SI 7 - Minority influence

Question 1

what is minority influence

Answer 1

• creates a conversion whereby people consider the message itself and people want to understand why the minority hold this position.

Question 2

examples of minority influence

Answer 2

• unions, Clare’s law - internalisation

Question 3

how do minority groups influence the majority

Answer 3

• consistency, commitment, flexibility

Question 4

what does consistency entail

Answer 4

• can come in the form of synchronic consistency or diachronic consistency which makes people rethink their own views by adopting the same views.

Question 5

what is synchronic consistency

Answer 5

• everyone saying the same thing

Question 6

what is diachronic consistency

Answer 6

• saying the same thing for a long time

Question 7

what does commitment entail

Answer 7

• sticking to a cause - can be quite extreme in minority groups to draw attention to their views or can be gradual commitment to slowly influence in small increments. this is called the augmentation principle.

Question 8

what does flexibility entail

Answer 8

• having the ability to bend and adapt to come people’s views. some people whom are extremely consistent can be seen as rigid so unlikely to convert people.

Question 9

AO3: + Research support for consistency – strength is research evidence demonstrating the importance of consistency

Answer 9

• Moscovici et al.’s blue/green slide study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people than an inconsistent opinion
• Wendy Wood et al. (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential
  Suggesting that presenting a consistent view as a minimum requirement for a minority

Question 10

AO3: + Research support for deeper processing – strength is evidence showing that a change in the majority’s position does involve deeper processing of the minority’s ideas.

Answer 10

• Robin Martin presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured participants’ agreement
• One group of participants then heard a majority group agree with it.
• Participants were finally exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again.
• People were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group than if they had listened to a majority group.
  Suggesting that the minority message has been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect, supporting the central argument about how minority influence works.

Question 11

AO3: X Artificial tasks – limitation of minority influence research is that the tasks involved are often just as artificial as Asch’s line judgement task.

Answer 11

• Includes Moscovici et al.’s task of identifying the colour of a slide.
• Research is therefore for removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life
• In cases such as jury decision-making and political campaigning, the outcomes are vastly more important, sometimes even literally a matter of life or death
• Meaning findings of minority influence studies are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real-world social situations.