as we've covered the social influence unit you might have got the impression it's all about authority figures and majority groups forcing the individual to change their behavior through obedience and Conformity and which individuals can resist that pressure but in this video we're going to turn this around and look at how it's possible for individuals and small groups to influence the behavior and beliefs of larger groups and even change entire societies the psych boost app now has three features flashcards multiple choice quizzes and see if you can work out the key term from his definition with the key term tester try paper one for free right now and Patron supporters can watch psych boost videos ad free learn from over 17 hours of exclusive exam tutorial videos and access hundreds of digital and printable resources including my Maps quiz sheets worksheets teaching slides and more minority influence we can Define Minority influence as when members of a majority are converted to the views of a minority free factors make a minority group more able to change the mind of members of the majority consistency commitment and flexibility let's start with consistency this simply means that members of the minority group need to repeat the same message and there are two ways this can happen individuals within the minority group can repeat the same message over a long period of time known as dionic consistency or all members of the minority group can be consistent with each other having the same clear message this is synchronic consistency they're in synchrony with each other as an example of synchronic consistency you can think of government ministers they are a minority group that tries to influence a majority the voting public all government ministers have to follow what's known as the party line they all agree to have the same public opinion on important issues even if they don't privately agree it can be annoying when you see them being interviewed and you can tell they're arguing for something they don't really believe in but synchronic consistency makes them seem more united as a group and more convincing than they would be if they were all disagreeing with each other another way a minority group can seem convincing is by showing they're committed to their position and an effective way of doing this is showing they're willing to suffer for their beliefs when someone tries to convince us of something we often question their motivations if an influencer is promoting a face cream or overpriced green health drink you know it's likely they don't truly think it's a good product but are being paid a significant amount of money to tell you to buy it however if someone can demonstrate to you they're not getting any personal reward for promoting their position but instead are willing to take a personal cost you're more likely to trust that they truly believe it you may wonder why they believe so strongly in their position so you consider their arguments more carefully a good example of commitment is the suffrage acts who demonstrated commitment by going on Hunger Strike getting arrested for civil obedience and in the case of Emily Davidson walking in front of the king's horse of the Epson Derby while it's debatable if she expected to die she did want to show a commitment to the cause of women's rights to vote we'll use this real life example again in the evaluations and in the social change section now when answering applied questions about commitment you don't have to jump straight to hunger strikes some were volunteering to give up their time is an example of commitment as is continuing of an unpopular position despite suffering social rejection from the people around them we can use the term augmentation principle here this is a concept from an area of psychology called attribution theory we infer we assume people's intentions and attitudes based on their behaviors key argues that if someone performs an action despite significant obstacles or deterrence this Alters this augments what we assume to be the underlying motive for that action we attribute their behavior to a particularly strong internal motivation the augmentation principle is a little tricky and you can create a good essay without it so feel free to skip it but I wanted to include the concept as it's appeared in a few mark schemes the final Factor flexibility may seem a little counterintuitive considering consistency is important but being somewhat flexible demonstrates that the minority is reasonable and open to valid counterarguments members of the majority won't be willing to engage with minority they see as dogmatic as the minority group wants to persuade members of the majority to be flexible and move close to this position they'll be more successful in this if they demonstrate they're willing to do the same to understand this Balancing Act between commitment and flexibility imagine a group of Green campaigners Let's assume that ultimately they want to see the end of fossil fuel cars and argue that ideally there should be an immediate B the majority of people own these cars so they would likely see this position as extreme and not agree that they couldn't drive their own cars the green campaigners can remain consistent about the princip of wanting to stop the sale of petrol and diesel cars but shift from their position of an immediate ban to argue for a significant discount on new electric cars paid for by attacks on more polluting Vehicles this would ultimately achieve their aim and members of the majority are likely to shift towards their adjusted position to appear reasonable a final point in minority influence that isn't mentioned directly on the spec what can be used in an essay is the Snowball Effect this is named after the idea that snowball rolling down downhill starts small but builds up in size quickly potentially becoming an avalanche this concept refers to the idea that Minority influence often starts as a slow process with each person only converting a few members of the majority but if each one of those people converts more this effect can be exponential with the minority quickly building in size until it becomes a majority a view also becomes more acceptable as the size of the minority becomes larger and larger increasing the speed need of acceptance minority influence evaluations our first evaluation is researched by mosichi using a consistent minority in a study that's kind of a reverse of Ash a group of participants sat together and completed a perception test they were asked to name the colors of slides which were clearly different shades of blue the groups were made of real participants aside from two Confederates these Confederates claim the slides with green either consistently for every slide or inconsistently mosichi found that the consistent minority were far more able to convince members of the majority to claim the blue slides were green which happened in 8% of Trials than the inconsistent minority who were only successful in 1% of Trials while this does indicate a consistent minority is more effective than an inconsistent one looking deeper at the results we can see that the majority of real participants 68% didn't conform to the consistent minority suggesting not everyone is receptive to the influence of a consistent minority we also have some research that shows the effectiveness of flexibility Neo asked groups of participants to take part in a mock jurry to decide the compensation level of an imaginary victim of a ski lift accident in this scenario this was a serious accident resulting in the removal of part of the victim's leg bone and the company had been found guilty of negligence so you'd expect the victim to get a significant payout all the actual participants suggested payments of between $150 and $300,000 however in each mock jwelry neth included one Confederate that argued for an unreasonably low compensation level of $50,000 in one condition the Confederate would stick to that level for the entire negotiation in the second condition they would eventually increase their offer of compensation to $100,000 neth found that the flexible Confederates were more successful in convincing members of the majority to reduce their level of compensation so it was closer to the Confederates when talking about both of these studies we could of course bring in issues of generalizability they both have strange tasks so they lack mundane realism and being set in a lab environment they have poor ecological liity in the real world we do experience minority influence but the members of those minorities are often known to us not total strangers also the issues that minorities and majorities disagree on are often important social issues not trivial things at the core of a slide or imaginary compensation ultimately this means lab based studies of minority influence may tell us little about real world minority influence however we can talk about real life examples of minority influence and reuse these points again when we cover social change in the next section we just mentioned the suffragette who showed commitment by going on hunger strikes we can also give the example of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement who delivered speeches with a consistent message of equality the lgbtq plus Rights Movement campaigned for civil Partnerships this was a flexible compromise as they ultimately Wanted full legalization of same-sex marriage which they got after civil Partnerships we could add to this that the factors that have been shown to give minorities influence in the past and in the lab can be practically applied by Future social movements I will develop these points more in the next section but keep in mind if your essay is about minority influence keep this evaluation focused on how these real life examples support the concepts of commitment flexibility and consistency because if you turn an essay on minority influence into one just about social change you won't score as highly as you could have done social change we will be a to use the ideas we've covered about minority influence when discussing social change but keep in mind this is at a larger scale we're still thinking about a minority group challenging a majority view but we'll say this leads to entire societies taking on the attitudes beliefs and behavior of the minority group I don't feel I need to re-explain these points to you but social change happens when a minority group is consistent committed and flexible in its views ultimately the snowball fact grows and grows until it influences the majority of the society what we should also explain is how minorities use both obedience and Conformity to cause social change governments are minority groups and they able to influence entire societies by creating and enforcing laws there are a number of examples such as when smoking in public places like pubs was made legal a more recent example was a set of rules around social distancing and mask use during the pandemic or the passing of discrimination laws protecting characteristics such as age disability and sexual orientation even if they don't agree with these laws members of society will alter their behavior to the wishes of the minority group to avoid punishment most minority groups however don't have the force of law to compel members of the majority group in society instead they rely on formity normative social influence is possible but as members of the minority this is harder as by definition the minority's behavior isn't the norm for most of society but what you can find is that behavior can become the norm within an influential minority group and then this Norm can spread often a new fashion style is seen as cool first among the Rich and Famous and this can then spread to the members of the youth who are rejected if they don't conform and ultimately older people are influenced and the fashion is no longer cool and the cycle repeats of course as this is normative social influence this form of Conformity is likely to be compliance the most effective and likely way a minority can use conformity to change society is informational social influence minority groups can provide new information to members of the majority such as campaigners sharing knowledge about the effects of climate change and the importance of reducing your carbon footprint this then convinces members of the majority to convert to the new view through internalization I want to give you one final term we can use and that's social crypto Amnesia when promoting a new idea minority groups often have to take Extreme Action to be noticed by the media and get their message talked about this is usually disruptive and can even include criminal action such as destruction of property this leads to arrests and imprisonment this is of course a significant personal sacrifice the activists feel is Justified to advance their cause sections of the media in society will often demonize these groups and their actions however over time these previously extreme positions can become mainstream Society taking on the position of the minority group so the attitude or behavior is now the new Norm however at this point members of the majority tend to forget that they took the idea from the minority group and in effect also forget the sacrifices the minority group made in promoting the idea often the minority group still face the stigma from the initial demonization social change evaluations it Mak sense for the evaluations of social change to focus on real life examples of social change we can develop two of these and rather than just telling the history of the movements make clear the roles of consistency commitment and flexibility that way we can use them effectively if we wanted to use them in a minority influence essay the leaders in the Civil Rights Movement were consistent and committed in their fight against racial segregation and for equality they presented a consistently unified position by organizing nonviolent process Sittin and marches with all members promoting the same message they showed commitment by continuing the protests even as they suffered abuse at the hands of law enforcement an example of this is Bloody Sunday in 1965 as unarmed and non-violent peaceful protesters attempted to cross a bridge in Alabama the Marchers were brutally attacked by police who used tear gas Batton and whips to end the protest many protesters were severely injured and the violent confrontation was captured by the news media sparking outrage Across America through the augmentation principle committed actions like these led many white Americans to reconsider their beliefs on segregation and ultimately this movement led to significant social change including the passing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act which outlawed discriminatory practices a group that demonstrated the power of flexibility are the lgbtq plus activists who wanted equal representation of their relationships under the law being able to marry this campaign was heavily resisted especially by religious leaders as a compromised position the status of civil partner was created this gave people in same-sex relationships the same legal protection as marriage but without the religious aspect interestingly this appeared to move Society closer to accepting same-sex marriage and laws allowing same-sex couples to get married was passed only a few years later in a point we can also use when discussing minority influence understanding the role of commitment flexibility consistency has led to practical applications leaders can encourage positive social change for example when it comes to healthare societies can be encouraged to improve their diets exercise more and make behavioral changes in an emerg situation such as a pandemic I mention this as an example as we could also link this to the economy as social changes in this area can significantly reduce healthare costs of society and finally as a criticism we can point to the fact that social change only happens on a large scale and happens only rarely so highly controlled laboratory experiments on large scale social change are simply not possible instead researchers rely on natural experiments case studies and correlations that don't establish cause and effect relationships I want to thank everyone over on patreon for supporting the channel because of you I've been able to teach part-time me I can make site boost on YouTube for everyone and a special thank you to Ay Taylor for supporting at the developer level I do have extra resources that are exclusive to my patrons so if you do decide to sign up you can grab those over my website these include over 100 exam question tutorial videos of course including questions on the social influence unit I hope this was helpful and I will see you in the next psych Boost video