Psychology Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Majorities: A majority is more than half of a total. It can be used to describe a group of people, a number of votes, or a percentage. See also Minorities, Minority rights, Election systems, Democracy._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Psychological Theories on Majorities - Dictionary of Arguments
Haslam I 87 Majority/minority/psychological theories: There is a tacit implication in many of [the] experiments that those insubordinate subjects who are outside the hypothesis-confirming majority are a nuisance. (Jahoda 1959(1): 99; see also Moscovici, 1976(2)). >Conformity/Asch. Haslam I 86 Resistance/Hornsey/Jetten: resistance is not simply the absence of conformity. Rather, it is a process that is quite different from conformity and guided by different considerations. Yet the idea that individuals are able to resist a majority that is clearly wrong has generally been of little interest to those who typically comment on Asch’s work. One possible reason for this is that social psychology in general appears more interested in what makes people conform than in what makes them dissent and show defiance in the face of group pressure (see Jetten and Hornsey, 2011(3), 2014(4)). >Conformity/Asch, >Conformity/Social psychology, >Majority/Jetten/Hornsey, >Minorities/Moscovici. 1, Jahoda, M. (1959) ‘Conformity and independence’, Human Relations, 12: 99–120. 2. Moscovici, S. (1976) Social Influence and Social Change. New York: Academic Press. 3. Jetten, J. and Hornsey, M.J. (eds) (2011) Rebels in Groups: Dissent, Deviance, Difference and Defiance. Wiley-Blackwell. 4. Jetten, J. and Hornsey, M.J. (2014) ‘Deviance and dissent in groups’, Annual Review of Psychology, 65: 46–85. Matthew J. Hornsey and Jolanda Jetten, “Conformity. Revisiting Asch’s line-judgment studies”, in: Joanne R. Smith and S. Alexander Haslam (eds.) 2017. Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies. London: Sage Publications - - - Haslam I 93 Majority/psychological theories: (…) Asch’s classic conformity studies(1)(2)(3) (…) showed that people will publicly agree with the objectively incorrect judgments of a majority on an unambiguous task involving the judgment of line lengths. Moreover, subsequent studies showed that people will conform to the majority for a number of reasons including the desire to be accepted by the majority and therefore not appear to be different (reflecting social approval; ‘I want to be in the majority group’), and also because people assume that the majority is more likely to be accurate and correct in its judgments than a minority. Form the late 1960s researchers began to ask whether a numerical minority can influence the attitudes of the majority. >Minorities/Moscovici, >Conversion theory/Moscovici, >Experiment/Moscovici. 1. Asch, S.E. (1951) ‘Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgment’, in H. Guetzkow (ed.), Groups, Leadership and Men. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Press. pp. 177–90. 2. Asch, S.E. (1952) Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 3. Asch, S.E. (1955) ‘Opinions and social pressure’, Scientific American, 193: 31–5. Robin Martin and Miles Hewstone, “Minority Influence. Revisiting Moscovici’s blue-green afterimage studies”, in: Joanne R. Smith and S. Alexander Haslam (eds.) 2017. Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies. London: Sage Publications_____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Psychological Theories Haslam I S. Alexander Haslam Joanne R. Smith Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies London 2017 |
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> Counter arguments in relation to Majorities
