Minority Influence and ‘Trivial’ Social Categorization

✍ Scribed by Robin Martin

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 404 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0046-2772
• DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2420180508

✦ Synopsis

This experiment examines ingroup and outgroup minority influence when group membership was determined by a trivial categorization. The results show that ingroup minorities had more public influence than outgroup minorities when the categorization was trivial and when subjects also believed that they were similar to their ingroup. However, no differences were found when group membership was not associated with similarity. These results are interpreted as supporting the social identification model of social influence.

'It should be noted that when responses are made in private a different effect is often observed than when responses are made in public (see Martin, 1988a,b; Ptrez and Mugny, 1985). For the purpose of this paper, the discussion focuses upon responses made in public.