258 research outputs found
[The Art of Opinion Research: A Lawyer\u27s Appraisal of an Emerging Science: Observations on Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties ]: Comment
Group Process and Organizational Environment: Student Organizations in the University
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68768/2/10.1177_089976407400300305.pd
Local Convergence and Global Diversity: From Interpersonal to Social Influence
Axelrod (1997) showed how local convergence in cultural influence can
preserve cultural diversity. We argue that central implications of Axelrod's
model may change profoundly, if his model is integrated with the assumption of
social influence as assumed by an earlier generation of modelers. Axelrod and
all follow up studies employed instead the assumption that influence is
interpersonal (dyadic). We show how the combination of social influence with
homophily allows solving two important problems. Our integration of social
influence yields monoculture in small societies and diversity increasing in
population size, consistently with empirical evidence but contrary to earlier
models. The second problem was identified by Klemm et al.(2003a,b), an
extremely narrow window of noise levels in which diversity with local
convergence can be obtained at all. Our model with social influence generates
stable diversity with local convergence across a much broader interval of noise
levels than models based on interpersonal influence.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, Paper presented at American Sociological
Association 103rd Annual Meeting, August 1-4, 2008, Boston, MA. Session on
Mathematical Sociolog
All in the family: partisan disagreement and electoral mobilization in intimate networks—a spillover experiment
We advance the debate about the impact of political disagreement in social networks on electoral participation by addressing issues of causal inference common in network studies, focusing on voters' most important context of interpersonal influence: the household. We leverage a randomly assigned spillover experiment conducted in the United Kingdom, combined with a detailed database of pretreatment party preferences and public turnout records, to identify social influence within heterogeneous and homogeneous partisan households. Our results show that intrahousehold mobilization effects are larger as a result of campaign contact in heterogeneous than in homogeneous partisan households, and larger still when the partisan intensity of the message is exogenously increased, suggesting discussion rather than behavioral contagion as a mechanism. Our results qualify findings from influential observational studies and suggest that within intimate social networks, negative correlations between political heterogeneity and electoral participation are unlikely to result from political disagreement
Erwartungsbildung über den Wahlausgang und ihr Einfluss auf die Wahlentscheidung
Erwartungen über den Wahlausgang haben einen festen Platz sowohl in Rational-Choice-Theorien des Wählerverhaltens als auch in stärker sozialpsychologisch orientierten Ansätzen. Die Bildung von Erwartungen und ihr Einfluss auf die Wahlentscheidung ist dabei jedoch ein noch relativ unerforschtes Gebiet. In diesem Beitrag werden anhand von Wahlstudien für Belgien, Österreich und Deutschland verschiedene Fragen der Erwartungsbildung und ihrer Auswirkungen untersucht. Zunächst wird die Qualität der Gesamterwartungen analysiert und verschiedene Faktoren identifiziert, die einen systematischen Einfluss auf die Erwartungsbildung haben. Im zweiten Schritt wenden wir uns den Einzelerwartungen über verschiedene Parteien und Koalitionen zu und finden eine moderate Verzerrung zugunsten der präferierten Parteien und Koalitionen. Dabei kann gezeigt werden, dass der Effekt des Wunschdenkens mit dem politischen Wissen und dem Bildungsgrad abnimmt. Schließlich werden in einem letzten Schritt zwei unterschiedliche Logiken für die Auswirkungen von Erwartungen getestet, das rationale Kalkül des koalitionsstrategischen Wählens zur Vermeidung der Stimmenvergeudung sowie der sozialpsychologisch begründete Bandwagon-Effekt. Das Ausmaß an politischem Wissen scheint dabei eine zentrale vermittelnde Variable zwischen den beiden Logiken zu sein
Comment on Claude Berrebi and Esteban F. Klor (2008): 'Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate'
Dynamic networks and behavior: separating selection from influence.
A current problem in the analysis of behavioral dynamics, given a simultaneously evolving social network, is the difficulty of separating effects of partner selection from effects of social influence. In this paper we present a recently developed family of statistical models that enables researchers to separate the two effects in a statistically adequate manner. To illustrate our method we make use of a three-wave panel measured in the years 1995-1997 at a school in the West of Scotland. We are able to assess the strength of selection and influence mechanisms associated with friendship networks of substance-using adolescents
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