Aqa psychology 16 markers help

Does anyone have any evaluation points for minority influence and resistance of social influence

Minority Influence:

- Moscovici’s blue slide - green slide study demonstrates the importance of consistency as does Wood’s meta analysis of 100 studies that found consistent minorities to be the most influential.

- Further supportive evidence from Martin’s study on deeper processing of the minority viewpoint.

- Contradiction by Mackie who suggests that it is the majority influence that is deeply processed rather that the minority view. This is because we like to believe that others share our beliefs and when we find out that a majority believes something different, we think about their arguments and this causes conversion to the minority.

- Low ecological validity as minorities in the real world are committed because they face opposition and majorities have more power and status. These factors are missing from minority research as the minority is simply the smallest group.


Resistance:

- Support from Albrecht who showed the importance of social support in resisting social influence. Pregnant adolescents were more likely to resist the peer pressure to smoke when they had a buddy.

- Holland repeated Milgram’s baseline study but measured whether participants were internals or externals. 37% of internals did not continue to 450V compared to 23% of externals.

- Gamson shows more evidence for social support in his study.

- Twenge analysed data from American locus of control studies and found that people became more resistant to obedience but also more external. This is not what we would expect considering resistance is linked with being an internal.

Hope this helps