AQA A Level Psychology复习笔记1.4.1 Minority Influence Including Commitment, Consistency

• Minority Influence is when a small group of people or even an individual changes the attitudes, behaviours and beliefs of the majority
• This is the opposite of conformity, where the majority are the ones influencing others to join them
• Moscovici (1969) found there were three main processes of minority influence. These are:

Consistency

• The minority has to be consistent in their views as this increases the amount of interest from others and gets people to start to rethink their own opinions. This is due to types of consistency:
  • Synchronic consistency: They're all saying the same thing
  • Diachronic consistency: They've been saying the same thing for a long period of time

Commitment

• The minority has to show full commitment to their views and show this through their actions, which can be extreme in some cases
• taking part in extreme actions or having extreme views makes the majority think that the minority group must truly believe what they are  doing
• This then may cause them to rethink their own opinions
• This is called the argumentation principle

Flexibility

• The minority has to be able to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter opinions, the minority have to be able to have a balance between both consistency and flexibility
• They cannot be dogmatic in their views

The three factors, consistency, commitment and flexibility, make people think about the minority cause

Over time, the increasing numbers who change from the majority to the minority, are the converted

The more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion from majority to minority

This is called the snowball effect as it gets bigger, taking on new members all the time, like a snowball being rolled on the ground

Over time, the minority becomes the majority