D o strong demographic faultlines breed opinion polarization in work teams? We integrate two theories that have been used to explain faultline effects. The first, the approach of Lau and A2 Murnighan [Lau DC, Murnighan JK (1998) Demographic diversity and faultlines: The compositional dynamics of organizational groups. Acad. Management Rev. 23(2):325-340], suggests that in teams with strong faultlines the mechanisms of homophilious selection of interaction partners and persuasive influence cause subgroup polarization, defined as the split of the team into subgroups holding opposing opinions. The second, from sociological and anthropological traditions, emphasizes that crisscrossing actors bridge faultlines because they share demographic attributes with several subgroups. Demographically crisscrossing actors help to prevent polarization in social groups. We argue that Lau and Murnighan's theory implicitly factors in the effects of crisscrossing actors. However, we show that the authors overlooked crucial implications of their theory because they did not consider crisscrossing actors explicitly. Most importantly, we demonstrate that demographic crisscrossing implies that even teams with strong faultlines will overcome polarization in the long run, although they might suffer from it in the short term. We develop and analyze a formal computational model of the opinion and network dynamics in work teams to show the consistency of our reasoning with Lau and Murnighans' theory. The model also revealed another counterintuitive effect: strong faultlines lead to structures of interaction that make teams with strong faultlines faster in arriving at a stable consensus than teams with weak faultlines.

Abstract. Although peer review is crucial for innovation and experimental discoveries in science, it is poorly understood in scientific terms. Discovering its true dynamics and exploring adjustments which improve the commitment of everyone involved could benefit scientific development for all disciplines and consequently increase innovation in the economy and the society. We have reported the results of an innovative experiment developed to model peer review. We demonstrate that offering material rewards to reviewers tends to decrease the quality and efficiency of the reviewing process. Our findings help to discuss the viability of different options of incentive provision, supporting the idea that journal editors and responsible of research funding agencies should be extremely careful in offering material incentives on reviewing, since these might undermine moral motives which guide reviewers' behavior.

Both classical social psychological theories and recent formal models of opinion differentiation and bi-polarization assign a prominent role to negative social influence. Negative influence is defined as shifts away from the opinion of others and hypothesized to be induced by discrepancy with or disliking of the source of influence. There is strong empirical support for the presence of positive social influence (a shift towards the opinion of others), but evidence that large opinion differences or disliking could trigger negative shifts is mixed. We examine positive and negative influence with controlled exposure to opinions of other individuals in one experiment and with opinion exchange in another study. Results confirm that similarities induce attraction, but results do not support that discrepancy or disliking entails negative influence. Instead, our findings suggest a robust positive linear relationship between opinion distance and opinion shifts.

Abstract:The emergence of disliking relations depends on how adolescents perceive the relative informal status of their peers. This notion is examined on a longitudinal sample using dynamic network analysis (585 students across 16 classes in 5 schools). As hypothesized individuals dislike those who they look down on (disdain) and conform to others by disliking those who they perceive as being looked down on by their peers (conformity). The inconsistency between status perceptions also leads to disliking, when individuals do not look up to those who they perceive to be admired by peers (frustration). No evidence is found that adolescents do not dislike those who they look up to (admiration). Results demonstrate the role of status perceptions on disliking tie formation. Interpersonal relationships among adolescents play a central role in their social development. Recent research suggests that although disliking ties are reported less frequently than liking relations, they are present in adolescents' everyday life and therefore drive their development in fundamental ways (Card, 2010). Compared to positive emotional relationships, such as friendship or liking, disliking ties are relatively rare (e.g., Baldwin, Bedell, & Johnson, 1997; Card, 2010; Gersick, Dutton, & Bartunek, 2000; Labianca, Brass, & Gray, 1998). Although disliking ties are scarce, they are very powerful: studies that successfully measured them found that disliking relations have a disproportionally greater effect on satisfaction, mood, performance and stress than liking relations, which has been described as a "negative asymmetry" (Labianca, Brass, & Gray, 1998; Labianca & Brass, 2006;Moerbeek & Need, 2003). Journal of Research on AdolescenceDisliking relations should be studied in a network context, given that they are not independent from each other (Huitsing et al., 2012). Disliking nominations depend on each other in various ways. They are often reciprocated (e.g., Berger & Dijkstra, 2013; Card, 2010) and balanced in triadic relations (Cartwright & Harary, 1956;Hummon & Doreian, 2003;Ludwig & Abell, 2007; Marvel, Kleinberg, Kleinberg, & Strogatz, 2011;Wang & Thorngate, 2003). Moreover, heterophobia exists as people dislike dissimilar others (Flache & Mäs, 2008). Going beyond these elementary structural processes, we argue that a crucial factor that requires particular attention for the explanation of the emergence of disliking relations is status.Gaining status among peers represents a major goal for adolescents (Lindenberg & Steg, 2007; Pellegrini & Long, 2002), and high status adolescents are more influential than their low status peers as they have a major role to set the norm in a class (Rambaran, Dijkstra, & Stark, 2013). Status competition and the resulting status perceptions in particular are important drivers of the formation of relational ties and peer influence (e.g., Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011;Faris & Ennett, 2010;Faris & Felmlee, 2011; Faris, 2012). Only few studies attempted thus far to explain how status is responsible fo...