Experimental evidence for minorities' hesitancy in reporting their opinions: The roles of optimal distinctiveness needs and normative influence

Four experiments provided evidence for when and why opinion minorities take more time than opinion majorities to report their opinions. In Study 1, participants who wrote about feeling overly different from-but not overly similar to-others were slower to report their opinions after being led to believe that they held a minority than majority opinion. In Studies 2 and 3, minority opinion holders' hesitancy was attenuated among participants with a high dispositional need for uniqueness, and this effect was mediated by low need for uniqueness individuals' beliefs that their minority opinions were less normative than their majority opinions (Study 3). In Study 4, a subtle need to belong manipulation amplified the differences in response times between opinion minorities and majorities. Together, these studies show that minorities' hesitancy in reporting their opinions depends on their motives to belong versus be unique and stems from normative influence processes.