PI: Henry A. Walker Co-PI: David Melamed Institution: University of Arizona
This research project examines two distinct theoretical processes. First, it develops and tests a model of justice evaluations. The research investigates the factors that make individuals expect to receive relatively few rewards. By focusing on the factors which allow for acquiescence, the research offers insights into the amelioration of large scale, societal inequality. Second, the project contributes to expectation state theories by modeling characteristics with more than two states (e.g., occupational prestige). This facilitates more accurate point predictions of justice evaluation models.
Broader Impacts: The improved precision of expectation state theories may contribute to a broader general theory of prejudice and discrimination.
This project consisted of two social science experiments. The first of these experiments was designed to establish whether or not a new procedure for modeling influence behaviors does better than the conventional way of modeling social influence. That is, the Principal Investigator developed a set of equations to predict social influence in collective task groups, and the experiment showed that the equations explain significantly more than conventional estimates from Status Characteristics Theory. (For more: see Melamed Forthcoming in Advances in Group Processes.) This particular experiment was run on 132 undergraduate subjects at the University of Arizona. The experiment systematically varied social status by using an abstract ability that was constructed in the experimental setting. Subsequently, subjects participated in a joint decision making task that allowed for social influence opportunities. Influence was modeled as a function of the status differences that were constructed in the laboratory. The second experiment in this project involved examining how social influence arises from both social status and the relative proportion of individuals who are trying to influence someone. Extant psychological research shows that as the number of people attempting to influence someone increases, so does the likelihood of social influence. Extant sociological research shows that the lower in status someone is, the more likely they are to be influenced by others. This experiment combined these two approaches and systematically examined the how the distribution of opinions and the distribution of status in four-person groups affects social influence. The results of the experiment support the theoretical model of social influence that the PI developed: social status is an important determinant of social influence when the group cannot attain consensus, but when the group reaches consensus or near-consensus, social status plays less of a role. This experiment was run on 86 undergraduate students at the University of Arizona.
