In a 2 x 2 factorial design, 165 high school girls gave their opinions about abortion (direct influence) and about contraception (indirect ifluence) after reading a message advocating abortion said to have been written by either an ingroup (same sex) or an outgroup (opposite sex) minority and explicitly opposed by the majority opinion of either the ingroup or the outgroup. Results show that there is less direct influence when the ingroup majority is opposed to the minority, and more direct influence when the process of identification is less involved. Indirect influence appeam in an intergroup context where categorization of majority and minority into different groups is superimposed on their ideological dissent, which has the effect of allowing recognition of the minority's distinctiveness and validity over and above the discrimination that appears at the direct influence level. In discussing the results, a theoretical integration of social comparison and validation p r o c a w is proposed as a step to war& explaining the diversity of minority influence phenomena.

This article presents the idea that during the 1990s an important change took place in relation between minorities and majorities: the emergence of minorities as victims alongside the formerly predominant active, militant minorities. A hypothesis is raised that these two types of minorities differ in their agenda as well as in the nature of the influence they exert. Active minorities trigger an external conflict with majority and induce conversion (latent rather than overt influence); minorities as victims create an internal conflict, a sense of guilt, within the majority, while they exert an exclusively overt influence. We report two experiments confirming our hypothesis. We discuss the novelty of this phenomenon and its relevance.

The concept of this article is that the symbolic relationships between human beings and animals serve as a model for the relationships between the majority and the ethnic minority. We postulate that there are two representations that serve to organize these relationships between human beings and animals: a domestic and a wild one. If the domestic animal is an index of human culture, the wild animal is an index of nature which man considers himself to share with the animal. With the wild representation, contact with the animal will be taboo, as it constitutes a threat to the anthropological difference. We offer the hypothesis that ontologization of the minority, that is, the substitution of a human category with an animal category, and thus its exclusion from the human species, is a method the majority use when the taboo against contact with the wild nature is necessary. Three experiments confirm the hypothesis that the Gypsy minority (as compared with the Gadje majority) is more ontologized when the context (a monkey or a clothed dog) threatens the anthropological differentiation of the Gadje participants.

One hundred and fifty‐five participants had to solve a set of 2–4–6 like reasoning problems (Wason, 1960), in which they were told which hypothesis a majority (or a minority) proposed, as well as which example was used for the test. In a 2 × 2 design, participants were also told that the problems allowed either one single correct answer or several possible answers. Results show that, when the source is a majority and the problem allows one single answer, most participants adopt the source's hypothesis and use confirmatory testing. On the contrary, it is when the source is a minority and the problem allows several answers that most participants give alternative hypotheses and use disconfirmation.

This is a reflection on the communication modalities of dissemination, propagation and propaganda as they have manifested in the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes the anchoring of the representations of COVID-19 in past diseases, other nationalities, anti-hygienic practices and groups deviating from the ethos of individualistic selfcontrol. It examines the objectification of the representation of COVID-19 in heroes (healthcare workers), elite villains (pharmaceutical company owners, ineffective governments), common villains (careless people, mindless masses) and victims (the elderly, the poor). It provides explanations and hypotheses on the sociopolitical correlate, the dynamic of common-sense beliefs and their relationship with social behaviour. RESUMENSe reflexiona sobre las modalidades de comunicación de difusión, propagación y propaganda tal como estas se manifiestan en la pandemia del COVID-19. Se describe en el caso del COVID-19 el anclaje de las representaciones en enfermedades del pasado, en grupos de otras nacionalidades, prácticas antihigiénicas y en grupos desviantes del ethos de autocontrol individualista. Se examina la objetivación de la representación del COVID-19 en héroes (sanitarios), villanos de elite (empresarios farmacéuticos, gobiernos ineficaces), villanos populares (persona descuidada, masas descerebradas) y víctimas (ancianos, pobres). Se plantean explicaciones e hipótesis sobre los correlatos sociopolíticos, la dinámica de las creencias de sentido común y su relación con la conducta social.