ABSTRACT
Minority influence theory has become remarkably popular over the past 15 years in part because it solves the seeming contradiction of social psychology by history. I argue that the concept of minority influence is muddled and prejudicial in its terminology, and propose the language of social impact theory as a substitute for expressing core hypotheses for the paradox of strength from weakness. I use this language to describe six ways in which minorities can gain such strength, including procedural effects and changes in actors’ behavior, as well as through observers’ attributions. In addition, I show that majorities in faction-size models necessarily include more distant and therefore less influential members; natural selection will weed out weaker minority members; and the very power of majorities may lead them to persist in outdated positions, allowing minorities to have truth on their side. Finally, I present recent computer simulations of dynamic social impact to show that self-limiting properties of influence in self-organizing social systems can protect the diversity of opinion through the formation of local clusters, eliminating the so-called contradiction by history of social psychology. This language and approach, faithful to Moscovici’s original insights, provides new techniques for understanding the negotiation of social reality.
