Dissent as Driving Cognition, Attitudes, and Judgments

Work on influence and underlying cognitive processes has moved from a consideration of cognition as primarily an intervening variable, useful for the understanding of the impact of certain source and receiver variables, to a dependent variable. In the present article, we focus on the power of disagreement to stimulate cognitive activity and argue that the effect of disagreement on cognition differs greatly as a function of majority or minority status of the source. Majority disagreement stimulates cognitive processes that are convergent in form. People think about the issue from the perspective of the majority to the exclusion of other considerations. This often leads to attitude change, but unless the source is “correct” or focuses on the appropriate task dimension, it tends not to foster quality of performance. By contrast, minority disagreement stimulates divergent thought. People think about the issue from multiple perspectives, one of which is that held by the minority. On balance, this serves the quality of performance and creativity. The implications for improving quality of decisions and performance as a result of exposure to minority dissent are explored.