No guts, no glory: courage, harassment and minority influence

To test a courage hypothesis of minority influence, participants read a jury transcript in which a four person majority argued for conviction, while a two person minority argued for acquittal. Across two studies a harassed minority was more persuasive than an un-harassed minority on both obvious and subtle measures of social influence. In certain cases, these effects occurred only when weak minority arguments were used. In-group/out-group status of the minority, manipulated in Study 2, had negligible effects on persuasion. In Study 2, comparisons to a control condition in which all participants argued for acquittal, did not verify the contention that minority influence provokes more careful processing than majority influence despite the fact that harassed minorities were more persuasive on several measures than this type of majority-control. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.