Minority Influence on Focal and Related Attitudes: Change in Size, Attributions, and Information Processing

Three experiments examined how change in minority size influenced information processing and attitude change. Experiment 1 showed that when strong rather than weak arguments were presented, a message attributed to an expanding rather than shrinking minority elicited more issue-relevant thoughts and...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality & social psychology bulletin 2002-10, Vol.28 (10), p.1315-1326
Main Authors: Gordijn, Ernestine H., de Vries, Nanne K., de Dreu, Carsten K. W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude Change
Attitudes
Group dynamics
Group Size
Information Processing
Majority Groups
Minority Groups
Social Attitudes
Social Influence
Social psychology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Three experiments examined how change in minority size influenced information processing and attitude change. Experiment 1 showed that when strong rather than weak arguments were presented, a message attributed to an expanding rather than shrinking minority elicited more issue-relevant thoughts and more related attitude change in the argued direction. Experiment 2 showed more related attitude change in the argued direction when it was unlikely that expanding size was due to the shifting majority members’ self-interest. Experiment 3 replicated these findings. In addition, results indicated that change in size interacted differently with the majority than with minority status of the source: related issues remained largely unaffected in the case of majority support, whereas expanding minorities elicited more related attitude change in the argued direction.
ISSN:0146-1672
1552-7433
DOI:10.1177/014616702236819