Majority influence

Majority influence occurs when the larger proportion of individuals (“majority subgroup”) has an influence on the opinions or behavior of the smaller proportion of individuals (“minority subgroup”).

The influence of other people leads to the fact that one behaves in conformity, i.e. agrees with the majority opinion. Whether and to what extent majority influence arises depends on various social factors.

Among other things, it is crucial how many people belong to the majority, to what extent they consistently agree with one another and how this majority is perceived by the minority. But the relationship between the level of difficulty and the importance of the decision also determines the occurrence of conforming behavior.

Social influence

In general terms, social influence occurs whenever members of a group change their minds or behavior as a result of the actual or perceived presence of other people. However, it is common to divide this general influence into two main types:

• Minority influence occurs when the opinions or behavior of the majority or majority are influenced by the minority or minority.

• Majority influence occurs accordingly when the larger proportion of individuals (“majority subgroup”) has an influence on the opinions or behavior of the smaller proportion of individuals (“minority subgroup”).

Asch's conformity studies

One of the most famous studies demonstrating the effects of majority influence is Solomon Asch's study of line perception. ("Line Perception Studies"):

Asch's experiments were an extension of previous experiments on majority influence insofar as incorrect and correct answers could be clearly recognized in the tasks used by Asch. Unlike this happened in the experiments on autokinetic effect of Sherif , where the correct answer was very unclear to be assessed task on. (in the sense of: there was no clearly right or wrong answer).

Trial design :

The subjects in this experiment were male college students who were told they were taking a test that would test their visual skills. The entire experiment was divided into 18 runs. During each round, the participants were shown a map with lines of different lengths. On it could be seen:

• A standard line of a certain length, e.g. B. 10 cm

• Three comparison lines, each with different lengths, but one line was identical to the standard line, e. E.g. 7, 10, 14 cm; however, it was clearly visible which line corresponded to the standard line in order to rule out errors

The task of the participants was to find out which of the comparison lines corresponds to the standard line. In experimental condition 1, the participants had to make the assessments alone.

In the second experimental condition, the men sat in a small semicircle in front of a blackboard on which the stimuli to be assessed could be seen and spoke their assessments out loud one after the other.

So sat z. B. 5 people in a semicircle, first person 1 said their assessment out loud, then person 2 and so on, until person 5 gave their assessment out loud. In fact, only the last person in each semicircle was a test subject ; the other people were so-called confidants, i.e. allies of the test director who made given statements. To take up the above example, only person 5 would be a test person who hears 4 other answers before making his assessment, which influence his own answer.

The confederates gave the correct answer in the first two rounds; in the third assessment and eleven others they were all asked to give the same wrong answer. So when it was the actual test subject's turn he had two options:

1. He gave the correct answer and thus did not conform.

2. He gave the same answer as everyone before him and thus behaved in conformity.

Results :

The subjects from Experimental Group 1 made no mistakes when making these assessments alone.

In experimental condition 2, 76% of the 123 men conformed to the incorrect answer given by the confederates at least once.

This speaks for the enormous influence of social conformity. However, not all test subjects behaved in conformity. In addition to the 24% of men who never complied, it was only 5% who complied in all cases.

Determinants of the influence of the majority

The fact that at least a few people behave in conformity with the majority, even if this is obviously a wrong answer, speaks in favor of the basic assumption of a group dynamic approach.

This means that there is a general pressure in groups for equality or similarity.

But while this study clearly shows the impact that certain situations have on compliance, compliance is more likely in some groups than in others. This depends on various social factors, which are discussed in more detail below.

Number of people in a majority

As the number of people in the majority increases relative to people in the minority, so does the pressure in the minority to conform. Asch carried out replications of his original study in which he varied the number of confederates (“majority subgroup members”) who gave a wrong answer in front of the test person, from one to 16 people, while the minority was constantly from a single test person was shown. The results showed that the greater the number of people in the majority, the greater the likelihood that the respondent would conform to the wrong answer. This increase in probability is independent of whether it is an informative or normative influence on conformity. However, it is not linear; from a certain size of the majority the probability hardly increases any further.

In the case of informative influence , the test person assumes with increasing number of opinions heard that the others have more information than himself and that this increases the validity of their opinion.

In the case of normative influence , the greater the number of opinions heard, the more the test person gets the impression that he is different from the group. The larger the majority, the more difficult it is to express a different opinion publicly, which brings with it a greater desire for conformity. ("Peer pressure")

Social impact ("Social Impact")

In addition to the fact that conformity increases with the number of people in the majority, the social influence of majority members who have been part of the group from the beginning is greater than that of newer majority members.

The social influence of a group member also depends on their role and status in the group; the group leader has e.g. B. More social influence than a new member.

Consequently, the influence of an additional group member is always less than that of the individual who joined the group before him. This fact can even be described mathematically by a function .

Perception of the group

From a certain number of people, adding new members to the majority no longer has an effect that is significant with regard to the influence of conformity . Usually this limit is 4–5 people. Possible explanations for this are:

• If “only” 4 to 5 people are in the majority, they are perceived as independent individuals who all have their own unique opinions. Each individual therefore makes a great influence.

• When the number of people in the majority grows, they are no longer perceived as independent individuals but as a group. Thus, the opinions are no longer viewed as the opinions of independent individuals, but as an opinion of the group. As a result, each new member has less influence.

Another reason is the idea of “optimal distinctiveness”. After that, the greater the number of people in the majority, the greater the desire to maintain one's own individuality.

Agreement in the majority ("Unanimity of the majority")

This determinant is particularly critical when trying to explain why some groups are more likely to be compliant than others.

A matching (consistent) majority would be - to refer again to Asch's study - if all 4 Confederates gave the same wrong answer, e.g. B. Line A would exist. So 100% would give a consistent answer.

One would speak of an inconsistent majority if z. B. 2 people A, 2 other people C answered. Thus, the answer frequencies would each be distributed over 50%.

But a much more extreme relationship is actually enough to prevent conformity. Even if only one out of 16 Confederates behaved inconsistently (as a test subject you hear line A 15 times and only once B or C), the compliant responses shrank to 5%.

Consequently, it does not matter whether an answer heard is correct, the answers just have to be different.

To summarize again briefly: Conformity turns out to be lower when there is an inconsistency in the individual opinions of the majority. Reasons for this:

• If the majority opinion is consistent , a person with a dissenting opinion is completely alone against the majority. One becomes unsure whether one's own perception actually corresponds to the truth. It's not hard to see why this describes an awkward situation that is avoided.

• If the majority opinion is inconsistent, the person perceives himself less as an individual compared to the group, but rather as part of a whole group of individuals. For example, once the person finds someone who agrees with them, the desire for conformity with the majority diminishes.

"Task importance"

Another factor influencing the probability with which conformity occurs is the perceived or felt importance of the task to be processed.

Since Asch and Sherif's experiments were criticized for the fact that the tasks they set were facts that were more or less trivial , Asch's original experiment was modified in a further study so that more precise statements about the influence of task importance were made could be made.

The subjects went through the experiment with two other people who were confidants of the experimenter. Participants completed a number of different assessment tasks, but there were 26 that were relevant to expected compliance. In these assessments, the photo of a single person was shown first, followed immediately by a photo with 4 people, one of whom showed the person from photo one, just dressed differently.

The task of the participants was now to identify the person. Similar to Asch's experiment, the Confederates consistently gave an incorrect answer to precisely these tasks.

There were 2 different experimental conditions in which, on the one hand, the task importance and, on the other hand, the task difficulty was varied:

1) Task importance manipulation :

a. High Task Importance: Participants were told it was about an eyewitness testimony and those who answered correctly would get $ 20.

b. Low task importance: Participants were told that they were only going to take part in a preliminary examination

2) Manipulating the task difficulty :

a. Very difficult task: the images were only shown for 0.5 or 1 second.

b. Low task difficulty: the pictures were shown for 5 and 10 seconds respectively

Based on the results it can be determined that there is an interaction between task difficulty and task importance:

• With simple tasks, there is less compliance when the task is important

• In difficult tasks, there is more conformity when the task is important

The more important the task is, the greater the pressure or the incentive to solve the task correctly. For simple tasks that are important, you tend to trust your own opinion. When it comes to difficult tasks that are important, one becomes insecure and more likely to rely on the opinion of the majority.

literature

Ash. SE (1952). Social psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Stangor, C. (2004). Social groups in action and interaction. New York: Psychology Press New York and Hove.