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Minority influence 16 marks
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- Social Influence 16 markers
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- AQA
AQA psychology 16 marker essay
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Discuss research into minority influence (16 marks)Minority influence is when people reject the established majority norm and move to the
minority position. Likely to lead to internalisation and therefore social change.
Ao1: Moscovici 1969
Moscovici aimed to investigate whether a minority group can influence a bigger group
through conformity. He got 172 female US participants who were told they were taking part
in an experiment on colour perception. 6 ppts at a time were asked to estimate the colour,
out loud, of 36 slides (they were all different shades of blue). 2/6 ppts were confederates
There were two conditions: 1) Consistent: 2 confederates called the slides green on all trials
2)Inconsistent: 2 confederates called the slides green 24 times and blue 12 times.
He found that a consistent minority influenced the naive ppts to say 'green' on over 8.4% of
the slides. In the inconsistent condition the minority exerted little difference and did not differ
significantly from the control group (ppts called slides green 1.3%). He therefore concluded
that a consistent minority opinion has a greater minority effect on other people than an
inconsistent opinion.
Ao3: Moscovici
He had a biassed sample of 172 female ppts from america. Therefore he was unable to
generalise the results to other populations e.g male ppts. We cannot conclude that male ppts
would respond to minority influence in the same way. Furthermore, research suggests that
females are more likely to conform and therefore further research is required to determine
the effect of minority influence on male ppts.
The tasks involved i.e identifying slide colour are artificial, meaning it is not representative of
a real life situation like jury decision making. This means the findings lack external validity
and the conclusions we can make about real life social situations are limited. Furthermore,
the study does not identify important factors in minority influence, such as group size, status
or degree or organisation.
Ao1: Conditions for minority influence
The conditions needed for social change through minority influence are: consistency,
commitment, flexibility, process of change.
Consistency is when a minority viewpoint is stable over time and is not deviated from, thus
the minority is taken more seriously. People begin to rethink their own views because doubt
is cast on established norms. Thus a consistent approach means a higher chance of
achieving social change.
Commitment is when a minority must be dedicated to their cause. They will take risks in
order to put forward a point of view and will draw more attention to the cause - therefore the
impact of their position is 'augmented' (strengthened) - Augmentation principle
Flexibility is when a minority needs to be cooperative and be prepared to adapt their POV
and accept counter arguments in order to be persuasive. Rigid, uncompromising behaviour
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