Social Influence - Minority Influence

Factors affecting Minority Influence:
As Moscovici’s study shows, consistency is a very important factor of successful minority influence; however there are other factors as well: 

• Size of minority – As the size of the minority increases, so does their influence
• Confidence in beliefs – Minorities who show belief in their point of view have a greater influence
• Sharing common ground with majority – The more common ground a minority has with a majority the greater their influence; this could be because the majority will find it easier to relate to the minorities point of view
• Acting from principle – If a minority is seen to be acting from morals and principles their influence increases, this could be because it seems more justified and morally correct if they have sound beliefs.
• Sacrifice – A minority has greater influence if they are seen to make personal sacrifices. This could be because it persuades others that the minority point of view must be correct if they are willing to go to such extreme lengths to show it.

Explanations of conformity to minority influence:

The presence of minority influence amongst a majority creates conflict in both social situations, and the minds of the majority. This is because often the minority’s beliefs are radically different to the majorities, so there these new ideas can be though provoking for the majority, they might start to question their own opinion, and sometime this is all that is needed to change someone’s opinion. This is why it is important for the majority to remain consistent and draw attention to themselves, because, if the majority can avoid the minority influence, then they will.

As the minority influence increases and more of the population conform to the minority belief, it can become the majority belief. This often picks up pace, converting more and more people to the minority belief in a shorter and shorter space of time; this is known as the Snowball effect.

1. The study was endocentric, as only female participants were used, there has been research to suggest that women are more conformist that men and so these findings cannot be applied to males - low external validity.

2. The minority group was not a ‘real’ group, they were strangers taking part in an artificial task. In the outside world, minority groups are likely to be more committed to their cause, to face stronger opposition and are able to provide considerable social support for one another.
Also the power/status relationships that exist in the outside world cannot be replicated in a lab.

3. Clark et al has found that when the majority group size was bigger than 4, there was a huge drop in influence, this raises questions over the extent that the findings can be applied to all majority/minority situations.

4. The study was culturally biased, as all participants were American, Smith and Bond (1998) have found that more individualistic (e.g. American, UK) cultures were less conformist that collectivistic cultures (e.g. African) so the findings cannot be universally applied.

5. Participants were deceived in this study and so informed consent could not be gained, this raises ethical issues, however, as the deception was mild and undue stress to the participant was not cause, some think that the deception can be justified.

6. The lab situation is artificial and some say that participants behaviour is also artificial in this setting. The task was also artificial like Asch’s (1951) was, it is unlikely that in real life people would disagree so often in an unambiguous task.