Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote, “All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.” Indeed, single individuals and small movements in philosophy, science, the arts, religion, and politics often have profoundly altered the course of history: Homer, Plato, Confucius, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sojourner Truth, Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., César Chávez—the list could go on and on. Thus, the study of minority influence is a window into the agents of cultural and social changes through scientific or artistic achievements, technological advances, political or social movements, horrific wars, advances in racial or gender equality, or other historical trends. Toward the end of this chapter, we’ll consider how individuals can influence others by holding a position of authority or rising to a leadership position. But for now, we’re going to focus on how individual dissenters can influence the majority even without the advantage of being in a position of authority.

This research indicated that a minority can indeed have an influence over the majority, a shocking finding in a field that had previously considered only how the majority could pressure the individual. Armed with these findings, Moscovici also studied the lives of historical figures such as Galileo and Freud and how they succeeded in thwarting the consensus of their times. Moscovici (1980) proposed his conversion theory to explain how and why being influenced by a minority differs from being influenced by the majority. According to Moscovici, because people generally want to fit in with the majority group, they often go along with the majority position without deeply considering the message the majority is delivering. They tend just to accept it. The minority position, however, is by definition more distinctive. Although Moscovici reasoned that people generally don’t want to identify with the minority, the distinctiveness of the minority’s position better captures their attention. As a result, they tend to consider it more thoroughly; this deeper consideration can lead to a change in attitude.

247

You may have noticed that the dual processes specified by Moscovici’s conversion theory sound quite similar to the dual automatic and controlled processes we described in our presentation of social cognition (see chapter 3). If you did, you’re right. Research indicates that the majority often influences us in a relatively automatic fashion. Especially when we’re not invested in an issue, we tend to give the majority the benefit of the doubt and accept its position without thinking too deeply about it. But because we don’t give those in the minority the benefit of the doubt, minorities often exert their influence only by provoking carefully elaborated thought (e.g., Crano & Chen, 1998; De Dreu & De Vries, 1993; Maass & Clark, 1983).

Martin and colleagues (2007) built on prior research showing that thoughtful processing tends to lead to private attitude change that better guides behavior, whereas the change in attitudes from more automatic processing tends to be more superficial, shorter lasting, and less influential in guiding behavior. Thus, Martin and colleagues reasoned that if being convinced by a minority involves more elaborate processing of the message, it should lead to a stronger and more enduring attitude that will be a more potent guide to behavior. In contrast, if one is convinced by a majority and this involves more superficial processing, the resulting attitude should be weaker and have less influence on one’s behavior.

To test this idea, they presented students with arguments, attributed to either a minority or a majority, recommending that students be required to pay membership fees to join the student union. The researchers also measured how relevant students felt this issue was to them personally, because earlier research had suggested that people process information more thoroughly when it is highly relevant (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). Consistent with this prior finding, the study showed that when personal relevance was high, all participants, regardless of minority or majority influence, processed the message thoroughly. It was when the issue was low in personal relevance that influence from a minority, rather than a majority, source made a difference. Under these conditions, participants persuaded by a minority to pay membership fees developed a stronger attitude than those who were persuaded by a majority. In fact, those who received the message from a minority source were actually more likely to sign a petition supporting membership fees than were those who received the message from a majority. Martin and colleagues explain that when the argument was attributed to the minority, it was processed more deeply; as a consequence, it led to stronger and more enduring attitudes that had a greater influence on behavior.

Part of the reason that minorities exert their influence by provoking more systematic processing of their position is that people want to understand why the minority sees a given issue so differently from the majority. Certainly, in so doing the minority group or individual courts negative reactions from others. Research consistently finds that those who adopt minority positions are generally disliked (Nemeth, 1979), and those who adopt the minority position may in fact be aware that they are flirting with such disdain. This would help to explain the minority slowness effect. When people are asked about their attitudes on various topics such as sports, politics, celebrities, and social issues, those who adopt the minority position take longer to express their opinions (Bassili, 2003).

248

The minority position presents a distinctive and interesting puzzle that people want to figure out. They can derive considerable benefits from trying to do so. As people think extensively about the minority’s argument and why it advocates that argument, they often think about different perspectives themselves, which allows for the consideration of novel and creative possibilities (Kenworthy et al., 2008; Nemeth, 1986). In a finding consistent with this idea, Charlan Nemeth and colleagues documented that although being influenced by the majority tends to elicit conventional problem-solving solutions, being influenced by a minority increases original thinking and diversified strategies in figuring out tasks such as word completions and word compositions (e.g., Nemeth & Kwan, 1987). In one example, Mucchi-Faina and colleagues (1991) had students from Perugia, Italy, try to think of ways to enhance the international reputation of their city. The students were shown pictures of two historic landmarks in Perugia, the Palazzo dei Priori (FIGURE 7.5, left) and the Arco Etrusco (FIGURE 7.5, right) and were told that marketing these sites to enhance the city’s reputation was advocated by either a majority or a minority of citizens surveyed. When students were presented with what they thought was the minority opinion on how to enhance the city’s reputation (versus what they thought was the majority opinion), they offered more creative and unique ideas about how to do so.

250