When minority influence is enough to increase tolerance of fraud: An experimental small-group study

Abstract

This paper studies minority influence on individual tolerance to certain instances of fraud. Using an experimental approach, we divided 100 students from a business school into 25 groups and compared the individual trajectory of each group according to whether they were in a group composed of only fraud-intolerant individuals (control), in a group with one fraud-tolerant individual (minority), or in a group with two fraud-tolerant individuals (equality). Our results indicate that individual fraud tolerance increases significantly after a group discussion in which only one more fraud-tolerant individual participates, demonstrating the magnitude of the minority influence on the trajectory of individuals who were initially fraud intolerant.