Status, Faction Sizes and Social Influence

该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，意见在任务组中的分布是解释社会影响力的主要因素之一，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，地位较高的人对群体决策更具影响力。这个项目考察了意见的分布和相对地位如何联合收割机影响社会影响力。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可推广的知识。两项实验室研究构成了该项目的实证部分。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联合影响。实验程序确保其他因素无法解释社会影响力的变化。第二项研究将该理论应用于将从更广泛的社区招募的个人群体。具体而言，将邀请三人或六人一组到实验室参加开放式互动环节。他们将被要求对一项任务形成一个意见，与小组分享这个意见，然后询问他们的最终意见。最初意见的变化构成社会影响，并预期以可预测的方式从地位进程和意见分布中产生。这些群体的构成将因性别、年龄、职业和种族而系统地发生变化。统计建模将被用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.