1,721,012 research outputs found
Me, us or them: who is more conformist? Perception of conformity and political orientation
No full textResearch has shown that people perceive others as more vulnerable thanthemselves to media communication, and their political out-group as more vulnerable thantheir political in-group. In the present study, the authors predicted that the same two biaseswould appear with respect to another kind of influence—conformity—but that participants’judgments would display a different pattern according to their political orientations. Rightwingand left-wing university students were asked to evaluate conformity and to estimatehow conformist they, their political in-group, their political out-group, and other groups are.As hypothesized, right-wingers expressed more ambivalence toward conformity and viewedit less negatively than did left-wingers. Political orientation had no impact on the discrepancybetween self and others, but it did moderate the in-group–out-group discrepancy
Social influence and the verifiability of the issue under discussion: Attitudinal versus objective items
No full textCompared majority and minority influence on attitudinal (opinion) vs objective (knowledge) tasks in 2 experiments with a total of 360 adults. The hypothesis that minority influence would decline on objective items was tested by exposing Ss either to a minority or majority influence source; the question under discussion was either objective (from which country does Italy import most of its raw oil?) or attitudinal (from which country should Italy import most of its raw oil?). Exp 1 showed that, compared to a no-influence control group, majorities exerted a reliable influence on both objective and attitudinal issues whereas minorities were persuasive only on attitudinal issues. Exp 2 indicated that this was true only for Ss who were uncertain of their own position, while minorities were unable to convince highly certain Ss regardless of type of task
The effects of intergroup context of evaluation on ambivalence toward the ingroup and the outgroup
No full textA study is reported which examines the relations between ambivalence toward the ingroup and the
outgroup. The basic assumption was that ambivalent attitudes in intergroup contexts contribute to
satisfying two competing motivations of group members, i.e. establishment of positive distinctiveness
for the ingroup and conformity to the fairness norm. Participants were asked to evaluate the ingroup
and one other group by using unipolar (positively and negatively valenced) affect- and cognitionbased
items. We predicted an interaction effect of target group (ingroup versus outgroup) and attitude
domain (affect-based versus cognition-based) on ambivalence. Additional hypotheses were formulated
taking separately into account the positive and the negative unipolar items. We expected that on
positively valenced items the ingroup would be favoured over the outgroup on both affect- and
cognition-based evaluations. Besides, we predicted that on negatively valenced items, the ingroup
would be favoured over the outgroup on affect-based evaluation but not on cognition-based
evaluation. Results indicated support for the predictions and shed light on the moderating role
played by attitude domains on both ambivalence and ingroup favouritism
Automatic reactions to the labels “minority” and “majority” are asymmetrical: Implications for minority and majority influence
No full textSocial influence: The role of originality
No full textTwo experiments used 150 undergraduates to investigate the role of message originality vs conventionality in social influence. It was hypothesized that Ss would generate more original proposals when confronted with a minority advocating an original viewpoint than when confronted with a conventional minority proposal or with an original majority proposal. Results of Exp 1 support the hypothesis. Exp 2 further demonstrated that the original message induced creative processing only when attributed to a minority source but not when attributed to a majority source. The original minority elicited creative processing mainly when paired with a conventional majority, but not when paired with a majority advocating an equally original position. Findings are interpreted in the frame of C. J. Nemeth's (see record 1986-14271-001) minority influence theory
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