Minority Influence

September 21, 2006

Social Influence Equated with
Conformity
• By the late 1960’s research on social
influence was focused completely on
conformity.

• Focus on conformity is evident in the

course readings up to this point.
• Social Norms, Group Polarization, Majority
Pressure.
Origins of Conformity
• Social Norms: When faced with uncertainty,
people look to others to establish a collective
frame of reference.
• Norms are even more powerful when they become the
focus of our attention.
• When people feel that the group norms do not describe
their personal behavior, they feel alienated and less
committed to the group.
• People will continue to follow a norm even when it is
arbitrary.
Drift Toward Similarity
• Group Polarization: Once the group has
established agreement, this agreement
becomes more extreme over time.
• Group polarization is the end result of a
social comparison process.
• Because people want to be liked, they will try
to exemplify the group’s values and beliefs.
• Example: This group values bravery, so I will be the
BRAVEST person in the group.
Maintaining the Status Quo
Through Majority Pressure
• Conformity: People will often ignore the
evidence of their own senses to go along
with a majority view the know to be wrong.
• (1) People actually convince themselves that
they are seeing what the group is seeing.
• (2) People believe they are wrong and the
group is right, so they yield.
• (3) People believe that they are right and the
group is wrong but they yield to avoid a hassle.
Myopia of Majority Influence
• Moscovici faced with a field that was
completely focused on conformity.
• Influence flowed from the majority to the
minority and not the other way.
• Groups become more and more similar over
time.
• Peoples’ primary motivation is to be liked and
accepted and their greatest fear is to be different
and alienated.
From Majority to Minority
Influence
• Conformity does not account for the full range of
human behavior.
• People sometimes resist the group to tell the truth as
they see it (e.g. protests).
• Groups change over time. New ideas always reflect a
minority viewpoint, but the group may eventually come
to accept them.
• Influence must flow from the minority to the majority or else
groups would never change.
• Majority does not always rule: Some conflicts are never
resolved.
Minority Influence?
Toward A New Set of Questions

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or

no influence on society.”
Mark Twain
• Can the minority influence the majority and if so,
how?
• When are minorities the most/least persuasive?
• What are the consequences of minority influence?
Reversing the Asch Experiment

• Six naïve subjects constituted the majority.

• One confederate was the minority.
• Subjects were asked to view a set of slides
and state their color. All slides were
actually blue but varied in intensity.
• Minority consistently said that the blue
slides were green.
Results: Minority Influence
• Control condition not exposed to the
minority only said green twice—less than
1% of the responses.
• Among those exposed to minority view
almost 10% of the total responses were
green and 32% of the subjects reported
seeing green at least once.
• Evidence for minority influence.
Key Question: HOW do
minorities have influence
• When do minorities have influence and
how?
• The answer lies in understanding their style
of argumentation and how different styles
are interpreted by the majority.
• Consider the following cases.
The Case of Freud
• Victorian Era: Books on etiquette were bestsellers.
Women were revered for their virginity and
simplicity. Sex was never discussed in public.
• Freud: Proposed a theory of infantile sexuality,
children can have hostile and erotic
feelings, and a son can desire his mother.
• Reaction: Freud’s work was censored, he was
called a pervert, his followers were “paranoid
psychopaths”
The Case of Galileo
• Catholic church: Held the conviction (based
on their interpretation of the bible) that the
earth was the center of the universe and that
the sun rotated about the earth.
• Galileo: Argued that the earth rotated
around the sun.
• Reaction: Brought before the inquisition
and forced to recant under threat of torture.
How did Freud and Galileo exert
influence?
• Conventional wisdom tells us that we must
win friends to influence people.
• Therefore, they should have first conformed
to the group, demonstrated their
competence and then slowly shifted their
view over time.
• A minority must earn “idiosyncracy credit”
to have influence (Hollander, 1964).
Evidence for the power of
consistency
• Freud responded,
“I think therefore that one has to be content to state one’s
point of view and relate one’s experiences in as clear
and decided a way as possible and not trouble too much
about the reaction of one’s audiences.”
• Galileo responded by publishing more evidence in
support of his theories.
• KEY: Majority made certain assumptions about
them based on their behavior.
When Do Minorities Have
Influence?
• Minorities have the most influence when they are
consistent and maintain their viewpoint over time.
• Consistency triggers an attribution of confidence.
• Result: Maybe they know something I don’t?
Gains legitimacy and the potential to have
influence.
• Bottom Line: One need NOT win friends to
influence people. Does this theory fit with your
personal experiences? Have you ever witnessed a
minority view come to be accepted within a
group?
Caveat to Consistency:
Appearing Dogmatic
• Exception when consistency is perceived to be
dogmatic.
• Mindless repetition, while consistent, does not
lead to influence. People must be able to argue
their position in a flexible way.
• Flexible: Ability to alternate between more than
one counter-argument while maintaining the
consistency of one’s viewpoint.
• Question: How can you differentiate between
being consistent and being dogmatic? Is it always
possible?
The Dilemma of the Double
Minority
• Double Minority: When a person is a minority
both in terms of their belief but also in terms of
the social categories to which they belong.
• Double minorities tend to be less persuasive: A
gay person arguing for gay marriage is less
persuasive than a straight person arguing for gay
marriage.
• Important role of assumed self interest.
Are Majority and Minority
Influence Really the Same?
• Social Impact Theory: Influence is a multiplicative
function of 3 factors:
(1) Strength: Status, power, knowledge
(2) Immediacy: Proximity in space and time
(3) Number: Of group members
• All things being equal, the majority will always
have greater influence simply because of their
larger numbers.
• This position has been strongly disputed.
Next Week: Understanding and
using minority influence
• Two reasons that majority and minority influence
are not the same process:
• Majority influence results in compliance (going along
in public, but not believing in private) while minority
influence results in conversion (believing in private
without acknowledging it in public).
• Minority influence makes people think divergently
(open minded), while majority influence makes people
think convergently (narrow minded).