Innovation through the Conflict of Ideas: Returning to the Foundations of Minority Influence

Abstract

Minority influence appeared in social psychology in the 1960's. This theoretical paper aims to present and analyze Serge Moscovici's pioneering studies and their present development. From Moscovici's explanation of the genetic model of social influence, it points out the diagnostic of the lack of comprehensiveness of the functionalist model to explain the conflict of ideas, the conversion and the innovation by minorities' norms and ideas. This paper explains these concepts and exhibits the behavioral consistency and the informational conflict in the conceptual and the operational level. The authors detail the foundational studies of the blue-green paradigm in order to show theoretical and methodological constructs and the incongruence between both. They explore the relationship with social identity theory in the divergent perspectives of the conversion theory and the self-categorization theory. They present new concepts of minorities: the victimized, the perpetrators and those who seek tolerance. Finally, the authors point out the developments already made and those still needed, based on reviews and analysis of the field.