Status, Faction Sizes and Social Influence

这个项目将社会影响的心理学和社会学理论整合到一个单一的框架中。在心理学中，任务组中意见的分布是解释社会影响的主要因素之一，人们受到群体中大多数人的影响。在社会学中，地位特征，如受教育程度、一般智力，甚至性别，都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力越大。这个项目考察了意见的分布和相对地位如何结合起来影响社会影响力。因此，它有助于社会学和心理学的研究和理论，也有助于关于任务小组的结构如何影响其结果的概括知识。两个实验室研究构成了这个项目的实证部分。第一种方法使用高度控制的协议来隔离地位和意见分布对社会影响的共同影响。实验程序确保其他因素不能解释社会影响的变化。第二项研究将这一理论应用于从更广泛的社区中招募的个人群体。具体来说，三到六人一组的小组将被邀请到实验室参加一个开放的互动环节。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。最初意见的变化构成了社会影响，预计将以可预测的方式从地位进程和意见的分布中产生。这些群体的组成将按性别、年龄、职业和种族有系统地变化。将采用统计模型来辨别地位和意见分布对社会影响的影响。

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.