Consensus, Cohesion and Connectivity

Social life clusters into groups held together by ties that also transmit information. When collective problems occur, group members use their ties to discuss what to do and to establish an agreement, to be reached quick enough to prevent discounting the value of the group decision. The speed at which a group reaches consensus can be predicted by the algebraic connectivity of the network, which also imposes a lower bound on the group's cohesion. This specific measure of connectivity is put to the test by re-using experimental data, which confirm the prediction

E-groceries and urban freight: Investigating purchasing habits, peer influence and behaviour change via a discrete choice/agent-based modelling approach

n/

Deconstructing Gender Differences in Persuasibility: A Bricolage

The study of persuasion long has been a central preoccupation of communication theorists and critics. As a cornerstone in communication theory. persuasion research has provided the impetus for inquiries into how symbolic behavior effects social and personal change. A number of metatheoretical issues have emerged from empirical studies of gender and persuasibility that are of concern to feminist theorists. Scott (1988) argues that poststructural theory, or deconstruction. is an avenue for understanding how "traditions of (Western) philosophy have systematically and repeatedly construed the world hierarchically in terms of masculine universals and feminine specificities" (p. 33). Scott contends that such a construction has put a "conceptual hold" on our thinking about gender and behavior (p. 33). Research on gender and persuasibility suffers from this conceptual hold and is ripe for deconstruction to bring about alternative ways for communication theorists to think about the relationship between gender and persuasibility. The following analysis focuses specifically on persuasive messages and attitude change rather than the general concept of influenceability which entails compliance, agreement, conformity, and related ideas

Communication modality and attitude change in a realistic experiment

In this experiment, an experimental interview with the leader of the Socialists in the Dutch Parliament was delivered via three different media: television, radio, or a newspaper presentation. We showed that the experimental interviews led, in themselves, to attitude change, but no difference was found among the three communication modalities. Moreover, no significant interaction effect was established between the political preference of the subjects (Socialist versus non-Socialist) and communication modality. Our main results do not support the assumption that for a well-known politician presently holding office, television is a less effective medium than radio or newspaper

Are collectivistic cultures more prone to rapid transformation? Computational models of cross-cultural differences, social network structure, dynamic social influence, and cultural change

Societies differ in susceptibility to social influence and in the social network structure through which individuals influence each other. What implications might these cultural differences have for changes in cultural norms over time? Using parameters informed by empirical evidence, we computationally modeled these cross-cultural differences to predict two forms of cultural change: consolidation of opinion majorities into stronger majorities, and the spread of initially unpopular beliefs. Results obtained from more than 300,000 computer simulations showed that in populations characterized by greater susceptibility to social influence, there was more rapid consolidation of majority opinion and also more successful spread of initially unpopular beliefs. Initially unpopular beliefs also spread more readily in populations characterized by less densely connected social networks. These computational outputs highlight the value of computational modeling methods as a means to specify hypotheses about specific ways in which cross-cultural differences may have long-term consequences for cultural stability and cultural change

Modelling Influence and Opinion Evolution in Online Collective Behaviour.

Opinion evolution and judgment revision are mediated through social influence. Based on a large crowdsourced in vitro experiment (n = 861), it is shown how a consensus model can be used to predict opinion evolution in online collective behaviour. It is the first time the predictive power of a quantitative model of opinion dynamics is tested against a real dataset. Unlike previous research on the topic, the model was validated on data which did not serve to calibrate it. This avoids to favor more complex models over more simple ones and prevents overfitting. The model is parametrized by the influenceability of each individual, a factor representing to what extent individuals incorporate external judgments. The prediction accuracy depends on prior knowledge on the participants' past behaviour. Several situations reflecting data availability are compared. When the data is scarce, the data from previous participants is used to predict how a new participant will behave. Judgment revision includes unpredictable variations which limit the potential for prediction. A first measure of unpredictability is proposed. The measure is based on a specific control experiment. More than two thirds of the prediction errors are found to occur due to unpredictability of the human judgment revision process rather than to model imperfection

Values, Susceptibility to Normative Influence, and Attribute Importance Weights: A Nomological Analysis

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141583/1/jcpy115.pd