult to achieve as being in the minority means having to work harder to be heard and taken seriously

  • Staying committed takes a lot of effort as it is much easier to be part of the majority

• Commitment may be demonstrated via direct or indirect action, e.g.

  • commitment to animal rights may involve setting lab animals free (direct) or starting a petition to close an animal-testing lab (indirect)

• Strong commitment in the face of ridicule or hostility may lead the majority to think that the minority possibly have a point, as they are willing to be mocked publicly and to face great hardship to change peoples' minds, e.g.

  • Emily Davison a suffragette, flung herself in front of the King's horse at the Epsom Derby to raise awareness of women's right to vote

  • Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California who was murdered due to his outspoken and relentless campaign to raise awareness of gay rights

• Going to extreme lengths to show commitment to a minority cause (as the above examples demonstrate) is known as the augmentation principle

Consistency

• The minority has to be consistent in their views i.e. promoting a specific 'message' which does not fluctuate or change over time

• Staying consistent to the message/stance/viewpoint/belief is a way of showing the majority that the minority are firm, resolute and strong in the face of possible criticism or outright hostility

• Consistency may be one or both of the following:

  • Synchronic consistency: The minority presents a united front and shares the same message

  • Diachronic consistency: The minority have been promoting their message for some time 

• Consistency may produce a war of attrition:

  • The majority may begin to look seriously at the minority's stance, possibly admiring them for not veering from what they believe in

  • Gradually a consistent stance can lesson at the doubts and misgivings of most people

• An example of consistency can be seen in climate change activists:

  • The message is always the same (i.e. the earth's future is at risk)

  • Over time, more people have taken this seriously and changed their behaviour accordingly, e.g. by recycling

• Research by Moscovici (1969) demonstrates the importance of a consistent minority:

  • Participants were put into groups of six and shown 36 slides of varying shades of blue

  • The participants had to state out loud the colour of each slide

  • Two of the six participants were always confederates

  • In the consistent condition, the two confederates said that all the slides were green

  • In the inconsistent condition, the confederates said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue

  • The findings showed that:

    • in the consistent condition, there was 8.2% agreement with the minority (the two confederates)

    • in the inconsistent condition, agreement decreased to 1.25% of the trials

  • Thus, a consistent minority is more effective in terms of social influence than an inconsistent minority

Flexibility

• The minority should be able to adapt their message as what they have to say may not be welcomed by many sectors of society

• The minority should be open to accepting reasonable and valid counter-arguments

  • People could be put off if they feel that they are being talked at

  • People do not like to feel that they are being chastised or patronised by others who claim to 'know better'

  • People may remain unsympathetic if a minority continually berates them for their behaviour (this is where consistency should be modified)

  • Maintaining a rigid, inflexible stance could alienate them from the majority

• The minority is in a difficult position (precisely because they are the minority)

  • The minority can not assume that in time everyone will agree with them

    • hence the need for a flexible approach

• A study by Nemeth (1986) investigated the extent to which a flexible minority could influence others:

  • Participants - one of whom was a confederate - were put into groups of four

  • The participants were presented with a scenario in which someone had been injured in a ski-lift accident

  • They had to decide as a group how much compensation the victim should receive

  • There were two conditions of the independent variable:

    • The inflexible condition: the minority (the one confederate) argued for a low rate of compensation and refused to change his position

    • The flexible condition: the minority argued for a low rate of compensation but then compromised, offering a slightly higher rate

  • The results showed that

    • in the inflexible condition, the minority had little or no effect on the majority

    • in the flexible condition, the majority was much more likely to change their view and go along with the minority

• Thus, a minority needs to be flexible if it wants to change the attitudes and behaviours of the majority

• Over time, the increasing numbers who change from the majority to the minority, are the converted

• The more this process happens, the faster the rate of conversion from majority to minority

• The above process is called the snowball effect - what starts small gathers pace and picks up new members, like a snowball being rolled downhill gathering more snow

• Over time, the minority becomes the majority

Evaluation of minority influence

Strengths

• The real-world examples cited on this page demonstrate that the processes of minority influence have direct application and relevance

  • This real-world relevance means that the theory has good external validity i.e. it can be generalised to real behaviours in real settings

• As well as the studies included on this page, there is other good supporting evidence for minority influence:

  • Wood et al. (1994) conducted a meta-analysis of minority influence research

    • they found that consistency was a strong factor in minority influence

    • the above study used almost 100 studies which means that it has good reliability to large sample size and use of quantitative data

Limitations

• Minority influence may in part be due to the personality of the people or main person associated with the group rather than with their cause, e.g.:

  • charismatic cult leaders who persuade people to join their extreme religious or political group

  • freedom fighters who appear as almost mythical figures to their followers

    • hence, minority influence under these conditions is based on dispositional factors rather than on the processes outlined above

• Both Moscovici and Nemeth's research are low in mundane realism:

  • Participants were not involved in a real situation i.e. there was a lack of jeopardy

  • Arguing about the colour of a slide or the amount of hypothetical compensation are both low-stakes tasks that had no personal salience for the participants

  • Minority influence does not happen during one experimental session; it takes (usually) many years to be subsumed into a society