Psychologization and processes of minority and majority influence

Minority influence, although possible, is relatively difficult for an active minority to achieve. One of the obstactes encountered by a minority in the diffusion of an innovation is psychologization which consists in the establishment of a link between the ideological positions defended by the source of influence and psychological characteristics which are specific to that source. The experiment presented here seeks to show that psychologization constitutes an ideological barrier only to minority influence while this mode of interpretation of the source does not reduce the influence of a majority. The results obtained seem to confirm this hypothesis, above all when subjects possess opinions relatively close to those of the influence source. When on the other hand subjects have opinions that are relatively distant from those defended by the source, the explicit induction of psychologization does not seem to affect the degree of influence. It was also found that in the absence of such induction, ‘distant’ subjects would ‘spontaneously’ psychologize a minority source, in particular attributing its arguments to psychological imbalance.