Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: The Social Roots of Political Decision-Making

个人根据周围的人做出决定--买什么，吃什么，甚至如何投票。现实是，个人沿着种族、社会阶层甚至党派界限与自己一样的人包围着自己，这让人们对这些决定的社会组成部分感到困惑。社交网络要么可以增进对他人观点的理解和容忍，要么可以进一步巩固观点。因此，虽然正式和非正式的社会团体是民主的必要组成部分，但它们也为政治分裂提供了机会。了解个人如何根据其社会背景作出政治决定的过程和影响，对于理解和参与当前的政治气候至关重要。这项研究通过解释个人被选入群体的原因以及群体如何影响他们的政治决策，为投票决定和投票以外的政治活动提供了新的社会解释。其理论是，对社会环境的选择决定了那里发生的影响。例如，政治团体中的个人更有可能受到该群体的影响，因为政治规范是明确的，遵守这些规范的压力很大。换句话说，社会影响的机制取决于遴选过程。一旦考虑到选择，就可以更好地确定群体对个人的影响。本研究采用混合方法来阐明个人政治态度与社会网络之间的关系。该项目首先对具有不同政治目的的组织团体中的个人进行了三波小组研究。在用纵向数据记录由于社会联系而导致的政治信仰变化的同时，研究人员还使用实验分析来阐明影响过程的机制。具体地说，这项研究探索了社会学习(信息)、群体动力(社会压力)以及网络本身的规模和结构是否是社会环境影响政治信仰的机制。研究人员记录了个人在被选入群体之前、期间和之后的情况，以阐明政治倾向如何影响个人对社会环境的选择，以及这些环境如何影响他们的政治信仰。本研究克服了社会影响研究的普遍局限，为社会影响研究、网络分析和政治决策提供了理论和实证两方面的贡献。最近的学者在试图理解影响力的过程中忽略了选择过程，也很少注意到确切地理解社会对政治的影响是如何发生的。通过保持选择进入一个社会群体的原因不变，这项研究利用新的横截面、纵向和实验数据阐明了个人通过政治后果方式影响他人的机制。总而言之，这些努力侧重于整个影响力过程：从选择进入影响力群体到在这些环境中获得影响力的机会。

Individuals make decisions in relation to those around them -- what to buy, what to eat, and even how to vote. Understanding the social component of those decisions is confounded by the reality that individuals surround themselves with individuals like themselves along racial, social class, and even partisan lines. Social networks can either lead toward increased understanding and tolerance of others views or further entrenchment in views. Thus, while formal and informal social groups represent a necessary component of democracy, they also present opportunities for political division. Understanding the process and implications of how individuals make political decisions in relation to their social context is imperative toward understanding and engaging the current political climate. This research sheds new light on social explanations of the vote decision and political activity beyond voting by accounting for the reasons individuals select into groups and how the group then affects their political decisions. The theory is that selection into a social environment conditions the influence that occurs there. For example, individuals in political groups are more likely to be influenced by that group because political norms are clear and the pressure to comply with those norms is high. In other words, the mechanisms of social influence depend on the selection process. Once selection is accounted for, the influence of the group on the individual can be better ascertained.This study utilizes a mixed-method approach to illuminate the relationship between individual political attitudes and social networks. The project begins with a three-wave panel study of individuals in organizational groups with varying amounts of political purpose. While documenting the change in political beliefs as a result of social ties with longitudinal data, the researchers also employ experimental analysis to illuminate mechanisms of the influence process. Specifically, the research explores whether social learning (information), group dynamics (social pressure), and the size and structure of the network itself are mechanisms through which the social environment affects political beliefs. The researchers record individuals before, during, and after their selection into groups in order to shed light on how political predispositions influence an individuals' selections into social environments and how those environments then influence their political beliefs. This project makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of social influence, network analysis, and political decision-making by using a research design that overcomes common limitations of social influence studies. Recent scholarship ignores the selection process in their attempts to understand influence and little attention has been given to understanding exactly how social influence on politics occurs. By holding the reasons for selection into a social group constant, the research illuminates the mechanisms through which individuals influence others in politically consequential ways using novel cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental data. Taken together, these efforts focus on the entire influence process: from the selection into influence groups to the opportunities for influence in those settings.