Minority influence

Minority influence, a form of social influence, takes place when a member of a minority group influences the majority to accept the minority's beliefs or behavior. This occurs when a small group or an individual acts as an agent of social change by questioning established societal perceptions, and proposing alternative, original ideas which oppose the existing social norms. There are two types of social influence: majority influence (resulting in conformity and public compliance) and minority influence (resulting in conversion). Majority influence refers to the majority trying to produce conformity on the minority, while minority influence is converting the majority to adopt the thinking of the minority group. Unlike other forms of influence, minority influence is often thought of as a more innovative form of social change, because it usually involves a personal shift in private opinion. Examples of minority influence include the civil rights movement in the United States and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

Nearly all early research on minority influence focused on how the majority influenced the minority, based on the assumption of many psychologists that it would be very hard for the minority to have any influence on the majority. Moscovici had a different perspective, as he believed that it was possible for a minority influence to overcome majority influence. As a result, he conducted his own study on minority influence in 1969. Similar to Asch's (1951) 'blue-green' experiment, to see if a group of four participants were influenced by a minority. His research was important as it was one of the first studies to show that a minority was able to change the opinions of the majority. The research of Moscovici and his colleagues opened the door to more research on the subject.

Moscovici's (1980, 1985) conversion theory outlines a dual process of social influence. When an individual's views differ from the majority view, this causes inner turmoil, motivating the individual to reduce conflict by using a comparison process, leading to compliance and public acceptance of the majority position to avoid ostracism and potential ridicule. Therefore, majority influence is seen as normative social influence because often it is generated by a desire to fit in and conform to the group, e.g. Asch's (1951) line study. Conversely, a minority view is more distinctive, capturing attention and resulting in a validation process, where people carefully analyse the discrepancy between their own view and the minority view. This often results in attitude conversion, where the individual is convinced that the minority view is correct, which is much more likely to be private rather than public.

Majority influence occurs when people conform to certain beliefs and behaviours in order to be accepted by others. Unlike majority influence, minority influence can rarely influence others through normative social influence because the majority is indifferent to the minority's perspective of them. To influence the majority, the minority group would take the approach of informational social influence (Wood, 1994). By presenting information that the majority does not know or expect, this new or unexpected information catches the attention of the majority to carefully consider and examine the minority's view. After consideration, when the majority finds more validity and merit in the minority's view, the majority group has a higher chance of accepting part or all of the minority opinion.

Although the majority group may accept part or all of the minority view, that fact does not necessarily indicate that the majority has been completely influenced by the minority. A study by Elizabeth Mannix and Margaret Ann Neale (2005) shows that having the support from the majority leader could prove to be the critical factor in getting the minority opinion to be heard and be accepted. The support of a leader gives the majority more confidence in the merit of the minority opinion, leading to an overall respect for the minority. The strength of the "key people" (Van Avermaet, 1996) comes from the reputation built from their consistency of behaviors and ideas. Involving key people will benefit the minority view because people are more open to hear from others whom they trust and respect. In minority influence, a few influential leaders can influence the opposing majority to the minority's way of thinking. Even small changes in the influence of a minority ideology can trigger substantial changes in behavior or beliefs. In the end, having a more supportive and active minority group could lead to innovative and better decision-making.

Moscovici and Nemeth (1974) argue that a minority of one is more influential than a minority of more than one, as one person is more likely to be consistent over long periods of time and will not divide the majority's attention. They explain that a person may question themself: "How can they be so wrong and yet so sure of themselves?", resulting in a tendency to reevaluate the entire situation, considering all possible alternatives, including the minority view. On the other hand, two people are more likely to be influential than one person as they are less likely to be seen as strange or eccentric. More recent research has supported the latter due to the belief that a minority with two or more, if consistent, has more credibility and is therefore more likely to influence the majority.

The social impact model (Latané & Wolf 1981) predicts that as the size of the majority grows, the influence of the minority decreases, both in public and in private attitude change. The social impact model further explains that social impact is the multiplicative effect of strength (power, status, knowledge), the immediacy (physical proximity and recency), and the number of group members, supporting the view that a minority will be less influential on a larger majority.

Clark and Maass (1990) looked at the interaction between minority influence and majorities of varying sizes, and found that, like Latané & Wolf's findings, the minority's influence decreases in a negatively accelerating power function as the majority increases. This is reflected in findings that minority support should decrease considerably with the first few members of the majority, but additional members will have a marginally declining impact on getting people to conform to the majority position.