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., 1994; Wolf & Latané, 1983).The opinions of minorityfactions are especially likely to prevail when their members are confident(Nemeth & Wachtler, 1974), when they appear flexible as opposed to rigid(Mugny, 1982), and when they offer compelling arguments against the ma-jority position (Clark, 1990).In social impact theory terminology, minoritiescan be influential when their members are high in strength and/or immedi-acy.Minorities must also be able to communicate their ideas effectively.Gali-leo was not the first person, or even the second, to promote the idea of aheliocentric universe.But one of the reasons why his view caught on, whileCopernicus s was more or less ignored, was that Galileo s book was moreinteresting and readable and in the language of the people instead of inLatin (Hellman, 1998; see Crandall & Schaller, chap.9, this volume).Havingtruth on one s side and being able to communicate that truth effectively canallow the minority to not only maintain its numbers, but to become the newmajority.On balance, however, DSIT predicts consolidation within groups,other factors being equal.Empirical evidence supports this growth of majorities.In the Harton etal.(1998) study, all eight groups also showed significant consolidation, asmeasured by a group-level index of diversity.The most popular answers,TLFeBOOK 52 HARTON AND BOURGEOISwhether correct or not, grew in popularity, as those that were endorsed byfew people lost support.This occurs with a variety of types of issues, fromattitudes toward euthanasia to so-called eureka problems logic problemswith a demonstrable correct answer to behaviors (Bourgeois & Latané,1996; Harton et al., 2002; Jackson et al., 2002; Latané & Bourgeois, 2000a,2001a; Latané & L Herrou, 1996; Rockloff & Latané, 1996).Discussion consistently leads to a reduction in diversity of opinion,whether the discussion takes place face-to-face, over a computer network,or in a more naturalistic setting.This consolidation is rarely total, however,which leads to our fourth marker of culture, continuing diversity.Continuing DiversityAlthough consolidation leads to, in most cases, majority influence, this in-fluence is not complete.Minority groups can and do remain and eventhrive.Thus the final prediction of DSIT is that even though majority sizeswill tend to increase, there will be continuing diversity.A wide variety ofcomputer simulations using different programs and assumptions has shownthat as long as there is some nonlinearity of attitude change (see section oninvolvement), there will not be total consensus (Latané & Nowak, 1997;Nowak et al., 1990).Because those holding minority opinions are largely in-sulated from dissent by others within their clusters who agree with them,they receive social support for maintaining their beliefs (Kameda & Sugi-mori, 1995).Social critics in the 1950s warned of the homogenization of U.S.cultureas a result of mass media.Because the production of television, movies,magazines, and newspapers was controlled by a small segment of the popu-lation, the concern was that regional differences would disappear.Yet itseems that there is even more diversity and disagreement today than 50years ago.Regional accents persist despite decades of exposure to rela-tively accent-free television, and there is rarely national consensus on anyimportant issue, as a recent U.S.Presidential election that ended in a virtualtie has shown.Americans responses to the terrorism attacks against the United Statesin September 2001 provide a seeming counterexample to continuing diver-sity.In the weeks and months after the attacks, the country seemed tocome together, united in its support for the President and its opposition toterrorism.This apparent agreement, however, masked diversity on manyother important issues, such as religion, homosexual rights, and gun con-trol, on which the country is even more split than before (Lawrence, 2002).Beyond the level of the country, there are huge regional differences in theperceptions of the attacks, who did them, and whether the United Statesreaction was justified (Benedetto, 2002).TLFeBOOK 3.CULTURAL ELEMENTS EMERGE 53Despite much consternation over the McDonald-ization of culture, astreet in Miami looks very different from one in London or in New Delhi oreven in Chicago.Where American institutions such as Wendy s, Pizza Hut,and Wal-Mart have spread, they have their own local flavor.You can get redwine with your giant smiling Mouse at that most American of icons, Disney-land Paris, but you must abstain at Disney World in Orlando.In the grocerysection of a Chinese Wal-Mart, you can find live frogs and seafood, but youare unlikely to run across such delicacies stateside.To the extent that a group segregates itself or is segregated by the ma-jority culture, they close themselves off to influence from those outsidetheir group.Their local majority can continue relatively uninfluenced, al-though the tradeoff for this protection is that they generally do not havemuch influence on the majority.An example is the Amish community in theUnited States.The Amish live much as their ancestors did at the turn of thelast century, eschewing cars, telephones, and other modern conveniences.They are able to maintain this culture because they live in separate commu-nities with their own schools and churches and mix with the English (non-Amish Americans) fairly infrequently
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