Serge Moscovici

Aims: To investigate the process of innovation by looking at how a consistent minority affect the opinions of a larger group, possibly creating doubt and leading them to question and alter their views

Procedures: Participants were first given an eye test to check that they were not colour blind. They were then placed in a group of four participants and two confederates. they were all shown 36 slides that were different shades of blue and asked to state the colour out loud. There were two groups in the experiment. In the first group the confederates were consistent and answered green for every slide. In the second group the confederates were inconsistent and answered green 24 times and blue 12 times.

Findings: For 8.42% of the trials, participants agreed with the minority and said that the slides were green. Overall, 32% of the participants agreed at least once.

Conclusions: The study suggested that minorities can indeed exert an effect over the opinion of a majority. Not to the same degree as majority influence, but the fact that almost a third of people agreed at least once is significant. However, this also leaves two thirds who never agreed. In a follow-up experiment, Moscovici demonstrated that consistency was the key factor in ; by instructing the stooges to be inconsistent, the effect fell off sharply.

minority influence

Le scandale de la pensée sociale (edited by Nikos Kalampalikis). Editions de l'EHESS, 2013

Raison et cultures (edited by Nikos Kalampalikis). Editions de l'EHESS, 2012

The Making of Modern Social Psychology: The Hidden Story of How an International Social Science was Created (with ). Polity Press, 2006.

Ivana Markova

Social Representations: Explorations in Social Psychology (edited by Gerard Duveen), , 2000

Polity Press

Conflict and Consensus: General Theory of Collective Decisions (with ; trans W.D.Hall) SAGE Publications, 1994

Willem Doise

La Machine à faire les dieux, , 1988 / The invention of society: psychological explanations for social phenomena, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993

Fayard

Changing conceptions of conspiracy (with C.F. Graumann), New York: , 1987

Springer

L'Age des foules: un traité historique de psychologie des masses, Fayard, 1981 / The age of the crowd: a historical treatise on mass psychology. Cambridge, , 1985

Cambridge University Press

Psychologie des minorités actives, , 1979

Presses Universitaires de France

Social influence and social change, , 1976

Academic Press

L’expérience du mouvement. , disciple et critique de Galilée, Éditions Hermann, 1967

Jean-Baptiste Baliani

Reconversion industrielle et changements sociaux. Un exemple: la chapellerie dans l'Aude, , 1961

Armand Colin

La psychanalyse, son image et son public, PUF, 1961/ new edition 1976 / Psychoanalysis. Its image, its public, Polity Press, 2008

; University of Glasgow; University of Sussex; University of Seville; University of Brussels; University of Bologna; University of London; University of Rome; University of Mexico; University of Pecs; University of Lisbon; Jönköping University; University of Iasi; (rejected)^[11] University of Brasilia; University of Buenos Aires; University of Evora^[12]

University of Geneva

Bonnes, M. (ed.), Moscovici, La Vita, il percorso intellettuale, i temi, le opere, Milano, , 1999.

FrancoAngeli

Fabrice Buschini, Nikos Kalampalikis (eds.), Penser la vie, le social, la nature. Mélanges en l'honneur de Serge Moscovici, Paris, Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2001.

Kalampaliki, N., Jodelet, D., Wieviorka, Moscovici, D., & Moscovici, P. (eds.). Serge Moscovici. Un regard sur les mondes communs, Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2019.

Papastamou, S., & Moliner, P. (eds.), Serge Moscovici's work. Legacy and perspective, Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines, 2021.

(in English and French)

European Laboratory of Social Psychology website