Minority influence and psycho‐social identity

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Abstract
Social influence mechanisms are considered as also relevant to intergroup dynamics. In a social influence situation, approaching or retreating from the source's position also involves accepting or rejecting psycho‐social identification with the source, implicating self‐attribution of the set of characteristics stereotypical of the category or categories to which the source belongs. This conception allows one to account for some of the difficulties encountered by minorities in their attempts to diffuse innovations.An experiment illustrates this conception of influence. It is shown that the influence of a minority is greater when subjects are led to believe that they have in common with the minority numerous category memberships (five out of eight presented) than when they think they share fewer (one out of eight). The difference between these two inductions is, as expected, revealed to be most marked when the source is rigid and for those subjects displaying opinions already relatively close to those of the source and for whom therefore the matter of psycho‐social identification is more salient.