Majority or Minority Influence :: Politics, Compliance, Conversion

This essay concerns loving influence in general. Aspects of tender influence as such as legal age influence and nonage influence will be discussed in terms of their underlying psychological edgees and how they differ. Majority influence or conformity refers to the desire to belong or to fit in within a exceptional group which involves adopting authoritative attri moreoveres, behaviour and attitudes of a particular group. As a result individuals then experience group pressure (in Baron, Branscombe & Byrne 2008). Minority influence on the unalike hand, refers to the influence that the minority exert over the majority in that the majority come to accept the beliefs and behaviours of a minority (in Baron et al. 2008).A colossal body of research has been injected into the nature and impact of both majority and minority influences. Moscovici (1980 in grunter and Vaughan 2007) claimed that both majorities and minorities exert influence in different ways. One psychological proce ss underlying majority influence is through with(predicate) direct public compliance. The dual-process dependency model which was postulated by Deutsch and Gerard, (1955 in hogget and Vaughan 2007) proposes two important motives for conformity normative complaisant influence and informational social influence. Normative social influence refers to the need to be accepted and approved by society. This involves individuals to modify their behaviours and to adopt new/current ones that are associated with the particular social group so that they are not rejected (in Hogg & Vaughan 2007). An example of this situation can be reflected in Aschs (1956 in Baron et al. 2008) study of conformity in which participants conformed to the majority group but at the same time maintained their own private opinions and disagreed. This process is known as compliance (in Bailey, J.et al. 2008).The second motive that explains why flock conform according to Deutsch and Gerard, (1955) is based on informa tional social influence. According to Festinger, (1950, 1954 in Hogg & Vaughan 2007) this type of influence is associated with uncertainty. Here individuals are uncertain and wishing knowledge as to how to behave in certain situations. Festinger referred to this as social comparison in which individuals are not fully confident rough their beliefs, attitudes and opinions and therefore yield to majority in order to be correct. This occurs peculiarly under ambiguous conditions and is clearly demonstrated in Aschs (1956 in Hogg and Vaughan 2007) and Sherifs (1936 in Hogg and Vaughan 2007) studies in which participants converged on equal answers particularly when the tasks became extremely difficult for them to be able to rely on their own judgments (in Bailey et al.