Social Influence as a Function of Numerical Status and Social Belonging : Self-Categorization and Conflict Elaboration

Résumé 0

Even if the conflict-elaboration (Pérez & Mugny, 1993) and the self-categorization (Turner et al., 1987) theories agree that manifest influence is only produced by in-group majorities, they give rise to alternative predictions regarding the latent influence. Indeed, the former assumes that such an influence would be produced by out-group minorities whereas the latter asserts that it would be induced by in-group minorities. The present research manipulates the numerical status of the influence source as well as its social belonging in order to confront these predictions. Actually, targets were exposed to a majority versus a minority, either of the same sex (in-group source) or opposite sex (out-group source). Main results indicate that regarding the manifest level, only the in-group majority induces conformity among men, whereas among women, such a conformity takes place in the case of both in-group and out-group majorities. At the latent level, only the out-group minority produces conversion among women, whereas among men, such an influence occurs in the case of both in-group and out-group minorities. These results which are apparently consistent with neither theories are discussed in terms of the dominance relation between the influence source and the targets.