Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Method: a method is a procedure agreed on by participants of a discussion or research project. In the case of violations of a method, the comparability of the results is in particular questioned, since these no longer come from a set with uniformly defined properties of the elements.
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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.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Serge Moscovici on Method - Dictionary of Arguments

Haslam I 95
Method/Moscovici: In their afterimage studies Moscovici and Personnaz (1980)(1) had the novel idea of setting out to show that, in contrast to a majority, a numerical minority could change the way people see the world (in this case colours) even though they would be unaware of this change.
Haslam I 94
(Moscovici et al. 1969(2)): In these ‘blue-green’ experiments, groups of up to six naïve participants sat in front of a screen and viewed a series of blue slides that varied in their light intensity. After each slide, each participant was asked, in turn, to name aloud the colour of that slide. When all the participants had named the colour of the slide, the next slide was presented. Under these conditions, virtually everybody called the slides ‘blue’, showing that they were perceived as being unambiguously blue.
However, in some experimental conditions, a numerical minority within the group (two of the six group members) were confederates of the experimenter and gave pre-agreed responses. In this case they replied ‘green’ to the slides – a response that was clearly different from that of the naïve participants.
Through the use of a clever methodological technique, the afterimage studies were able to examine people’s perceptions of colours beyond what they publicly said but at a more latent and unconscious level.
Haslam I 96
Problem: these studies were unable to examine the impact of the minority on a more latent/private level of influence. This is because only one type of response was measured, namely the slide colour (manifest influence), and no measure of latent influence was taken. Critically, then, such studies cannot tell us whether participants’ private judgments were also affected by the minority.
Haslam I 97
Afterimage/experiment/Moscovici: (Moscovici and Personnaz (1980)(1)) The afterimage judgment was obtained by participants viewing a white screen, after looking at the blue slide, on which an afterimage briefly developed. Afterimage responses were recorded on a nine-point scale (1 = yellow, 2 = yellow/orange, 3 = orange, 4 = orange/red, 5 = red, 6 = red/pink, 7 = pink, 8 = pink/purple, 9 = purple). In fact, the same slide, which was unambiguously blue, was used throughout the experiment. The experiment had four phases, with each phase consisting of a number of trials or presentations of a slide.
Gender/Moscovici: Moscovici argued that he preferred to use women as confederates and participants in his blue-green studies ‘because of their greater involvement in evaluating the colour of an object’ (Moscovici et al., 1969(2): 368).
Haslam I 102
VsMoscovici: no evidence has been found for influence at the manifest or public level.
Haslam I 103
Most studies (>Moscovici/Psychological theories) report that on only very few occasions do participants agree with the confederate that the slide is green. However, it should be noted that the paradigm was primarily designed to examine latent/private influence, and there is robust support from other research that majorities have a greater impact on the manifest/public level (Martin and Hewstone, 2008)(3).

1. Moscovici, S. and Personnaz, B. (1980) ‘Studies in social influence: V. Minority influence and conversion behavior in a perceptual task’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16: 270–82.
2. Moscovici, S., Lage, E. and Naffrechoux, M. (1969) ‘Influence of a consistent minority on the response of a majority in a color perception task’, Sociometry, 32: 365–80.
3. Martin, R. and Hewstone, M. (2008) ‘Majority versus minority influence, message processing and attitude change: The Source-Context-Elaboration Model’, in M. Zanna (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40: 237–326.


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


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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.
Moscovici, Serge
Haslam I
S. Alexander Haslam
Joanne R. Smith
Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies London 2017


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