Minority Influence and Social Change

Minority Influence within Psychology

So, what do we mean by social change? Social change occurs when society’s values, beliefs, norms, and operating methods change over time. Even though, we tend to conform to the majority's views. Throughout history, we have seen that minority movements can drive major societal norms shifts.

Fig 1 - The LGBTQ+ movement is an example of minority influencing the views of the majority.

Minority influence is the opposite process of conformity. While conformity involves pressure from the majority on an individual, minority influence puts pressure on the majority.

According to Moscovici (1968), minority influence occurs slowly over time. The minority group must gradually persuade the majority that its ideas and beliefs are correct and not just tolerable. Moscovici referred to this as a conversion process. If it unfolds successfully, it can lead to the internalisation of minority beliefs by the majority. This occurs when the majority changes their private beliefs and behaviour in response to the minority's pressure.

The Role of Minority Influence in Social Change

The process of minorities creating social change occurs through several stages. First, the minority is in direct opposition to the majority's views and current social norms, it is not accepted by society and can be met with resistance. Then the process of conversion occurs, through which the views of the majority members are slowly changed.

As more and more people start to convert their views, the snowball effect occurs. At this stage, the minority becomes the majority and the previous social norms shift. Finally, once the minority position is fully integrated into the new societal norms, society can forget that it was not always this way. This is called social cryptomnesia, it occurs when the minority ideas become a social truth.

Fig 2 - The right of women and minorities to vote is currently regarded as a social truth, but it was not one in the past.

Minority Influence: Examples in Research

Let's take a look at psychological studies providing further insights into how minorities influence social change.

Moscovici's (1968) Blue-Green Study

Moscovici asked a group of six people to look at 36 coloured slides. All slides were different shades of blue. Participants had to indicate whether they thought each slide was blue or green. However, a minority consisting of two participants (secretly part of the research team) would claim that some slides shown were green.

As a result of this minority influence, participants changed their answer to green 8.5% of the time.

However, when the minority was less consistent, meaning they would sometimes label the same slide as green and sometimes as blue, the majority was influenced only 1% of the time. The study shows that a more consistent minority is more likely to influence the majority.

Nemeth (1986)

In this experiment, the investigator asked groups of four participants to estimate the compensation a ski lift accident victim should receive. Each group had one confederate who represented the minority and argued that the victim deserved less compensation. The confederate would not compromise in one situation and would rigidly hold to their position.

In another situation, the confederate allowed some compromise by meeting the rest of the group halfway and offering the victim a slightly higher compensation than initially proposed. The experiment results showed that the inflexible confederate had far less influence on the views of the majority group than the flexible confederate. This finding highlights the importance of the minority group being flexible when trying to change the opinions and ideas of the majority group.

Wood et al. (1994)

Wood et al. is a meta-analysis of about 100 studies on minority group behaviour. The analysis found that the minority group has more influence when it is consistent in its beliefs and actions. As a result, the minority group needs to be consistent when influencing a majority group.

Three Determinants of Minority Influence

The three most important factors that determine the effectiveness of minority influence are consistency, flexibility, and commitment.

Minority Influence Consistency

A consistent minority group believes in a clear set of values and beliefs that do not suddenly change or contradict. The beliefs seem fixed, which gives the majority group the impression that they are well thought out and defensible. There are two types of minority influence consistency:

Minority Influence Commitment

Commitment refers to the perception that a group is serious about its beliefs and willing to initiate and implement change.

There are numerous ways in which a minority group can demonstrate commitment to their cause:

• Sticking to their beliefs over time despite opposition and oppression.

• Publicly demonstrating and protesting.

• Making sacrifices for their beliefs, such as prosecution during a demonstration.

This approach is thought to be effective because of the augmentation principle.

The Augmentation Principle Minority Influence

The minority tend to have an internal locus of control and believe they drive their own destiny. Usually, the minority have an internal locus of control. Committed minorities, i.e. those who take risks for their cause, tend to affect the majority through an augmentation principle. It means the majority value the importance of the cause - as the minority are risking their lives for it.

Minority Influence Flexibility

Flexibility refers to the minority's willingness to compromise. When the majority group sees that the minority group is willing to compromise or engage in honest discussion to satisfy everyone, they are taken more seriously and treated with more care and respect. If a minority group is seen as dogmatic (rigid in their views) or too demanding, this can put people off.

What other Factors Drive Social Change?

There are other insights on social change that Moscovici did not address but are still worth discussing. Let us look at some notable studies and explain what they found.

Identification with the Minority Group

Maass et al. (1982) found that heterosexual individuals were more successful at convincing members of the heterosexual majority to support gay rights compared to homosexual individuals. The reason is that the heterosexual member of the majority identified with and was more understanding of other heterosexuals. For the heterosexual majority, the homosexual minority is an ‘other’, this perception can result in a lack of understanding or even hostility towards their message.

Bashir et al. (2013) found that people sometimes resist social change, even when they believe it is necessary because they want to avoid being associated with negative stereotypes attributed to proponents of these ideas.

Style of Thinking

Mosccovici proposed that encouraging critical thinking can help the conversion process because it compels the majority of group members to question their beliefs rather than blindly following the crowd intellectually.

However, Diane Mackie (1987) counters this claim. According to Mackie, discovering that the majority does not think the same way we do can force us to think deeper about our position, so we can embrace the majority's viewpoint.

Normative Social Influence

In one of his famous line judgement studies, Solomon Asch found that individuals are less likely to conform to the incorrect majority if at least one other person opposed the majority views. This gave the participant support to oppose the majority as well. Feeling like we are not alone can encourage us to voice our opposition towards the majority.

This idea could also apply to social change, unjust government actions are more likely to be challenged when there is dissent against them. Public health and environmental campaigns also take advantage of normative social influence to drive positive social change. This practice discourages people from certain behaviours by highlighting how if they engage in them, they will no longer fit in.