Hidden impact of minorities: Fifteen years of minority influence research.

Abstract

This article reviews and evaluates the literature on minority influence since Moscovici's original formulation of minority influence theory in 1969. Alternative theoretical explanations (attributional accounts and formal models of social influence) are discussed. Special attention is given to studies contrasting minority influence with conformity processes. These studies suggest that people tend to yield to the majority in public (public compliance in the conformity paradigm), while accepting the position of the minority in private (private acceptance in the minority influence paradigm). Theoretical implications of this finding are discussed. Since Sherif's (1935) and Asch's (1951) early work on conformity, it has become a social psychological truism that individuals tend to yield to a majority position even when that position is clearly incorrect. Conformity became a term nearly equivalent in meaning to social influence. It was not until 1969 that Moscovici and his coauthors pointed out that social influence is by no means limited to a one-direction dependency of the minority on the majority. Reversing the usual conformity paradigm, Moscovici, Lage, and Naffrechoux (1969) demonstrated that a consistent minority is able to exert a remarkable degree of influ