... views in members of society and are essential for social change. This essay will be exploring the different processes involved in majority and minority influences by assessing a number of social psychologists views and experimental evidence. Moscivici (1980, cited in Hogg &Vaughan, 2005) argued that majority and minority influences work in different ways. Majority influence results in compliance which is when one publicly conforms to majority view but privately believe something else. Deutsch and Gerard (1955, as cited in Kelvin, 1969) proposed two types of influence which leads to public conformity to majority view, Informational influence and normative influence. Informational influence is based on the desire to be correct and relies on others for information. This leads to change in opinion, as seen in Sherif (1936, as cited in Kelvin, 1969) classic study where the auto-kinetic effect was used. Participants were put into a dark room with a small spot ...

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