Minority-sourced persuasion produces lasting change and spillover to unaddressed beliefs, unlike majority pressure.

Evidence

Peripheral changes of attitudes brought about by majority pressure are temporally unstable, susceptible to counterpressure, and unlikely to impel behavior (Crano & Prislin, 2008; Moscovici, 1985; Petty & Krosnick, 1995). Minority influence, on the other hand, typically is delayed, but once it occurs, it is more likely to persist in the face of counterpressures and to guide future actions (Wood, Lundgren, Ouellette, Busceme, & Blackstone, 1994). An intriguing feature of minority influence is its capacity to induce immediate change on beliefs or attitudes that are related, but not identical, to the target of the minority’s persuasive appeal; that is, beliefs never even addressed in the persuasive message appear susceptible to change pressure when addressed by a minority source. This indirect influence effect is a novel and reasonably consistent outcome of minority-sourced persuasive communications (Crano, 2010a, 2010b; Wood et al., 1994). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1418

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to social influence literature (Asch conformity, Moscovici minority influence) and to the persuasion/elaboration likelihood frameworks familiar from other chapters in this volume on influence and group dynamics. — connects to: Defeated minorities accept majority rule through continued discursive hope, not conviction change — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 95
• CANDY: Counterintuitive nugget: minorities win slowly but durably; majorities win fast but lose fast — good elevator conversation hook.