Status, Faction Sizes and Social Influence

这个项目将心理学和社会学关于社会影响的理论整合到一个单一的框架中。在心理学中，意见在任务组中的分布是解释社会影响的主导因素之一，人们受到组中多数人的影响。在社会学中，地位特征，如教育程度、一般智力，甚至性别，已被证明与社会影响力有关，地位越高的人对群体决策的影响越大。这个项目考察了意见的分布和相对地位如何结合在一起影响社会影响力。因此，它有助于社会学和心理学的研究和理论，也有助于关于任务组的结构如何塑造其结果的概括性知识。两项实验室研究构成了该项目的经验部分。第一种是使用高度受控的协议来隔离地位的联合影响和关于社会影响的意见的分发。实验程序确保了其他因素不会解释社会影响的变化。第二项研究将这一理论应用于将从更广泛的社区招募的个人群体。具体地说，三到六个人的小组将被邀请到实验室参加开放互动课程。他们将被要求对一项任务形成意见，与小组分享意见，然后询问他们的最终意见。初始意见的变化构成社会影响，预计将从地位进程和以可预测的方式分发意见而来。这些群体的组成将因性别、年龄、职业和种族而有系统地不同。将使用统计模型来辨别地位的影响和意见对社会影响的分布。

This project integrates psychological and sociological theories of social influence into a single framework. Within psychology, the distribution of opinions in task groups is one of the dominant factors explaining social influence, with people being influenced by the majority in a group. Within sociology, status characteristics, such as educational attainment, general intelligence, and even gender, have been shown to be related to social influence, with higher status people being more influential over group decision making. This project examines how the distribution of opinions and relative status combine to affect social influence. As such, it contributes to research and theory in sociology and psychology, and also contributes to generalizable knowledge regarding how the structure of task groups may shape their outcomes. Two laboratory studies constitute the empirical component of this project. The first uses highly controlled protocols to isolate the joint effects of status and the distribution of opinions on social influence. The experimental procedures ensure other factors are not explaining variations in social influence. The second study applies the theory to groups of individuals that will be recruited from the broader community. Specifically, groups of three or six people will be invited to the laboratory to participate in an open interaction session. They will be asked to form an opinion about a task, to share that opinion with the group, and then asked for their final opinions. Changes in initial opinions constitutes social influence, and is expected to follow from status processes and the distribution of opinions in predictable ways. These groups will systematically vary in their composition by gender, age, occupation, and race. Statistical modeling will be employed to discern the effects of status and the distribution of opinions on social influence.