Keywords: Minority effect, majority effect, adaptation
Solomon Asch produced a variety of studies, one of which concentrated on the estimation given by of a group of participants. The participants were required to state which of a variety of parallel lines were the longest. There was a degree of ambiguity as the lines were of similar length. In Asch’s study (1951) where, despite being aware that their answer was wrong, the majority of participants still went along with the group norm at least once.
Despite Asch; Serge Moscovici (1972) found that the minority can influence the majority when the minority’s responses are consistent and repetitive. According to him; if the minority is self-confident and strong and consistent (but not rigid), minority can influence majority opinion. Instead of one subject amongst a majority of confederates, he placed two confederates together with four genuine subjects. This minority was able to influence about 32% of the subjects to make at least one incorrect judgement about the color of slides they were shown.
Pretending an experiment about color perception, Moscovici invites volunteers to take part in a test. Two of them are assistants, playing the active minority. A first collective test shows everyone that each subject has a good vision. After that, slides are projected, representing miscellaneous blue taints. Participants are asked which color they see, and each time the assistants answer “green”. A few genuine participants are immediatly influenced ; they pretend too seeing green diapositives. Others say “green” later during the experiment. However a few ones keep saying “blue” each time.
But Moscovisci goes deeper, and pretexting a study about effects of tiredness on vision, he shows everyone a sequence of sixteen colours (forming a blue to green gradient), asking to locate the transition, i.e. to indicate which slide is the first green one. It appeared that the subjects perceived green really sooner than a witness-group. Furthermore, the more they resisted to assistants’ influence in the first experiment, the sooner they saw green in the second one. This implies that the people who did not seem to be influenced have in fact been the most ones.
There are two types of conformity. One is normative influence the other is informational influence. Normative influence occurs when group members conform to the norms of the group, the majority opinion, in order to prevent conflict and ensure acceptance in the group. The majority influences the minority using normative influence. The majority defines the norms of the group and the minority wants to be accepted, so the minority conforms to the majority view to ensure group harmony and acceptance.
In contrast, informational influence happens when the goal is a high–quality decision and the decision is based on arguments, or at the least majority group members are still open to evidence and arguments. A minority cannot use normative influence to change the majority view; by definition the minority does not define the norms of the group. The minority can, however, use informational influence to change the majority opinion.
In my study, Asch’s experiment is adapted to Moscovici’s minority effect experiment. It is predicted that minority in Asch’s experiment will affect majority opinions.
There are 30 participants. The only difference of this experiment from Asch’s experiment is the number of fake participants. In each experiment there are 8 participants which 3 of them are fake. These three person are our minority group. It is told them the experiment is about visual perception.I showed them patterns with lines of different lengths, and asked them to say which one of the lines is similar to a reference.
As a result; minority affect on majority. As Moscovici pointed out minority effect occured in Asch’s experiment structure. Even the signals are clear, minority can change the majority’s opinion. The strong and consistent responses of minority were enough to make majority think over. Being different and interesting is effective on others.
