To what extent has minority influence shown to be a significant form of social influence?
...e without a great deal of thought. Lastly, one main difference is imitation and originality. Minority influence leads to more divergent thinking as alternatives are considered. Alternatively, as Nemeth discovered, that majority influence leads to restricted convergent thinking based on imitation rather than originality. A study conducted by Moscovici showed that social influence occurs not just through conformity but also through a change to the previously held opinions of a group. The aim of this study was to test the effects of consistency where the stimulus was unambiguous. In the first experiment Moscovici asked participants to view colour slides and report the colour aloud. Two confederates consistently said the slides were green. In the second experiment participants did the same task and then were later asked to write down the answer individually. In the third experiment the confederates were not consistent in their answers. Overall Moscovici found that minority could influence majority opinion, even if it was only a little. However this study was conducted on only female undergraduates, as women tend to be more conformist than men, resulting in a biased study. There are two main explanations of why people yield to minority influence. They are group identification and social cryptoamnesia. Group identification is when the majority of people can identify with the minority and therefore having a greater influence. When the minorities share the same group identity as the majority they are more likely to succeed in their attempts at social influence. Social cryptoamnesia is when by the time changes occur people have forgotten the original source of opinion change, but innovation was actually due to minority influence. There are different factors that affect minority influence. The size of the minority is a critical factor when discussing minority influence. Moscovici and Nemeth argue that a minority of on may be more influential than a minority of two or more because one person can ...