... theories argue for one process underlying both majority and minority influence. According to dual process theories, majority influence occurs through compliance while majority influence occurs through conversion, with the latter assumed to have a greater impact conversion. Moscovici (1980 argued that majorities instigate a comparison process by which group members attention focuses on "what the others say, so as to fit in with their opinions or judgements". In contrast minorities, if consistent, induce a validation process by which a group member's attention focuses on trying to "see what the minority saw, to understand what it understood." Comparison therefore presumes fairly superficial information processing focusing on the position that is advocated, and validation presumes more active, information processing focusing on the more complex matter of how this position was derived from an external reality. Moscovici's proposal thus resembles to some extent the heuristic systematic and peripheral-central distinctions of which the latter will ...

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