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Book Reference Book The social psychology of minority influence MUGNY, Gabriel, PÉREZ, Juan Antonio Reference MUGNY, Gabriel, PÉREZ, Juan Antonio. The social psychology of minority influence. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991 Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:4021 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. 1 / 1 Mugny, G., & Pérez, J. A. (1991). The social psychology of minority influence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Paris: L.E.P.S. Translated from French by Vivian Waltz Lamongie TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. EXPLAINING CHANGE 1.1 The illusion of immobility and the reality of change 1.2 Majority effects, minority effects 1.3 Searching for the social impact of minorities 1.3.1 First-generation studies: the social context of innovation 1.3.2 Second-generation studies: influence as social identification 1.3.3 Third-generation studies: some gaps in discrimination 1.3.4 Fourth-generation studies: towards inter- relating discrimination and validation 2. MINORITY INFLUENCE AND SOCIAL COMPARISON 2.1 The intergroup nature of innovation processes 2.2 Categorization, identity, and categorical differentiation 2.3 Minority influence and social categorization 2.3.1 Ingroup favoritism and public influence 2.3.2 Salience of the intergroup context 2.3.3 The feeling of shared identity 2.4 Minority influence and evaluation contexts 2.4.1 Original minorities and deviant minorities 2.4.2 When the moderates are more extreme and the extremists more moderate 2.4.3 Influence and ethnocentrism 2.5 Minority influence and identification conflicts 2.5.1 Between favoritism and discrimination: the ingroup paradox 2.5.2 The dissimilation effect 2.5.3 Identification and regulation of membership 2.6 Identification as a model of minority influence 3. THE LIMITS OF DISCRIMINATION 3.1 Behavioral rhetoric and categorization 3.2 Categorization and degree of freedom 3.2.1 Influence as a function of conflict intensity 3.2.2 Negotiation style and the feeling of shared identity 3.2.3 Ideological negotiation and categorization 3.2.4 Ideological discourse and psychosocial regulations 3.3 The indirect effects of categorization 3.3.1 The private influence of outgroups 3.3.2 Outgroup minorities and delayed influence 3.3.3 Beyond social costs: the alternative 3.3.4 Conversion: from the interpersonal to the intergroup 3.4 Conclusions 4. VALIDATION AND MINORITY INFLUENCE 4.1 Learning by imitation or social constructivism? 4.1.1 Selective focusing on the source or on the object 4.1.2 Indirect influence and social constructivism 4.1.3 Minorities and creativity 4.2 The model of validation 4.3 Psychosocial construction of the minority 4.3.1 The ambivalence of minority representation 4.3.2 From a stereotype to a dual representation 4.3.3 Consistency 4.3.4 Validation implies focusing on the source 4.3.5 From intergroup conflict to intragroup change 4.3.6 Homologies and their negation 4.3.7 Conversion: not "in spite of" but "thanks to" categorization 4.4 Validation and recognition of an organizing principle 4.4.1 Organizing principle and perceptual context 4.4.2 Inferential cognitive activity and validation 4.4.3 Consensus about the specificity of a minority norm 4.4.4 Experimental induction of the organizing principle 4.4.5 To validate is not to approve 4.5 Conclusions 5. COMPARISON AND VALIDATION IN MINORITY INFLUENCE 5.1 Explaining the possible 5.1.1 Resistance and/or change 5.1.2 Comparison and validation: their theoretical link 5.2 The paradox of identification 5.2.1 Comparison versus validation 5.2.2 The dual dynamics of social cost 5.3 Beyond comparison, validation 5.3.1 The cognitive way to conversion 5.3.2 Dimensionality of judgments and validation 5.3.3 Salience of the intergroup context and validation 5.3.4 Interdependent or independent judgments, and dissociation 5.3.5 Comparison, validation, and ideological distance 5.3.6 Conflict and dissociation: from discrimination to conversion 5.3.7 Independence, dissociation, and organizing principle 5.4 Conclusions 6. RESISTANCE AND CHANGE 6.1 Psychologization as a form of resistance 6.1.1 Psychologization: the logic of indissociation 6.1.2 Resistance and dimensionality of representation 6.2 Beyond resistance: change 6.2.1 Minorities and the spirit of the times: what causality? 6.2.2 The paradoxical effects of resistance to change 6.2.3 Beyond denial, truth 6.2.4 Changing the norms: a privilege of minorities 6.3 Conclusion 7. REFERENCES not available 8. APPENDICES not available TABLES and REFERENCES: not available Acknowledgements Like most scientific works, this book is not the sole product of the one, or in this case, two authors to whom it is credited. It was made possible through several exchange networks all contributing to its creation. The first is the social psychology research team of the University of Geneva, and in particular, Willem Doise, who introduced us to the study of intergroup relations and with whom we developed our constructivist approach to social psychology; Stamos Papastamou, collaborator in our first book on the issue, The Power of Minorities; and Clause Kaiser and Patricia Roux, with whom so many of our studies were conducted. A second network, this time international and connected to the first, was instrumental in enabling the experiments reported in this book. Serge Moscovici played a central role here, providing initial inspiration and constant suggestions. These networks were supported from outside the University of Geneva, where we found the means to develop our research and confront our ideas with others, particularly through two conferences on minority influence, one held in Barcelona in 1980, the other in Geneva in 1985, with the assistance of the Laboratoire Europ‚en de Psychologie Sociale and the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology. Our experimental research, so fundamental to this approach, was greatly facilitated by several research grants from the Fonds National suisse de la Recherche Scientifique. Gabriel Mugny is a professor of social psychology at the School of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Geneva. Juan Antonio Pérez is a professor of social psychology at the School of Psychology of the University of Valencia. Chapter 1 Explaining Change 1.1 The Illusion of immobility and the reality of change Influence phenomena refer to the processes through which individuals and groups form, maintain, spread, and modify their thought and action modes during direct or symbolic social interaction. The question of how to approach these processes is a fundamental one, not only for researchers in the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, or like ours, social psychology, but also for groups and societies themselves. These processes form the very basis of how society functions and evolves, for as Touraine (1973, 10) writes, "Human society is the only natural system known to have the ability to form and transform its functioning on the basis of its investments and of the image it has of its own ability to act upon itself" (our translation). Two conflicting tendencies exist in this respect, both from a scientific point of view and the broader social perspective. One approach has focused on the reproduction and maintenance of social relations, the status quo. This perspective is a "conservative" one from the sociopolitical standpoint and a "functionalist" one from the scientific standpoint. Moscovici (1976) was one of the first to uncover the implicit postulates wherein social systems are conceived as optimal, functional, even ideal, or nearly so. The advocates of this approach essentially look at the adaptation processes through which social systems become long lasting and protect themselves against change, regarded as a social evil. What is implicit here is the idea that there is only one correct, ahistorical, and somehow predetermined view of the world and its values. In short, the functionalist view is based on the illusion that norms and ideas are immobile, using Balandier's (1985) term. Whenever the value a norm takes on is defined in this manner, i.e. in absolute rather than relative terms, the issue becomes searching for the conditions and mechanisms, the (nearly "natural") laws through which individuals and groups internalize or adapt to that norm, or in the worst of cases, deviate from it. For the most part these studies have dealt with the mechanisms of conformity and obediance, in short, of social control (the adaptation pole) and self-control (the internalization pole). These mechanisms are the constituents of majorities and dominant positions, which are both the cause and the effect of social influence, considered to be responsible for maintaining uniformity and consensus by reducing interindividual differences. Others, including ourselves, are fascinated instead by the question of social change and innovation. Ours is an "interactionist" perspective from the scientific standpoint, and a "progressive" perspective from the social standpoint. In the social psychology of influence in particular, researchers working in this perspective in the past twenty or so years have concentrated their efforts on compensating for the emphasis that has been and still is being placed on the dynamics of social control. Given that norms are considered here to be relative, i.e. to be the outcome of compromise or submission, emphasis is placed on the mechanisms underlying these transformations, in this case, the processes of innovation and the spread of innovation, viewed as fundamental to social and historical evolution. At the root of such change, we find individuals and groups that are not so inclined to conform to the status quo or to abide by "universal norms": they constitute the minorities. From both the scientific and social points of view, then, fundamental tensions exist, as demonstrated in a recent book on perspectives in the study of minority influence (cf.
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