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MSU Ie An Nﬂnnetive Action/EM Opportunlty Inetltutlon

MINORITY INFLUENCE AND SHARED INFORMATION:
DOES ARGUMENT STATUS ASSIST THE MINORITY?

By

Michael E. Winters

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Psychology

1996

ABSTRACT

MINORITY INFLUENCE AND SHARED INFORMATION:
DOES ARGUMENT STATUS ASSIST THE MINORITY?

BY

Michael E. Winters

This study investigated the impact of informing participants that arguments presented by
either a minority or majority source either had, or had not, previously been shared with
previous audiences. It was hypothesized that the minority faction would achieve greater
persuasive ability if arguments were believed to be previously unshared. Subjects were
146 Michigan State University undergraduate students. While this hypothesis was not
supported, results indicated interesting trends bearing both on this and related research

topics.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost I would like to acknowledge Randy and Chris Hansen, they have
been more than just advisors and mentors, but friends. Without you this journey could
not have taken place. Thank you for support and confidence I will appreciate forever.

To my Parents Gene and Marianne, and my brother Anthony, you were there before this
began, and will be long after it is completed. Thank you for the little things, that are not
always recalled, but will never be forgotten.

To Patrice and Robert Moore, You have given me one of the greatest gifts that can be
granted, peace of mind. Having a safety valve has been very comforting, I guess I work
better with a net.

To Doug Thompson, who taught me about the game, a way to approach work, life, and
adversity. ~

To Gwen Fiol, who watched the transition, listened to me, and constantly reminded me
by her presence the importance and joy of a friend who cares selﬂessly.

To Jim Peters, who has been there as long as I can remember, and has been a friend
whose support has never wavered. To Karl Hochkammer, who has quietly been a pillar
of support, and who reminded me that I really could do this, when I was not so sure. To
Rick Schrage, a fellow Spartan, who has helped me keep some perspective thorough all

of this craziness.

To Donna, there is no easy place to begin, you have been a trailblazer, a guide, and a
friend through the tough stuff. You kept me on track and I proudly bear the title
“Whining buddy” Let the Banquet commence, and continue!

To the rest of my family, all of the Hollywoods, Croziers, and Schaeﬁem, for all of the
cards, questions, calls, and care, which always seemed to arrive at just the right time.

To Lisa, Domini, Linda, and the rest of the gang. Where would I be without all of you ?
You have been the ﬁrst line of defense against insanity, and you may never know what
that meant.

Finally, to Norb Kerr, my Advisor, who kept me in line, knew when to push, and how
hard. Thank you for all you have done to get me here.

iii

Table of Contents

Introduction

The First Innovations

Minority Inﬂuence and Models of Persuasion

The State of Minority Inﬂuence Today

Minority Inﬂuence and Persuasion Models: Beginning the Integration
Minorities and Information Processing: Do They Do it Differently?
The Issues and the Arguments: What do People Believe About Them?
Issues of Operationalization and Definition in Minority Inﬂuence
Method

Design

Subjects

Procedure

Results

General Discussion

Appendices

List of References

iv

12

19

21

22

22

22

22

26

32

38

41

List of Figures

Figure 1 - Source Status Effect on Attitude Toward Senior Exams Three Item 38

Figure 2 - Source Status Effect on Attitude Toward Senior Exams Five Item 38
Figure 3 - Source x Argument Status Interaction Trend (ns) Three Item 39
Figure 4 - Source x Argument Status Interaction Trend (ns) Five Item 39

Figure 5 - Source Status Effect on Attitude Toward Senior Exams Restricted (3) 40

Figure 6 - Source Status Effect on Attitude Toward Senior Exams Restricted (5) 40

Introduction

The purpose of the proposed experiment is to further explore the area of
minority inﬂuence. This rich area of study has been of growing interest in the last two
decades. Part of this richness stems from the fact that it is a phenomenon which has had
many contending theories about causes and instances of occurrence. There has been '
substantial contention about how powerful an inﬂuence a minority can exert, but that
such an effect exists no longer seems to be an issue. In the following introduction I first
brieﬂy review the classical theory developed by Moscovici. I then begin to explore
some of the more recent innovations in this area as related to the work of Trost and her
colleagues, as well as that of Mass, Clark, De Dreu and De Vries, Petty and Baker,
Chaiken and others. Within this framework I introduce a variable that I believe is
essential to further understand the phenomenon of minority inﬂuence: the shared or ,
unshared status of the arguments presented to a target audience. Finally, I present an
experiment that I believe provides sound integration of this concept into the framework
of minority inﬂuence research.

Minority inﬂuence is an area of social psychological research that has slowly ,
become a focus of interest in the field. By adhering to one of the basic tenets of this area
of research, consistency of position, in this case that minorities can have an inﬂuence,
those who believe in the effects of minorities have brought its study into the mainstream
of the discipline. The idea that a consistent minority can have an impact on those who
are exposed to its message was ﬁrst suggested by Moscovici, Lage, and Naffrechoux

(1969), as a response to Asch’s work on conformity.

2

The basic argument that they presented was, as Asch had demonstrated, that
while majorities could persuade others to conform to its position, the minority should
also have an ability to inﬂuence others under the right circumstances. Moscovici and
his colleagues attempted to create just such circumstances, and by so doing demonstrate
the power of the minority. In the laboratory they created a situation where ambiguous
stimuli (blue slides) were presented to a group of subjects and confederates. A minority
of the confederates consistently claimed the slides were green. When they analyzed the
responses of all participants they found that a small percentage of the respondents were
persuaded to agree with the minority confederates, and that fully a third of the subjects
had agreed with the minority on at least one trial. Based on these results Moscovici and

his colleagues claimed that a minority could exert some amount of inﬂuence on others.

This original work was followed up by a series of studies that began to explore,
and deﬁne, the boundaries of minority inﬂuence. One of the most important
conclusions that Moscovici and his colleagues drew was that the actual process of
inﬂuence was somehow different from that of the conformity responses typically
generated by the majority. The question then became: In what way was minority
inﬂuence different from that of the majority? Minorities, they theorized, lead to
innovation, while majorities force conformity. As we shall see Nemeth, and others,
continue to explore the area of minority inﬂuence, speciﬁcally the results of innovation
and novel thought processes, and have found this to be an area of minority inﬂuence
that is quite complex in its own right. This tendency for minority sources to promote

innovation in target audiences was believed by Moscovici to stem from the conﬂict of

3

position, or attitude that a minority faction creates in a group situation. This state of
conﬂict contrasts with a unanimous group, which inherently has no such conﬂict,
without which, they argue, innovation cannot occur.

In 1976 Moscovici and Lage began to explore the “cognitive and relational
conﬂict” that they felt was necessary to create an environment suitable for the minority
to exert inﬂuence. This research also explored two particular details that would become
areas of interest themselves in research endeavors soon to follow: l)the need for a
“behaviorally consistent” minority; and the prerequisite that a minority be at least two
persons. The consistent minority was an essential ingredient for the development of
programs by Nemeth, (N emeth, Swedlund, and Kanki, 1974) as well as the work of
Mungy and his colleagues ( Mungy and Papastarnou 1980, Mungy 1985). In any event,

the possibility of an inﬂuential minority, as first explored by Moscovici, has indeed
created an interest in the potential power and dynamics of the minority. In fact, there
are now many competing theories that have grown from this base which attempt to
explore and explain this intriguing phenomenon.

Since Moscovici’s original work research into the phenomenon of minority
inﬂuence and the variables that are believed to mediate and moderate it are being
investigated with growing interest. In the beginning, the work on minority inﬂuence
was conducted almost exclusively in Europe; but, in the last two decades an increasing
amount of research on this phenomenon, and the processes that lie beneath it, has been
performed in the United States. There have been two major lines of inquiry in this area,
those that have continued to explore the visual-perceptual effects that Moscovici

originally uncovered and those that have explored the relationship of the minority

4

source and its target. Of interest here is the latter area of research, which focuses on the
message that the minority uses in its presentation, and the context in which it is
delivered to, and processed by, the target audience. Within this problem area, Crano has
explored a number of interesting avenues, particularly the use of other individuals as a
basis for comparison in the decisions we make. His work has focused in part on how
we perceive the nature of the information we are presented with, in other words, the task
of interpreting and processing the information in a situation. The essence of his
argument (Crano, 1995) is that it is ﬁrnctional for us to perceive cues about the task, or
environment, and depending on those cues we might react differently to the same
message in different situations. For example, an individual may use perceived aspects
of the task, such as the belief that there is (or is not) a true and objective solution to a
problem, as a guide in decisions about resolving the issue at hand.
_T_'h_e_ _Ifj;s_t Innovations

As interest began to spread, and research increased in this area, some
investigators started to return to the original issue that had sparked this inquiry, as well
as some of the conditions proposed as essential to minority inﬂuence. For example,
how, if at all, are majority and minority inﬂuence alike? Maass and Clark (1983)
explored this area by investigating the way minority and majority messages are
processed. They asked the question: Are minority messages processed in the same way
as majority messages (therefore a single process model) or, are they processed in a
totally different way (indicating a dual process model)? Mass and Clark, as well as
others (Moscovici 1980, Nemeth 1986, Kruglanski and Mackie 1990, De Dreu and De

Vries 1995), have found evidence that supports the dual process model, but this issue is

5
still a point of contention today. Alternatively, Latané (1981) offered a theory that

advanced two basic ideas. His primary hypothesis posited that the ﬁrst minority
member to state his or her position would have the greatest impact, with each successive
person having less of an effect, and his second predication was that because of the
diminished impact of the “reinforcement” minority members, there should be no
fundamental difference in the way in which minorities inﬂuence their targets relative to
majorities. His hypotheses were essentially an integration of minority inﬂuence with
social inﬂuence theory, and supported a single process theory. The idea of social
inﬂuence as a moderator of minority inﬂuence is a perspective that Crano and his
colleagues would later explore more fully, basing some of their arguments on the work
of Latané.

Still others began to explore some of the other inﬂuences the minority could
potentially exhibit. For instance, Nemeth began investigating how people receiving the
minority message think about that message. One outcome of this program was the
discovery of what Nemeth and Wachtler (1974,1983) term divergent thinking. What
then is divergent thinking? And, how did it inﬂuence the way Nemeth’s hypotheses
about minorities were developed? First came the realization that after being exposed to
minority messages subjects “thought differently” about the issues, even if they resisted
the persuasive aspects of the message. As this effect was further considered Nemeth
and her colleagues found that individuals exposed to minority messages tend to envision
both more, and more diverse solutions to problems. Furthermore, it was shown by
Nemeth et a1. (1974) that majority sources tend to focus targets more on the direct

argument topic, as well as inducing “convergent” thought. This convergent processing

6

leads targets to not develop as many, or as original thoughts about the relevant topic or
topics related to that issue.

Another effect of minority inﬂuence that was discovered was that the private
opinions of subjects tended to be inﬂuenced toward the minority position even when the
public response showed conformity with the majority (Maass and Clark, 1984). The
reason, it has been argued, for the difference in which opinion is displayed, is based on
the idea that the individual may be in some way sympathetic to the minority position,
but is concerned with the power of the majority and its ability to sanction them.
114mm Inﬂuence m Ms 9_f Persuasion

As the domain of minority research expanded, and gathered attention, it slowly
began to become integrated with models of persuasion and information processing that
were more fully developed, as well as more mainstream. One example of this synthesis
is the application of Chaiken’s (1980) Systematic-Heuristic model of information
processing to the area of minority inﬂuence. This processing model states that when
processing more carefully, or systematically, individuals process information more
deeply and “... have attended to and cognitively elaborated persuasive argumentation...”
(Maheswaran and Chaiken, 1991). This depth of processing becomes essential to the
argument that minorities can only have an inﬂuencing effect when the minority message
is carefully scrutinized. Another processing/persuasion model which has been utilized to
study minority inﬂuence is the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), proposed by Petty
and Cacioppo (1986). Similar to Chaiken’s Heuristic Systematic model, this is a dual
route model of information processing which argues that the “central” route is an

effortful, careful mode of processing. Individuals processing via this path will tend to

7

pay close attention to the argument presented, so in order to persuade (or inﬂuence), the
arguments used must be recognized as valid. In the case of “peripheral” processing the
individual is not as invested in the arguments at hand and therefore not carefully
attending to the actual argument content. When processing by this route, nonessential
(as related to the argument itself) cues can inﬂuence the target, cues such as physical
attractiveness, or communicator expertise. This mode of processing could obviously be
an issue when considering minority inﬂuence, and have direct impact on a minorities’
ability to inﬂuence a target audience. If targets (for whatever reason) do not believe an
issue to be important they might tend to process peripherally and be more subject to
cues of persuasion that might not normally inﬂuence them if they were more invested.
One possible example of such a persuasive cue would be the faction size of the source.
In the “non-invested” example, the salient majority could have an advantage, by a
simple cue such as “consensus implies correctness”, or “there is strength in numbers”,
or so one could argue based on this theory.

The possibility of the impact of dual process information processing and
minority inﬂuence has been both reviewed (Maass and Clark 1984, Wood et al., 1992
and De Vries et al. 1995) as well as researched, although the ELM model has been most
carefully pursued by Baker and Petty (1994). Alternatively, De Dreu and De Vries
(1993a, 1993b) have considered both the ELM and Chaiken’s HSM. I explore some of
this last team’s results, and their potential ramifications shortly. This
processing/persuasion based research relates to another, important, line of research, that

of Trost and her colleagues. We discuss this work more completely later, but the thrust

8

of this perspective postulates that the task relevance can have an effect on the mode of
processing that an individual uses when processing a message from any source.
ﬂ; ﬂag _(_)_f Minority Inﬂuence jib—day

What we have seen develop began as a single idea about the power of a small
minority and has become an investigation about how we communicate, when we are
swayed by one group or another, and how the size of that group contributes to these
processes. What has also become evident is that there are still many issues involved in
minority inﬂuence that have not yet been resolved. Some, as introduced above, involve
questions about the ways in which a message is processed. This issue however, leads to
another question: What inﬂuences the way that we process as related to the faction size
of the source of the message? Next we discuss some potential inﬂuences on the situation
that have only recently been more thoroughly considered, including the type of task
that the subject is performing, also, the strength of the arguments being presented.
What happens if, for instance, we process elaborately and the message we process is
very weak? Finally, and the last topic I discuss in the next section, What happens if
new information is brought to bear on an argument? What if the people asked to think
about the message from the minority source believe the message is an old argument,
versus when they believe the argument to be new and they are the ﬁrst to hear it? How
might this set of circumstances affect the process of persuasion?

During the last ten years there has been a proliferation of research in the area of
minority inﬂuence. As the question has drawn the attention of more researchers,
scientists from different backgrounds have explored this area, and some interesting

questions, and hypotheses have developed. One of the outcomes of these developments,

9

however, is that competing theories have been offered to explain minority inﬂuence,
theories which make very different predictions about how people behave under similar
circumstances. Generally, it is these theoretical differences that have generated some of
the most interesting new questions, as well as some of the variables explored in the

resulting experiments, in particular, which I intend to address with this project.

Minority Igluence a_n_d_ Persuasion Models Beginning _th_e Integgtion

 

DeVries and DeDreu (1995) present a series of arguments which direct attention
not to minorities themselves as the key to inﬂuence, but to the message and speciﬁc
external factors related to that communication. DeDreu and DeVries propose that they
believe the most effective method with which to explore the minority inﬂuence
phenomenon is the Heuristic Systematic Model (HSM) of persuasion (Chaiken and
Stangor 1986). It is their contention that for the source of a minority message to be
successful, the targets must be processing systematically and the minority must have
solid arguments. They describe systematic processing as a “comprehensive, analytical
orientation to information processing” (DeDreu and DeVries 1995, Eagly and Chaiken,
1993, 326- 327). Others, such as Crano (Gorenﬂo and Crano, 1989), have suggested
that we utilize heuristics in deciding where our attention is focused, and how deeply we
process a message. These variant positions may present a clue to an interesting series of
events that might need to occur for effective minority inﬂuence to take place. De Dreu
et. al. suggest, and support the position, that to effectively persuade, the minority must
induce systematic processing in its target. The dilemma created here is that if we
consider both types of paradigm, that presented by Crano, which relies, at least initially

upon heuristics to facilitate processing, and/or the series of events presented by De Dreu

10

and DeVries’, which speciﬁes the necessity of systematic processing, then the target
might ﬁrst recognize the type of task in a heuristic manner, and then based on cues in
the situation, process the message itself in a systematic way.

For the above series of events to occur a process such as the one I outline next
might have to occur which combines the concepts of both Crano and DeDreu et.al..
First heuristically, an individual recognizes that someone is trying to persuade them.
She recognizes that this is a topic of some importance, and that there is a speciﬁc correct
answer (as if she were on a team solving a team building survival type problem),
triggering her to process incoming information systematically. She might also be more
likely to use information from others outside her reference group (a minority) because
they may provide useful information she does not have, or could use. So she
systematically process the message itself, from the minority source. It is within the
HSM based paradigm which DeDreu and DeVries work which allows for such a series
of events to occur. Since this approach allows for both heuristic and systematic
processing to occur as a mixed ratio as opposed to strictly by one route or the other, it
could be argued that there are a series of stages in the persuasive attempt. In the
beginning processing is more heuristically oriented, then as the message itself is
processed, the incoming information is attended to by means of a more systematic
pattern. It is as this systematic phase begins when “ external factors” such as DeDreu
and DeVries consider in their research becomes important. We term these “external
factors” because while they are variables that affect inﬂuence, they are not part of the

task or message itself.

11

Before discussing the external factors De Dreu and De Vries explore, it is
important to point out that one of the main outcome variables De Dreu and
DeVries(l993) consider are the effects of minority inﬂuence on attitudes about focal
issues (those topics specifically in the communication), as well as related issues (or
topics which are related to the communication but that are not a part of the message).
While the influence a minority has is studied in their work, they also explore the effects
of a message over a period of time, or how attitudes toward issues that are only
tangentially related to the message are affected. One example of an external variable
that they have studied, and believe to affect minority inﬂuence, is the violation of
expectation. The concept of violated expectation is essentially as follows: individuals in
general believe that most other people are similar to them, and therefore hold similar
views. Since people, typically, tend to make this assumption there is an implicit
corollary assumption, i.e., most people tend to believe that they are a part of the
majority on any given issue. A frequent hypothesis related to violated expectations and
minority inﬂuence states that when what we believe to be true about the world is not
supported in other words when we believe we hold a majority opinion but are told
otherwise we have a tendency to pay more attention to a message. We pay closer
attention because we want to understand why there is a discrepancy between what we
thought was true and what we are being told is true. Recall that Moscovici
hypothesized that conﬂict occurs when minority factions exist; this occurrence of
expectation violation fulﬁlls just such a conﬂictual role, here at the individual as
opposed to group level. Baker and Petty (1994) support this contention. They showed

that minority messages were more effective in eliciting private change when arguments

12

were strong rather than weak, in conditions where the message delivered was
unexpectedly counter-attitudinal. This pattern of results speaks to the probability that
the violation of expectations tends to promote systematic processing, which in turn
heightens awareness of argument quality, and content.

Minorities and Information Processing: Do ILey Do It Differently?

The effect of the presence of minorities can also be seen in the way in which
topics at issue are considered. Take for example, the concept of convergent vs.
divergent thinking, ﬁrst proposed by Nemeth (1986). She and her colleagues
hypothesized, and supported the idea, that minorities and majorities tend to generate
different styles of conceptualizing of information. Minority dissent, Nemeth, Mass,
and others contend, fosters divergent drinking, or thinking that generates many, original,
and novel droughts related to problem solving both for the topic at hand and related
issues. Altematively, majorities foster convergent thinking that focuses on the central
issue only, and majorities tend not to create original solutions beyond those that the
majority already supports. This difference in drinking is relevant to our interests in that
if minorities do indeed foster novel and original solutions in problem solving tasks than
they may act as a catalyst to other individuals. If the minority presents quality
arguments, they might induce those others (such as a new target audience) to become
more likely to accept the position of the minority. Maass and others have addressed this
issue of divergent thinking as well as related questions in their work in two different
and equally important ways. First, in their research, Mass and Volpato (1995) support
the hypotheses that Nemeth had advanced, arguing that in performing problem solving

tasks minority sources do indeed promote more, and more original ideas than majority

13
sources (Nemeth 1986, Nemeth and Kwan, 1987). Importantly, Maass and Volpato also

consider, and recognize, that there have been two major camps in researching minority
inﬂuence. One aggregate is composed of those who study inﬂuence in problem solving
tasks such as Nemeth, and the other major faction consists of those researchers who
have investigated attitudinal change such as Baker and Petty, Maass, Mucchi-Faina, and
others. Why is this is an important consideration? Because Mass and Volpato
acknowledge that there needs to be an investigation of whether or not there is a common
set of processes that underly the effects in both paradigms.

Recently Maass et al. (1995) attempted to show differences between minorities
and majorities and their ability to persuade on tasks deﬁned as objective and subjective,
or, in their terms, knowledge based vs. attitude or opinion based tasks. They found that
minorities were persuasive only on attitude based issues, whereas majorities were
persuasive on both types of task. This result was further qualiﬁed by the fact that
subjects who were sure of their position were not at all inﬂuenced by a minority source.

There may be some question as to how clean a manipulation of objectivity and
subjectivity this experiment employed, but at the very least it utilized a method that
brought a new approach to this problem.

Trost and her colleagues (Trost and Ybana, 1995, Trost and Kenrick, 1995,
Trost, Maass, and Kenrick, 1992) have also addressed the issue of attitude change
fostered by minority and majority sources; and, in doing so they have developed an
interesting paradigm. Not only is their approach a useful, and relatively simple method,
but it effectively integrates some important aspects of some of the more recent research

efforts already mentioned. Trost et al. (1992) found that minorities could indeed be

l4

inﬂuential when the message was of low relevance to the target; however, when the
personal relevance was high, then the effect was eroded and the minority was unable to
persuade the target. The argument they present for this reversal of effect was that under
high relevance the increased attention the minority fosters becomes negatively biased
due to the high relevance of the issue, in this case being forced to take comprehensive
examinations before graduation. This is to say, using their stimuli, an individual will
regard the arguments they are about to hear about instituting comprehensive exams,
from an already negative position simply because they will be personally affected by
them, before even hearing the ﬁrst argument.

Further research in this area by Trost and Ybarra (1995) showed that personal
relevance can have an effect on the ability of a minority to inﬂuence others.
Participants were presented ﬁrst with a survey to obtain general attitudes toward a series
of issues related to university policies, one of these issues was the implementation of
comprehensive senior examinations. They were then shown a video taped confederate
posing as a university official recommending the adoption of this proposal, relevance
being manipulated by stating the adoption was to take place in either one or eight years.

Minority or majority status opinion was established by reporting the results of a student
poll which had been taken the year before, indicating that 78% supported and 22% did
not support the adoption (or the reverse). The main objective of this experiment was to
ascertain the effect of the personal relevance of an issue, and strength of the arguments
used in support of a position on the processing of inﬂuence messages. The issue of
argument strength has been fairly consistent in other research domains, where stronger

arguments are in general more persuasive when subjects are processing centrally, or

15
systematically, but Trost and Ybarra ﬁnd that the quality of arguments from minority

sources is only considered when topics are not highly personally relevant. So even
though arguments may be recognized as strong, they are not persuasive when
originating from a minority source. In addition to answering some of these questions,
Trost and her colleagues have developed an interesting methodology, which I will try to
adapt to answer some of the same as well as some different questions.

The above experiment showed that the strength of the arguments interacted with
the relevance of the message such that in low relevance conditions argument quality
from minority sources was attended to, i.e., subjects detected differences in argument
quality. However, the majority source was still given preference, and so induced a
greater overall change in favorability rating. I would like to take some time to more
closely examine the results that Trost and Ybarra report in their 1995 paper for two
reasons. First, as I have stated I wish to explore minority inﬂuence utilizing, and
augmenting Trost and Ybarra’s method. Speciﬁcally, my experiment is based on three
of their variables and as I have mentioned there is one other that I believe to be crucial.
The variables in common are source (majority/minority), strength of argument, (I will
present only strong arguments), and personal relevance (which will also be high for this
experiment); the additional variable will be the shared quality of the arguments
(previously shared/unshared). Second I wish to explore an interaction that occurs in the
Trost and Ybarra experiment which is of particular interest.

Trost and Ybarra found, as they would predict, that in low relevance minority
conditions, strong arguments were more favorably rated than weak arguments (see

ﬁgure). In the majority condition, there was no statistically reliable argument effect.

16

This is a reasonable outcome if we allow that the majority serves as a cue, and since
there is low relevance the majority would foster peripheral or heuristic processing. On
the other hand, a minority source would tend to produce (due to their novel status)
generally more systematic style processing (along a dimension, not as dichotomous set
of options). This more systematic level of processing should create a greater
differentiation between arguments, and thus the recognition of quality differences which
Trost and Ybarra observed. In the high personal relevance conditions strong and weak
arguments were recognized as such by both majorities and minorities, and so
favorability ratings were generally greater for strong arguments.

The result that I ﬁnd most intriguing however, occurred in the differences in the
relationships between the strong arguments for both minority and majority sources,
under high relevance. One would expect systematic processing for both sources and
equal inﬂuence due to consistent argument strength. Trost and Ybarra’s results show
otherwise, their results show a strong trend (p < .07) for subjects to rate arguments from
the minority to be less favorable than from the majority. Trost and Ybarra ﬁnd a
tendency to discount the minority position, even when arguments are strong, as well as
highly relevant.

It is my argument that the minority status of the source is having an attenuating
effect on the arguments, but not simply because they are a nrinority, the arguments are
the same strong arguments, when attended to they should be recognized as such. Why?
I argue that the status of knowledge (or assumptions) about the arguments themselves

could be causing this effect.

17

My argument is as follows: If a target listens to a strong argument from a
minority source, when in the low relevance condition, the novelty (or conﬂict) of the
minority caused systematic processing and the strength of the argument is recognized,
noted, and responded to, in this case by a favorable rating, which is as favorable as a
comparable majority argument. However in the high relevance condition, they are more
heavily invested, as such they are not only motivated to examine the arguments
carefully, but to discount them if possible. I believe that such discounting tendencies
lead the target person to not only consider the argument for its’ content, but also to
consider non-argument related facts. One such “fact” may be that these apparently
strong arguments have not won most people over. This consideration leads to the
cognition/question “ Has this argument been heard by everybody?” If the target
believes this to be the case, it may very well lead them to the conclusion that, as strong
as this argument may appear to be, if only a minority of people agree with it, there m
be stronger counter arguments available,(of which I am presently not aware, perhaps).
If however, subjects believed that the arguments they are about to be presented were
11.6.19! available to those previously polled, then they could not make this attribution and
therefore should be as strongly inﬂuenced as when there is a majority source.

It seems strange, almost counter-intuitive, that there are circumstances in which
a strong, cogent argument is unable to inﬂuence the targets of persuasion. If one
perceives, and rationally considers arguments about an issue, and if these arguments are
sound, when would they be persuasive, regardless of the source? Certainly, one can A
recognize the validity of a set of arguments and not be persuaded; for example when the

arguments imply a severely negative outcome for the person who is the target of the

18

persuasion (as in some of the high relevance conditions mentioned above). Given that

an example like this exists, and if we ignore that circumstance, what other conditions

 

would lead a person to consider such arguments and not be persuaded, and under what
circumstances would this not occur? The preceding review of recent experimentation
has shown that there have been both inconsistent predictions and results as to when an
argument or situation involving a minority source will fail or succeed to sway a target.
However I also believe that many of the necessary keys are present, we just need to
address attributions which may have been inadvertently supplied to subjects. What I
will attempt to show with the following experiment is that in combination with the
above discussed factors, there is a speciﬁc inﬂuence which needs to be considered,
whether the subjects believe the arguments have been shared with others who have
already been polled.

Most of the work done in this area has focused on the effects relative to indirect
or latent changes, for example, those which are not related either to the issue in a
persuasive communication. It is my hypothesis that direct but private inﬂuence for the
issue at hand, when individuals are privately polled can be demonstrated. The existence
of such an effect, is drawn from, and based upon the theories discussed to this point. I
have reviewed the experimentally explored effects of variables such as the potential
effect of the relevance of the issue being presented to the subject, the strength of those
arguments, and, of course, the minority status of the source. In considering the work
which has been done in this area, some interesting contradictions of prediction have

come to light.

The Issues and the Arguments: What Do People Believe About Them?

19

The issues considered, or presented, as manipulations in experiments on the
inﬂuence of minorities are often “hot topic” issues of the day. We need to be aware that
since the issues we choose for the manipulations in studies like this are topics which are
often well known, that the very popularity, or “spotlighted” quality of these issues will
probably mean that our subjects have at least a passing familiarity with the issues. For
example, Maass and Clark have used gay rights issues, DeDreu and DeVries the issue of
admission of foreign immigrants, and Trost and Ybarra comprehensive senior
examinations. Again, these are not simple issues that are novel to the participants, but
complex issues which if not deeply contemplated by subjects, are at least familiar to
them. Since it is probably the case that these individuals are familiar with the issues, it
is also reasonable to infer that they are aware that differing opinions exist relative to
these topics. If we allow that the subjects have at least some knowledge of the issues,
then it would be reasonable to assume that when they are exposed to our persuasive
communication they may draw conclusions, based on the cognitions they already have,
which in turn can inﬂuence the processing of our message. Trost and Ybarra (1995)
found that minority sources, under high personal relevance were processed
systematically, and subjects agreed with strong proposals and rejected weak ones, but
still were not willing to side with the minority. Closing the “escape hatch” of the
shared/unshared quality of the argmnents may be necessary, I believe, in order to
produce conversion (in Moscovici’s terms) by the minority. This will only be the case
when the arguments presented are strong arguments; weak arguments (regardless of

novelty), should not carry much persuasive weight.

20
Essentially then, when presented with what they believe to be previously

unshared arguments subjects who are asked to consider strong arguments which they
believe to be of high personal relevance, a minority source should be equally successful
in its attempt to persuade as the majority in similar conditions.

Trost and her collaborators tend to focus their research on the relevance of the
task to the person considering it. Their main prediction, and result, has been for a
general lack of minority inﬂuence for personally relevant tasks. To summarize, they
would argue that under a low relevance condition that the only minority impact will be
that the arguments will be scrutinized and recognized as weak or strong. On this I
would agree. However, and again, I believe that supplying the additional knowledge
that a series of strong arguments that have not previously been shared may be the
missing requirement for the participants to be swayed by strong minority messages.
Finally I would like to address a relevant, but nonsigniﬁgant, trend from Trost’s work
with both Ybarra(l995), and Maass and Kenrick(1992). In each of these experiments
subjects who were exposed to arguments that were, strong, highly relevant, and which
originated from a majority source tended to be more inﬂuential. This combination of
factors is of great interest to the current research. The reason for this interest is that the
addition of information about the history of the argument, in other words whether the
arguments have been shared previously with others, may either support the
nonsigniﬁgance of this trend, show that there is no trend when the participants have
more knowledge, or that more speciﬁc knowledge about argument shared status will

support this trend and exhibit statistical signiﬁcance.

Issues of QpeLatigngization and Deﬁnition in Minority Inﬂuence

21

One of the ﬁrst issues that must be addressed, and one that has been identiﬁed
by others as an area of misunderstanding, is the deﬁnition and use of terminology across
minority inﬂuence research paradigms. For this project the terms minority and majority

refer strictly to group size, the group with the larger contingent being the majority and
the smaller in number being the minority. Crano (1995), and others (Worchel et al.,
1995, Mucchi- Faina, 1995) have expressed the position that the term minority (as well
as other terms)can, under different scenarios, be applied in different ways. For the
purpose of this study, we will only consider the case of simple numerical division
between minority and majority.

Before I give a detailed description of the method and design I will brieﬂy
preview, and summarize the methodology. The variables I manipulated were essentially
the same as Trost and Ybarra (l 995); ﬁrst, source, (either majority or minority); these
were represented as being 78 and 22% respectively, of individuals who participated in a
(bogus) previous poll called the STATE (Senior Tests for A Traditional Education) Poll.

The “new” variable was the shared quality of the arguments that the subjects read.
With this variable I informed the subjects that the participants of the ﬁrst state poll
either were or were not familiar with the arguments that are about to be presented. In
the unshared condition the subjects were told that the arguments were received since the
last poll was administered, and so this is the ﬁrst time MSU students have seen them.
The arguments used are those used by Trost and her colleagues (1992, 1995), and
developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1986).

Method

Design

22

The experiment was a 2 (majority / minority) x 2 (Argument status: shared /
unshared) between subjects design.
Subjects

Subjects are 146 male and female students from Michigan State University.
Subjects received partial credit towards fulﬁllment of course requirements.

Procedure

Subjects were told that they were present to take part in a survey which is part of
a new university initiative to bring MSU into the next century. They were further
informed that the object of this part of the program was to gather student input for the
committee in charge of this project. Supposedly, this committee was a combined
faculty/student group that was formed to investigate the feasibility, and student reaction
to, the institution of comprehensive examinations here at MSU. Comprehensive Exams
were described as. a series of exams taken at the end of the senior year in the student’s
major area. The stated goal of the survey they were to participate in was to gather
information about issues that the school administration believed to be relevant to
keeping MSU one of the top schools in the nation for the next century. Subjects were
told that they would complete a brief general survey and then be presented with one of
the issues in a more speciﬁc presentation.

Subjects were then presented with the booklet containing survey/testing
materials. Each booklet was constructed so that the ﬁrst page that subjects came to was
entitled "MSU 2000 - General Opinion Survey". This general survey consisted of an
eight item survey requiring subjects to rate the importance of various topics which could

affect the student body. Topics on this survey will include: the addition of the new law

23

school, more ﬁrnding for remedial courses, stricter admissions requirements,
comprehensive examinations for seniors, more medical research, limitation of
enrollment, smaller class sizes, and greater stress on "core courses". Subjects had to rate
these issues on a series of dimensions for favorability, with ratings ranging from 1 ( not
at all favorable) to 9 (very favorable). For personal support of the issue for example,
“How much do you support the implementation of senior comprehensive exams ?” 1
(not at all) to 9 (strongly support), or “How much do you support the implementation of
more remedial courses ?” or “Do you support more funding for medical research?”.
This survey served as an initial rating of favorability towards comprehensive exams, as
well as a basic measure of how strongly subjects supported such an initiative. Here,
because of the apparently broad nature of the survey, I was able to ask directly for an
individual’s support/favorability reactions because similar questions were asked for all
potential policy topics.

The next section of the survey booklet contained the critical manipulation. To
begin this segment students were reminded by the experimenter that the following
section contained speciﬁc arguments about one of the issues from the survey they just
completed. The issue however, as in Trost and Ybarra (1995), was always that of
comprehensive examinations and whether or not they should be instituted at MSU.
Indemndeet variables

Minority vs. Majority inﬂuence. The text which followed the instructions was
either presented as a minority or majority source. The majority source condition will
claimed that 78% of MSU Students polled in the earlier STATE survey were in favor of

the idea of instituting senior comprehensive examinations and 22% of students polled

24

were against it. In contrast, the minority source condition stated that 22% supported the
idea of instituting senior comprehensive examinations and 78% of students polled were
against the adoption of such a policy.

Shared vs. Unshared arguments. I used this variable to determine if there are
processes occurring in which subjects reject arguments from the minority source
because they conclude that when strong arguments are being presented even stronger
counter arguments must exist; otherwise others would have been swayed by the original
arguments, for the shared condition . Subjects were informed that either the arguments
they are about to read are arguments which were shown to the previously polled MSU
students, during the ﬁrst “MSU 2000” poll. These students’ poll results, ﬁom last year,
have been used to establish the current majority / minority positions, in cooperation
with the committee, which is pursuing the task of gathering information necessary to
explore having comprehensive exams instituted at MSU (shared). Alternatively, other
subjects were told that they were being presented with a set of new arguments which the
committee charged with investigating the institution of comprehensive examinations for
seniors have recently collected. The participants in this condition were told that the
previously polled students had no arguments to consider, that they were just asked for
their opinions. Finally, it was explained that they will be reading the position paper that
the committee has compiled to present its’ case, and that they are the ﬁrst to read this
position paper. (unshared).

Arguments. The argument presented were based on arguments used by Trost and
Ybarra (1995) which were originally developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1986). The

arguments develop a position represented as the policy statement of the committee.

25

This statement contained four arguments why MSU students should consider supporting
the implementation of comprehensive examinations. The four arguments used in the
present study were: 1) Students like the idea, they are excused from course ﬁnals in
their senior year so that they can study for comprehensive exams in their major area,
which is presumably of more interest to them, 2) schools which have comprehensive
exams produce students who tend to score higher on national standardized tests, 3)
Students at schools with comprehensive exams rate their teachers more positively,
presumably because departments place more emphasis on high quality and stimulating
teaching, and 4) schools with comprehensive exams have more available scholarships
from individuals and corporations.

Demndent Measures. The primary dependent measure which was recorded on a
scantron form, and consisted of a series of appraisals focusing on comprehensive exams.
As in Trost et al. (1992), the essential inquiry was " How favorable are you towards
adopting comprehensive senior exams?" Responses were on a nine point Likert type
scale and compared to the initial rating from the pre-test. This measure was originally
intended to be measured directly in the post experimental survey, but due to a survey
construction error had to be measured with a multi-item measure. The end result of the
multi-item approach were two alternate measures, one consisting of ﬁve survey items
and one which consisted of three of the items. These measures are described in detail
below. Additional measures included the cognitive appraisal measures used by Trost et
al. (1992, 1995).

I also explored the impact of arguments with questions such as: "How would

you rate the quality of the arguments just presented?" and, "How strong do you feel the

26

arguments just presented were?". “How personally relevant are these arguments for
you?” “ Do you believe after considering these arguments that this issue can be resolved
simply, or with much and careful debate ?”, (responses on this item would be on a scale
of 1 (simply )to 9(with much debate» “Do you believe all arguments and counter
arguments were presented here?”, Do you believe the arguments presented here are the
best possible arguments?, “ How convincing would you rate these arguments as
being?” , “How conﬁdent are you that you could defend your position based on these
arguments ?”, “How conﬁdent are you that a single answer could be demonstrated for
this issue ?” Distractor questions were also included, these probes asked questions such
as: "How much do you feel such exams would affect perceptions of the university?" or,
"Would such exams have effected your choice of university?" and, "Do you believe
such exams affect the image of a university in a positive or negative way?".
.lLesths

Manipulation Checks

A check of differences in attitude favorability toward senior comprehensive
examinations was tested using a 2 (source status) X 2 (argument status) AN OVA with
the initial attitude measure from the ﬁrst survey as the dependent variable, indicated that
there were no signiﬁcant differences in favorability ratings previous to experimental
manipulation.

Manipulation checks indicated that participants were able to differentiate
between the source status of the communication. Subjects were asked to respond to the
question: “What percent of students in the previous poll were in favor of senior

comprehensive exarns?”. The responses were examined using a 2 (source status) X 2

27

(argument status) AN OVA in order to test the percent of subjects who recognized
source status, yielding an F(1, 141) = 1043.70, p< .001. All subjects in the majority
condition recognized that majority status, with 98% of participants indicating the
majority status as between 70 and 80 %, the actual percentage of the majority was 78.
In the minority condition 95% of participants recognized the minority as the source of
the arguments, 76% of whom were precisely accurate in reporting the minority source
as being 22%. Five participants in the minority condition incorrectly identiﬁed
arguments as originating from a majority source.

For the argument status treatment, participants who were informed that the
arguments they would read hag been shown to others during a previous poll correctly
identiﬁed the shared status of the arguments 61% of the time. Alternatively, in the
unshared condition, where subjects were told that the arguments had po_t been shown to
anyone else, 90% correctly identiﬁed the arguments as unshared. The ability of the
subjects to recognize this manipulation was checked by means of a single question
which asked “ Were students polled last year ﬁrst shown the committee’s report before
being polled?”
metal] Eevorability

The items from the second attitude survey were factor analyzed to determine if
an aggregate of items having face validity for general favorability rating would arise for
use as a single dependent measure. Five items were shown to load heavily on the ﬁrst
factor, these items included, 1) how convincing the arguments were to the participants,
2) the strength of the arguments, 3) how personally relevant the arguments were to the

students, 4) the quality of the arguments, and 5) how the participants felt the image of

28

the university would be affected by comprehensive examinations. Each of these items
loaded on the ﬁrst factor at .60 or above, and given the context, cluster thematically
about the concept of favorability toward comprehensive examinations. These ﬁve items
were subjected to a further analysis to asses how closely the held together in the absence
of the eight other items. This analysis yielded loadings of greater than .84 for the items
concenring quality, strength of argument as well as how convincing the arguments were,
as rated by the participants. The effect on image and personal relevance loaded at .59
and .53 respectively. Based on these results two alternative dependent measures were
constructed, one using the average of all ﬁve items, the other using the three items
which loaded the highest on the secondary factor analysis. All analyses ‘were run with
each of these alternative dependent measures.

The dependent measures were ﬁrst used to test a 2 (source status) X 2
(argument status) AN COVA with the initial favorability item from the ﬁrst survey as
covariate, in order to account for any differences in ratings which might be due to the
initial beliefs that subjects held toward comprehensive examinations. The AN COVA
was a necessary analysis due to the lack of a direct measure of attitude change on the
second survey. The covariate, with one degree of freedom in each instance, was
statistically signiﬁgant both for the three item measure (t = 4.509, p = .00), and the ﬁve
item measure (t = 5.154, p = .00), indicating that there was a signiﬁgant association
between the critical item on the ﬁrst survey and the three and ﬁve item dependent
measures. Future research modeled after this study should include such a direct
measure of attitude change in order to provide greater insight any underlying

phenomena. The overall analysis yielded a signiﬁcant effect only for source status, F

29
(1,141) = 4.38, p = .038 with the three item dependent measure. This result (ﬁgure 1)

indicated that, in general, participants held more favorable attitudes toward
comprehensive senior examinations when the majority was the source of the message
(_M_= 5.29) than when the source was a minority (M = 5.17) with shared arguments,
when unshared the majority rating increases
( M = 5.51) and the minority drops (M = 4.76). When the same analysis was run using
the ﬁve item dependent measure the analysis failed to achieve signiﬁcance, even for the
source status with an F(1,141)= 2.01, p = .158. These ratings were recorded on a scale
which extended from 1 to 9 with a rating of nine indicating positive, and 5 being a
neutral score; the means reported are the adjusted means. For the ﬁve item measure
(ﬁgure 2) the means for the shared condition are majority M = 5.20, and minority M=
5.69, and in the unshared condition majority M = 5.53, and minority M= 5.00. The
interaction term in this analysis was not signiﬁcant at F (1 ,141) = 1.14, p = .288. While
this was not a signiﬁcant interaction the mean directions reported above point to the
possibility of an interesting crossover effect.

All arguments presented were those which had been shown by previous research
(Trost and Ybarra, 1995) to be strong and valid. Additionally, the scenario in which the
information was communicated was structured to make the issue of comprehensive
examinations highly personally relevant, in other words to convince the students
participating that they would be impacted by the introduction of comprehensive exams.
One of the more interesting aspects of minority inﬂuence research is that there are
frequently effects of the presence of a minority source other than conversion, or attitude

change. For example Nemeth (1983) showed that the presence of a minority fosters, as

30

addressed earlier, divergent thought processes. It has also been shown that differences
can be detected in subjects ability to perceive variation in the strength of arguments

(T rost and Ybarra, 1995). Since opinions about the strength of the arguments presented
were collected analyses were conducted to determine if subjects who heard the same
arguments, but from different sources would attribute greater strength to one source or
the other. To test this possibility an AN OVA was used to analyze the perception of how
strong the arguments were as presented, and to test for different perceptions of the
argument strength depending on the source of the arguments. This analysis yielded a
marginal main effect for message source F (1,145) = 3.77, p = .054. When the
arguments were stated as originating from a majority source the adjusted mean strength
rating was 5.41 , however when the same arguments were attributed to a minority source
the adjusted mean strength rating was 4.85. I also chose to test for any perceived
differences the personal relevance of the communication to see if the source or shared
status of the arguments would add any weight to the “immediacy” of the issue. Personal
relevance however did not appear to be differentially affected by source status, as no
statistical differences were found for this measure F(1,145) = .28, p = .597.

Intenral analyses were also conducted to examine any effects which might have
surfaced for a restricted sample of those subjects for whom the shared/unshared
manipulation was clearly effective. Analyses were performed excluding the 37 students
who did not comprehend the manipulation of shared status to asses the interaction of
source and argument status. While still not achieving signiﬁcance the results of the
analysis were slightly stronger. For the restricted sample, the ﬁve item dependent

measure yielded an F (1,104) = 2.18, p = .142, and for the three item measure F (1,104)

31
= 1.74, p = .190. Analyzed with ﬁve items (ﬁgure 5)the mean favorability ratings for

the shared treatment were 5.21 in the majority and 5.54 for the minority, and for the
unshared treatment 5.69 for the majority and 5.00 for the minority. Again the reversal
of the direction is evident. The pattern also holds for the three item analysis(ﬁgure 6)
with mean favorability ratings for the shared treatment were 5.32 from a majority source
and 5.49 for a minority, and for the unshared treatment 5.55 for the majority and 4.74
for a minority source. While the shared condition again was statistically nonsigrriﬁcant,
the trend in those treatment condition is in the opposite direction. While this is not
overwhelming evidence of a minority effect, it does point in the direction of interesting
questions for future research, when some current ﬁndings are taken into consideration.
Other research, for example Trost and Ybarra (1995) had manipulations where
participants were not given information about the shared quality of the arguments they
were presented, and in that case the arguments were substantively the same as the
arguments used in this study. It is interesting to note that the subjects in that study
tended to rate arguments more favorably if they came from a majority, which is the
same trend this study shows for the participants who were told that the arguments were
unshared. This speaks to an interesting assumption that participants might be making
about the arguments they are presented with in a persuasive communication, that
assumption being that unless told otherwise they assume that they are the ﬁrst to be
presented with a set of arguments. It should be noted again that this is only a trend in

this study, but it does pose an interesting question to be pursued in future research.

W

32

A simple analysis of variance model was tested to explore the possibility that, as in
other minority inﬂuence research, the source status can inﬂuence the number of
thoughts generated about the focal issue after hearing a persuasive message. The
number of thoughts generated ranged from nine individuals who did not list any
thoughts to one participant who listed fourteen. Overall those exposed to a majority
source generated 236 thoughts, 116 positive and 120 which were negative as classiﬁed
by the subjects. For those exposed to a minority source 244 thoughts were generated
overall, with 119 positive thoughts and 125 which were classiﬁed as negative. There
were no signiﬁcant differences between minority and majority sources for number of
thoughts generated. A further analysis was conducted to determine if there were
differences in the number of positive or negative thoughts generated. Two 2
(Majority/Minority) X 2 (Shared/Unshared) AN OVA were conducted to test for any
inﬂuence of either source or argument status ﬁrst for positive thoughts, and then for
negative thoughts, with neither analysis resulting in signiﬁcant ﬁndings. The ratio of
positive thoughts to total thoughts generated was also tested, again the results did not
indicate a signiﬁcant effect either for source or argument status.
Generel Digussion

The most basic argument in minority inﬂuence since the research of Moscovici
introduced this ﬁeld of research has focused on the idea that if a minority is consistent
in its position, and able to persuade a few others, that as long as they factually support
their position, they can inﬂuence people in a deeper, more thorough and effective way
than a majority. To this day the goal of many researchers studying minority inﬂuence

has been to show under what conditions this phenomenon can occur. This research

33

proposed to investigate further the inﬂuence a minority source can have on those who
hear its message. The basic hypothesis which I attempted to support empirically was
that if those listening to a minority communication were acting under the belief that the
arguments they were about to hear had yet been shared before then they would be in a
frame of mind which would be more easily persuaded by a minority source. This
mental orientation hypothesis was based in part on the idea that people prefer to process
information in a casual way, since it takes effort to process systematically, and so we
want to conserve mental energy whenever possible.

To draw an analogy, imagine the attempt to avoid mental effort as a hallway
ﬁlled with a series of doors, where each door is an opportunity to escape from the effort
of systematic processing. As information is processed we try different doors to avoid
attending closely to a message. For example, one door might “test” whether or not the
source is credible. If the response is “No”, then we can discount the message and not
pay as close attention. If, however, the answer is “Yes”, then we must either listen to
the message carefully or ﬁnd another door by which to “escape”. With this research I
have attempted to close and lock some of the doors that might be used for just such an
escape so that those listening to the persuasive message would be forced to process
systematically, and in so doing increase the likelihood of being persuaded by the
message. This experiment had speciﬁc conditions which were intended to assist the
minority source, the message presented by both minority and majority consisted of
exactly the sarrre arguments. As mentioned, all of the arguments had been shown to be
strong in previous research (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986, Trost et. al., 1992), and personal

relevance was manipulated to be high for all subjects so that the participants would be

34

more likely to believe that it was in their interest to pay attention to the message. It was
hypothesized that the minority could be at least as persuasive as the majority, because
some of the main cues to routes of escape would not be available. If this were the case
then the systematic processing which minorities foster as demonstrated by researchers
such as Nemeth, Trost, and their colleagues, could be focused directly on the focal
message.

While the participants in this experiment were able to distinguish whether the
source of the communication they heard was from a minority or majority source, I
believe that this information needed to be even more clearly communicated. Possibly
most important was that participants who heard the “shared” communication were only
able to identify the message as having been heard 61% of the time, while this was
enough to indicate that statistically the manipulation was effective, in more detailed
analysis of the dependent measures if a participant did not correctly identify the shared
status of the communication they heard, their data were not included in the analysis.
This caused the resulting analyses to be short by 37 cases, spread across the four
conditions. The manipulation which was not completely effective may in turn have
effected the outcome of these more speciﬁc analyses. Another issue which most
certainly effected the clarity with which these results can be viewed is the lack of a
speciﬁc post test attitude measure. Instead of being able to do a straight-forward
analysis of attitude change after exposure to the communication, 1 was forced to use an
aggregate dependent measure. The use of a single attitude measure which directly
assessed change would have been more appropriate, and ultimately more useful for

interpretation because it would have allowed for an analysis of direct change.

35

Additionally, the use of an aggregate measure may contain more error, both systematic
an random. The aggregate measure, while having face validity in terms of beliefs
surrounding the issue of comprehensive examinations, was not, a direct and focused
measure. There is however a positive aspect to the use of this measure. Since the
measurement of attitude is not simple, the use of multiple items to measure a person’s
attitude may help paint a more accurate albeit broad picture of his or her belief structure.

There were however some interesting outcomes which did not achieve statistical
signiﬁcance in this experiment, but which warrant mention. The favorability of how the
message is perceived appears to have been inﬂuenced by the interaction of source status
and argument status. Although the trend is not signiﬁcant with either analysis (p = .261
for the three item measure and p=.288 for the ﬁve item dependent measure), when the
participants believed the communication contained arguments which had been heard by
others the mean favorabiltiy, adjusted for the covariate, for the three item measure, was
3.28 when originating from a majority, and 3.69 from a minority source for the three
item dependent measure. However, when the arguments were presented as containing
information which had not been previously shared the mean favorability from a majority
source was 3.57, while from a minority source it was rated 3.41 (ﬁgure 3). This
crossover trend also surfaced with the ﬁve item dependent measure( ﬁgure 4), with
majority source ratings for shared information at 5.28 and for a minority source at 5.31 ,
while for unshared information the means were the same 5.53 for the majority and 4.99
for the minority.

In general then what does this mean for minority inﬂuence research ? It seems

to indicate that the source of a message is still an important, and not fully explained key

36

to how a message is processed, and that the “history” of a message may inﬂuence that
process. Having a majority source does seem to add weight to the strength of an
argument, although how much and exactly why still is not completely clear. It may
very well be that a heuristic such as “there is safety in numbers” applies as well in
processing routines as it does in unsettling situations. It is also possible that a message
which is of high personal relevance induces just such a fear based response, or at the
very least a response which is based in being disturbed or unsettled with the message
that is presented. Unfortunately the hypothesized minority inﬂuence did not surface in
this experiment, however there are indications that there may be an effect of minority
inﬂuence where I did not expect to ﬁnd it. It may be that a minority can have its
strongest effect in situations where the message is attributed to a minority source, and
the information which has been shared before, not, as predicted, when information is
“unshared”. It is also possible that there are cues which Moscovici himself would
highlight. Such an example might be that by stating that the information pg been
shared before, and even though the message has only minority support, that minority is
sticking with those previously shared arguments. By reiterating the same message they
appear to be consistent in their position and are therefore are attended to more carefully.
Thus, it may be then, that the condition which I assumed might undermine the potency
of the minority source (the awareness that a communication had been heard previously
by another group) has quite the opposite effect. It may not be consistency, per se, but
consistency in the face of mopg opmsition which gives the minority particular power.
This question deserves more direct examination in a study which eliminates some of the

methodological weaknesses of the present study (e.g., includes both pre- and post-

37

message attitude measures) and clariﬁes and bolsters the shared/in shared manipulation.
In particular, if it is repeated unsuccessful advocacy that is the source of a minority’s
special power, one might simply manipulate the source’s apparent awareness of the

target group’s repeated rejection of her/his message.

APPENDICIES

 

38

 

 

 

 

 

 

6
5.5
5
4.5
4
3.5
Favonblllty 3
2.5 DMajorIty
2 IMlnorIty
1.5
1
0.5
o ‘ .' ' r. 1‘
Shared Unshared
Figure 1
Source Statue Effect on Attitudes Toward
SenIor Exams - Three Item Measure
Fevoreblllty
DMajorIty
IMlnorIty

 

Shared Unshared

Flame 2
Source Statue Effect on Attitudes Toward
SenIor Exams - Five Item Measure

39

 

u

N

Favorabillty

J

   

o
cor-tuninuinb

Shared Unshared

Figure 3
Source X Argument Status
Interaction Trend (ns)
Three Item Measure

 

Fevorabillty

l DMajority
IMlnorlty

 

 

 

 

 

Shared Unshared

Figure 4
Source x Argument Status
Interaction Trend (ns)
Five Item Measure

40

 

Favorability

Shared Unshared

Figure 5
Source Status - Effect on Attitude Towards
Senior Exams - Restricted Sampie
(Five Item)

 

 

Favorabllity

.,
: vrn.) s-zm‘ EWLMMLE
t

Shared Unshared

Figure 6
Source Status - Effect on AttitudeTowerds
Senior Exams Restricted Sample
(Three Item)

 

DMajority
IMlnortty

ElMajorIty
IMinority

LIST OF REFERENCES

41

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