Social, political, and economic decisions are increasingly being made by individuals interacting in groups within communication networks of varying size. One of the most noticeable and important differences among participants in such networks is their status rank or relative prestige within the group. The goal of this research project is to understand how group decisions are made in these kinds of settings. The investigators propose to do so by integrating two highly successful, formal-mathematical theories of social influence in sociology: status characteristics theory (SCT) and social influence network theory (SINT). Each theory alone does not address our research question. One the one hand, SCT provides a precise way of quantifying the status rankings of task group members, but it lacks a model of the social process by which (dis)agreements unfold and opinions form. On the other hand, while SINT does offer a mathematical model of the process by which opinions form in groups, it does not in its current form account for the status rankings of task group members. However, the formal-mathematical structure of each theory facilitates their integration in a way that provides a solution to the research problem we raise.
The researchers plan to conduct a laboratory experiment examining the impact of status differentiation on opinion formation in 30 two-person groups, 30 three-person groups, and 30 four-person groups. The goal is to make precise point predictions about group members' final opinions starting with only two "knowns": group members' initial opinions and the distribution of status within the group. In terms of the broader impacts of our work, the investigators concentrate on the longstanding general question of how "social order" is achieved in complexly differentiated groups and social systems. In the modern world, decisions bearing on the orderly maintenance of various aspects of daily life are predominantly achieved through non-coercive mechanisms involving social influence. School board members, for example, must decide how to ration limited tax dollars. Organizations must decide how to translate the requirements of legislation into their daily operations. And teams of hospital administrators must come up with and implement quality standards and "best practices" to improve patient safety. This work will shed light on the social process by which such important decisions are made.
