Minority Influence and Social Change

Research has shown that a person is more likely to conform to the majority when they are uncertain of their viewpoint, when they are quite similar to the majority group members, when the majority is unanimous in their views and when the majority portrays themselves as being certain, able and successful in what they do. Majority influence often results in compliance, where the individual responds positively and agrees with the majority in public but may not agree privately, this is also known as normative influence (Manstead & Hewstone, 1996).

In contrast, minority influence results in conversion, in which the individual changes their view privately but may not acknowledge this viewpoint publicly, this suggests that majority influence is qualitatively different to minority influence. In order for the minority to be successful it is essential for them to remain consistent, as their offer a different and alternative viewpoint to the majority. Minorities often deal with the problem of a lack of public conformity and social support, compared to the majority who have strong public influence (Moscovici, Mugny & Avermaet, 1985).

In a study by Asch (1952) male participants were shown 2 cards, the first was a test card with a single vertical line, the second has 3 vertical lines of different lengths. For 18 trials participants were asked to call out individually which of the 3 lines on the second card was the same in length as the line on the test card. Out of the seven participants only one was a genuine participant, the other six were in fact confederates, in 12 of the 18 trials the confederates would unanimously give incorrect answers. Asch found that in those 12 trials, genuine participants conformed just over 30% of the time, 76% of 123 participants conformed at least once and only 24% never conformed. As the number of people in the majority group increases the amount of pressure on the minority to conform also increases. Asch replicated his original experiment and varied the number of confederates in each group, which would play the role of the majority group. Unsurprisingly, the more confederates these were, the more likely it was for the genuine participants to conform and give an inaccurate answer (Stangor, 2004).

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In a study by Moscovici (year) participants were put in groups of 6, 4 of which were genuine participants and made up the majority group, and 2 of which were confederates and made up the minority group. Participants were asked to look at 36 blue coloured slides, all which varied in intensity. This experiment consisted of 3 conditions, in the first condition confederates would say that all the slides looked green, in the second condition the confederates would say that 24 of the slides looked green and 12 looked blue, and the third was a control condition which consisted of 6 naïve participants. Moscovici found that the participants in the control condition said the slides were green 0.25% of the time, compared to those in the second condition who said the slides were green 1.25% of the time. The participants in the first condition who were in the presence of 2 confederates said that the slides were green 8.42% of the time. This study shows that a consistent minority can have an effect on the majority group members.

Although the minority group may not have a large number of people in their group, its consistent behavioural style makes it influential, which makes the majority take notice of them and rethink. Nemeth, Swenlund and Kanki (1994) replicated Moscovici’s experiment and added 2 more conditions, the first was a random condition in which the confederates would say green or green-blue randomly over the trials, and the second was a correlated condition in which the confederates would say green to the brighter slides and green-blue to the dimmer slides. Researchers found that the random condition had no effect on the participants, but that the correlated condition resulted in 21% of influenced responses. Nemeth allowed participants to say whatever colour they saw on the slides, however Moscovici only allowed his participants to say 1 colour. Nemeth concluded that if a minority is not flexible in its behaviour then consistency will have no effect (Hewstone & Stroebe, 2001). However, neither the study by Nemeth or Moscovici allowed for the participants to communicate or work together, which creates difficulty when evaluating the reasons why some of the participants gave such an obviously wrong answer (Pennington, 2002).

Many psychologists, such as Nemeth and Moscovici believe that minorities stimulate more cognitive effort and that their ways of thinking are more divergent compared to majorities. In a study by Nemeth (1977) mock jurors were given a murder case, those who were told that they had to discuss the case until the reached an unanimous verdict recalled more of the evidence, brought a wider range of considerations to the table, provided more alternative ways of looking at the evidence and felt more confident about the decisions they made compared to those who were told they must deliberate until two-thirds of the jurors agreed, which made up the majority group. Nemeth found that the quality of the discussions in second condition suffered compared to those in the first condition (Hewstone & Stroebe, 2001).

Whilst majorities produce conformity through normative social influence, minorities usually produce personal acceptance in which the individual privately agrees with the minority. Some psychologists such as Nemeth believe that minorities actually help majorities to think divergently rather than convergently. The minority seeks out the majorities weaknesses and by pointing them out encourages the majority to think about different explanations and arguments. Once minority influence has triumphed over the majority, the minority members then become committed and believe in their own minority point of view, this does not often happen with majority influence because not all the majority group members may privately agree with the viewpoints of the majority (Pennington, 2002).

According to Moscovici, minority influence is distinguished in the way that the minority behaves. Moscovici explains how behavioural style is important to minority influence through Kelley’s Attribution Theory (1967), if the minority is consistent then they will stand out and attract attention from the majority (Hogg & Tinsdale, 2001).

In a study by Clark (1994) 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 Angry Men. Participants were given a summary of the murder case and the jury’s discussions about key pieces of evidence. The persuasiveness of the arguments and the views of the jury were manipulated, the participants were asked whether they thought the defendant was guilty. Clark found that participants were most persuaded when they heard consistent persuasive arguments from the minority jury members and when they learnt that more than 1 juror has a combination of combination of convincing arguments and a shift by other majority members that resulted in the minority exerting the greatest influence (Clark III, 2001).

Majority influence is usually thought to produce public conformity, whilst minority influence is thought to produce a private conformity, In a study by Maass and Clark (1983/1986) conducted 3 experiments which investigate the attitude change of participants towards gay rights after reading a summary of a group discussion in which participants gave their own viewpoints on gay rights. Half of the participants responded anonymously (privately) and the other half were told that their responses would be seen by others (publicly). Those who responded publicly and believed that others would see their responses had clearly been influenced by the majority views that they had read about in the summary, on the other hand, those who responded privately were influenced mainly by the minority viewpoints that they read about in the summary. This study is a good example of how public compliance can be produced by the majority influence and how private compliance can be produced by minority influence, illustrating the difference between the two (Brown, 2000).

Many researchers have concluded that minorities produce a different type of influence to majorities, however, some researchers such as Latane and Wolfe (1981), Tanford and Penrod (1984) and Kruglanski and Mackie (1990) emphasise on the similarities between minority and majority influence (Hewstone & Stroebe, 2001)

There has been much controversy over whether minority and majority influence are two separate processes or a single process. Research has shown that minority and majority influence differ by cognitive processes and attitude. On the other hand, the theory that minority and majority influences are a single process is supported by the fact that both the majority and minority groups influences are intensified by their group size. There are adequate qualitative outcomes to sustain the theoretical distinction between them (Brown, 2000).