ABSTRACT
The proposed alternative interpretation of Asch's well-known experiment on social conformity by Claude Faucheux and Serge Moscovici signalled the beginning of a new approach to the phenomena of social influence. This approach, which led to a series of research experiments over many years, orchestrated the processing of the genetic and interactive social influence model which brought to light the capacity of active minorities to provoke the phenomenon of innovation and conversion. Indeed, for many decades, social psychologists obstinately favoured the explanations put forward for social influence phenomena that pointed to inter-individual social-psychological mechanisms and variables of an intra-individual nature. As for the interpretation proposed by Asch to explain the social conformity produced in this way, we could maintain that it contains clear elements of 'regression', in the sense that the emphasis is now placed exclusively on variables on the intra-individual level of analysis.
