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68Nemeth, C., & Rogers, J. (1996). Dissent and the search for information. British Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 67–76. 69Nemeth, C., Mayseless, O., Sherman, J., & Brown, Y. (1990). Improving recall by exposure to consistent dissent. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 429–437. 70Butera, F., Mugny, G., Legrenzi, P., & Perez, J. A. (1996). Majority and minority influence: Task representation and inductive reasoning. British Journal of Social Psychology, 67, 123–136. 71Nemeth, C., & Wachtler, J. (1983). Creative problem solving as a result of majority vs. minority influence. European Journal of Social Psychology, 13, 45–55. 72Gruenfeld, D. H. (1995). Status, ideology, and integrative complexity on the U.S. Supreme Court: Rethinking the politics of political decision making. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 68(1), 5–20. 73Nemeth, C. J, & Kwan, J. L. (1985). Originality of word associations as a function of majority vs. minority influence processes. Social Psychology Quarterly, 48, 277–282; Nemeth, C., Rogers, J., & Brown, K. (2001). Improving decision making by means of dissent. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 48–58. 74Gruenfeld, D. H., Thomas-Hunt, M. C., & Kim, P. (1998). Cognitive flexibility, communication strategy, and integrative complexity in groups: Public versus private reactions to majority and minority status. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 34, 202–226. 75Van Dyne, L., & Saavedra, R. (1996). A naturalistic minority influence experiment: Effects on divergent thinking, conflict and originality in work groups. British Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 151–167. 76Nemeth, C. J. (1976). A comparison between majority and minority influence. Invited Address. International Congress for Psychology. Joint Meeting of SESP and EAESP, Paris; Nemeth, “Differential contributions,” p. 217. 77Nemeth & Rogers, “Dissent and the search for information.” 78Nemeth & Kwan, “Originality of word associations,” p. 217. 79Perez, J. A., & Mugny, G. (1987). Paradoxical effects of categorization in minority influence: When being an out-group is an advantage. European Journal of Social Psychology, 17, 157–169.

through modeling and advocating.67 Indeed, people who have been exposed to minor- ity dissent search for more information about all sides of an issue,68 remember more information,69 deploy more effective performance strategies,70 detect solutions that are elusive to others,71 think in more complex ways,72 and are more creative.73 The authors of U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions tend to concern themselves with specifying all imaginable contingencies under which the law should and should not apply to ensure the longevity of their precedent. In contrast, the authors of minority U.S. Supreme Court opinions often focus on arguments that eventually could facilitate the precedent’s over- ruling. People who are exposed to members who hold a minority view experience an increase in their own levels of integrative thought; in contrast, people exposed to majority opinions or unanimous groups actually experience a decrease in integrative thinking.74 Teams make better decisions when a minority viewpoint is present and expressed.75

In addition to instigating greater message scrutiny and cognitive activity, statisti- cal minorities stimulate divergent thinking.76 While majorities induce thoughts that are convergent in the sense of focusing on one solution to the exclusion of all others, minorities induce divergent thinking by considering several perspectives.77 In this sense, minorities are more likely than majorities to have more original thoughts. For example, their associations to words under dispute are more original than majority groups.78

Even when a minority is wrong about a given issue, its presence adds value to a group by stimulating divergent thinking, increasing creative ideas, generating more ideas, and arriving at better solutions. However, minorities certainly are not always suc- cessful in terms of stimulating conversion. Indeed, people in groups may want to actively dissociate from the minority subgroup so as to avoid ridicule and rejection.79 When

67Grant, A. M., & Patil, S. V. (2012). Challenging the norm of self-interest: Minority influence and transitions to helping norms in work units. Academy of Management Review, 37(4), 547–568.

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