Reconsidering the socio-psychological processes underlying majority and minority influence Stamos Papastamou* Antonis Gardikiotis** Gerasimos Prodromitis* * Panteion University of Athens, Greece ** Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Epistemological aim Reintroduction of the societal dimension into social influence research by reconsidering certain socio-psychological processes.

Reminder to theoretical assumptions Majority more influential than minority Recipient’s initial attitude (distance) => influence Congruent thinking => greater influence => indication of central processing Central processing => strong arguments Strong arguments are more persuasive, durable and influential. Peripheral processing => weak arguments => Source status

Reminder to theoretical assumptions Sociocognitive processes in social influence: cognitive validation (focus on the content – topic) social comparison (focus on the source) Cognitive validation => dissociation (minority influence) Social comparison => undissociation (majority influence)

Resistance to influence: Dissociation => denial (search for weak points of the message) => decrease of direct influence => increase of indirect influence Undissociation => psychologisation (attribution of message to psychological characteristics of source) => decrease of direct and indirect influence

Rethinking some methodological issues The Thought listing technique => thoughts about message and/or topic Maybe not only just a way of counting thoughts but may => lead to dissociation and => subsequently to cognitive validation Argument quality Strong arguments: perceived as persuasive and thus consensual Weak arguments may be less consensual and thus conflictual

We think that the following need further research attention Distinction between strong and weak arguments Recipients’ initial attitude The sociocognitive processes of majority and minority influence Focus on thought listing and other techniques of elaboration

Research hypotheses Thought listing technique Not just a method of counting thoughts (Maass & Clark, 1983) We assume that it affects the process that attempts to assess Activates the process of dissociation between source and message since it focuses on content and topic (see central processing) At the same time it impedes the potential undissociation between source and message and therefore other potential sociocognitive processing (see peripheral processing)

Research program At the level of independent variables majority and minority status quality of arguments Initial ideological distance from the source Different kinds of elaboration that may activate different processes such dissociation and undissociation that in turn may lead to different kinds of resistance (e.g. denial, psychologisation, etc.) At the level of dependent variables Direct and indirect influence Number and kind of thoughts Use of arguments of different orientation i.e. towards the source or the message

Experiment 1

Participants and design 278 students (109 males, 171 females, aged between 18 and 29) of two Greek Universities Randomly allocated to one of the sixteen experimental conditions of a 2 (source status: majority vs. minority) x 2 (argument quality: strong vs. weak) x 2 (order of cognitive elaboration: thought listing/validation-psychologization vs validation-psychologization/ thought listing ) x 2 (ideological closeness: distant vs. close) between subjects factorial design.

Independent Variables Source status Majority (82%) Minority (18%) Ideological closeness Distant subjects Close subjects Argument quality Strong Weak Order of cognitive elaboration: thought listing/validation-psychologization validation-psychologization/ thought listing

Dependent Variables Direct Influence (the legalization of voluntary euthanasia) Indirect Influence (the right to suicide ) Cognitive elaboration: Thought Listing (Total number of thoughts, total number of congruent thoughts, message congruent, more congruent thoughts) Validation-Psychologization scales (Papastamou, 1993) (Positive and negative psychologisation, denial, validation, positive – negative psychologisation, validation – denial, kind of argumentation, total psychologisation, total content argumentation)

Experimental design Distant subjects Close subjects Order of cognitive elaboration Thought list/ validation-psychologization Validation-psychologization / Thought list Thought / validation-psychologization Strong argum. Weak argum. Majority Minority

Results

Table 1. Two-way interaction between ideological distance and arguments quality on direct influence and on message congruent thoughts. Close subjects Distant subjects Strong arguments Weak arguments M (SD) Direct Influence (F=6,31 p<.013, h2=.024) 4,90* (,143) 5,10* (,163) 3,33** (,155) 2,74*** (,192) Message congruent thoughts (F=5,47 p<.02, η2=.021) 0,621* (,040) 0,668* (,045) 0,266** (,046) 0,107***

Table 2 Two-way interaction between source status and arguments quality on indirect influence.

Table 3 Two-way interaction between source status and order of kind elaboration on indirect influence.

Conclusions Comparison of strong vs. weak arguments: Direct influence: strong > weak only in distant participants. Interaction between source status and argument quality: Indirect influence: Majority: strong > weak Minority: weak > strong It is the first time in the literature that weak arguments lead to (indirect) influence. This finding makes us question the inherent incapability of weak arguments to exert influence

Interaction between source status and order of cognitive elaboration: Minority condition and validation–psychologisation first and then thought listing => greater indirect influence compared to Majority with same order (V-Ps first and then thoughts ). Minority with reverse order (thoughts first and then V-Ps). Indirect influence is greater when the process of undissociation between the source and the message comes first and then the dissociation between the two follows. In other words when the potential psychologization is followed by the validation

Experiment 2

Participants and design 235 students (113 males, 122 females, aged between 18 and 33) of two Greek Universities randomly allocated to one of the sixteen experimental conditions of a 2 (source status: majority vs. minority) x 2 (argument quality: strong vs. weak) x 2 (kind of cognitive elaboration: thought listing vs. validation-psychologization) x 2 (ideological closeness: distant vs. close) between subjects factorial design.

Independent Variables Source status Majority (82%) Minority (18%) Argument quality Strong Weak Kind of cognitive elaboration: Thought listing Validation-Psychologization scales Ideological closeness Distant subjects Close subjects

Dependent Variables Direct Influence (the legalization of voluntary euthanasia) Indirect Influence (the right to suicide ) Cognitive elaboration: Thought Listing (Total number of thoughts, total number of congruent thoughts, more congruent thoughts) Validation-Psychologization scales (Positive and negative psychologisation, denial, validation, positive – negative psychologisation, validation – denial, kind of argumentation, total psychologisation, total content argumentation)

Validation – Psychologisation Experimental design Distant subjects Close subjects Thought List Validation – Psychologisation Strong argum. Weak argum. Majority Minority

Results

Table 4: two-way interaction between ideological distance and arguments quality on direct influence.

Figure 1 Three-way interaction between ideological distance, argument quality and kind of cognitive elaboration on direct influence (F=10,61, p<.001)

Table 5 Two-way interaction between ideological distance and arguments quality on indirect influence.

Table 6 Two-way interaction between arguments quality and kind of cognitive elaboration on indirect influence (F=2,95, p<.085, η2=.016).

Figure 2 The two-way interaction between source’s status and kind of cognitive elaboration on indirect influence (F=8,18, p<.005)

Figure 3 Three-way interaction between source status, argument quality and kind of cognitive elaboration on indirect influence (F=8,88 p<.003)

Table 8 (Validation - psychologization conditions only) a) two-way interaction between source status and argument quality on indirect influence. b) correlations between indirect influence and the kind of cognitive elaboration Strong arguments Weak arguments Majority Minority N=30 N=28 N=35 N=26 Indirect Influence (ND) 5,36* (.272) 5,39* (.278) 5,50* (.255) 3,97** (.289) ND / Kind of cognitive elaboration +.205 ns +.463 p<.013 -.115 ns -.454 p<.020

Table 7 (Validation - psychologization conditions only) Correlations between indirect influence and different kinds of cognitive elaboration

Table 9 (Thought List conditions only) a) two-way interaction between source status and argument quality on indirect influence b) correlations between indirect influence and total number of congruent thoughts

Table 10 (Thought List conditions only) Table 10 (Thought List conditions only). two-way interaction between ideological distance and argument quality on Direct Influence, Indirect influence and Total Number of Thoughts.

Conclusions Strong arguments more influential than weak in distant participants This is happening in the thought listing conditions, when participants are led to cognitive validation. In other words under the process of dissociation Whereas in the validation-psychologization conditions (where participants are led to focus on both source and message) minority’s indirect influence on weak arguments is: less than majority indirect influence on weak arguments, and less than minority’s on strong arguments. The greater indirect influence of weak minority arguments is evident in the thought listing conditions.

The three-way interaction shows that only the weak arguments are sensitive to source status and kind of cognitive elaboration: On the one hand: majority leads to greater indirect influence in the conditions of «validation-psychologisation» (i.e. of «potential psychologisation») and the minority in the «thought listing» conditions (i.e. of «de facto cognitive validation»), On the other hand: Potential psychologization reduces minority’s indirect influence and increases majority’s indirect influence and the ‘de facto’ cognitive validation increases minority’s indirect influence and reduces majority’s one

By looking at the correlations between cognitive processes and indirect influence: Majority’s indirect influence is enhanced by psychologization and blocked by the process of cognitive validation, Whereas minority’s indirect influence is enhanced by cognitive validation and is reduced by psychologization.

THANK FOR YOUR ATTENTION! To neglect source status is impossible because: cognitive processes can not by themselves explain the influence phenomena conceals the interesting way they work The same sociocognitive processes: acquire different meanings, function differently and produce different socio-cognitive phenomena depending on majority or minority status. THANK FOR YOUR ATTENTION!