Moscovici and Minority Influence
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Moscovici's 1969 study with Lage and Neffrechoux is generally credited with overturning the conclusion that Asch had reached.

The study sat a group of six people down with blue coloured discs. Two of the group were confederates. The group was asked to state what colour the blue discs were. The two confederates repeatedly stated that the blue coloured discs were in fact green. In most cases sense prevailed, however, in some instances the "majority" group of participants "agreed" with the confederates that the blue discs were "green".

This result was intriging, not least because the normative influence of Asch was missing, but also because good sense had not prevailed.

Moscovici and Personnaz (1980) tried the experiment with a more ambiguous experiment. They used a well-known psychological phenomenon - that of the chromatic after image. If you stare at a single colour, and then look at a white area, you will see the opposite colour of the colour that you were previously looking at. For example, if one was staring at a purple area, one would see orange when looking at the white area.

Moscovici thought that minority influence operated in a different way to majority influence. Minority influence causes the majority to reassess their opinion, and that it actually changed underlying beliefs. This was in contrast to normative influence, which generally had little lasting effect. The results of the experiment seemed to back up his opinion.

Other Notes in this Category

1. Asch's Studies on Majority Influence
2. Dual Process Theory - Normative and Informational Influence
3. Groupthink - Irving Janis (1972;1982)
4. Moscovici and Minority Influence
5. Turner's Self-Categorisation Theory

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