Minority influence: The effects of social status of an inclusive versus exclusive group

Abstract

The study also provided some information on the relationship between indirect Influence and divergence, and between the quantity and the quality of cognitive production.

Divergence vs. ambivalence: effects of personal relevance on minority influence

“…Nevertheless until now, to our knowledge, no systematic research has been conducted with the aim of determining if the two cognitive processes are jointly or alternatively activated and what conditions foster each of them. Few studies have tested validation and divergence together, and the rare exceptions (Mucchi-Faina, 1994;Trost, Maass, & Kenrick, 1992;Volpato, Maass, Mucchi-Faina, & Vitti, 1990) have used a single measure for both. For instance, in Volpato et al (1990), participants were asked to choose between different responses such as agreement with the source's proposal (private change: validation option) or a personal proposal (generation of an alternative idea: divergence option).…”

“…Therefore divergence necessarily excluded validation and vice versa. In other studies (Mucchi-Faina, 1994;Trost et al, 1992) a single methodological tool (thought-listing) was used, and thoughts generated by participants were assigned to two different categories (e.g. thoughts related to minority message vs. general issue) that were supposed to indicate validation and divergent processing.…”