Context/Categorization Model of Social Influence: Minority and Majority Influence in the Formation of a Novel Response Norm

Abstract

The designs of most investigations of minority/majority influence interpose extreme discrepancies between influence sources′ messages and targets′ attitudes or primitive perceptual judgments. Further, majority/minority status typically is defined by performance on the critical judgment task, rather than being based on established features of the interacting actors under study. In the present investigation, susceptibility to influence is investigated in a norm formation (vs attitude change) context, and majority/minority status of both sources and targets is established independent of the critical task. The task itself is described to participants as involving either subjective or objective judgments, which presumably renders targets differentially sensitive to in-group or out-group influence sources. As predicted, but contrary to the usual findings, minority sources had greater informational influence on both public and private judgments. Furthermore, source and subject status interacted with subjective/objective nature of judgments: in the subjective judgment condition, targets of minority status were more influenced by in-group sources, while on objective judgments, participants of majority status were more influenced by out-group sources. These effects were anticipated by the Context/Categorization model, which describes the interactive effect of (objective/subjective) task type and (majority/minority) influence source and target status on susceptibility to informational social influence. Theoretical implications of the model were discussed, as were the ramifications of the methodological variations that distinguish the present work from much prior research on minority and majority social influence.