Situating Social Influence Processes: Dynamic, Multidirectional Flows of Influence Within Social Networks

Mason, Winter; Conrey, Frederica R.; Smith, Eliot R.

doi:10.1177/1088868307301032

Cited by 275 publications

(203 citation statements)

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“…A key outcome of interest is whether multiple competing sets of beliefs, attitudes, and behavior can persist over time within subgroups or whether the entire group converges to uniformity. Mason et al reviewed models of social influence in this broader context and advocated the use of multiagent modeling (E. R. as a technique for exploring the emergent, broader scale implications of specific assumptions about influence.Both this article and Mason et al (2007) exemplify a recent trend in the cognitive sciences: to consider individual-level cognition and behavior not in isolation but in the context of many interacting individuals. For example, cognitive scientists have developed models of collective search, where multiple agents acquire information in parallel and share it, allowing the group to converge to good problem solutions (Goldstone & Janssen, 2005;Mason, Jones, & Goldstone, 2008).…”

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confidence: 86%

“…Both this article and Mason et al (2007) exemplify a recent trend in the cognitive sciences: to consider individual-level cognition and behavior not in isolation but in the context of many interacting individuals. For example, cognitive scientists have developed models of collective search, where multiple agents acquire information in parallel and share it, allowing the group to converge to good problem solutions (Goldstone & Janssen, 2005;Mason, Jones, & Goldstone, 2008).…”

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confidence: 86%

“…Of course the 0.5 coefficient assumed here is arbitrary and somewhat smaller values could be substituted. But research in many domains shows that people routinely conform, moving their attitudes and beliefs toward those expressed by others (Mason et al, 2007). There is little conformity research specifically on person impressions, but one study found that people rely on gossip from others even when they also have direct information about the target's behaviors (Sommerfeld, Krambeck, Semmann, & Milinski, 2007).…”

Section: Social Perception In the Context Of The Social Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, we analyze consequences of these processes not for the mental representation of an impression within an individual perceiver's head but for patterned reputations-the distribution of impressions of an individual within the social network. This approach parallels the perspective regarding social influence put forward by Mason, Conrey, and Smith (2007). They noted that most research on social influence focuses on the microprocesses that mediate the effects of a source's attitude or behavior on a target, whether through persuasion or conformity.…”

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confidence: 92%

“…Finding out whether this is true by directly sampling the partner's behavior is extraordinarily costly: One would need to be in the relationship for a year or more to become confident that this negative trait is absent, and one would risk being abused. In contrast, asking others who know the person could be a lower cost way of obtaining this important impression-relevant information.Just as the beneficial effects of collective decision-making in general are limited by the possibility of groupthink, a shared group impression may prematurely converge to consensus without adequately considering all available information (Mason et al, 2007). This is especially likely if individuals fail to share information that they uniquely possess, focusing instead on discussion of shared information (e.g., Stasser & Titus, 1985).…”

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Contextualizing person perception: Distributed social cognition.

Smith

Collins

2009

Psychological Review

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Research on person perception typically emphasizes cognitive processes of information selection and interpretation within the individual perceiver and the nature of the resulting mental representations. The authors focus instead on the ways person perception processes create, and are influenced by, the patterns of impressions that are socially constructed, transmitted, and filtered through social networks. As the socially situated cognition perspective (E. R. Smith & G. R. Semin, 2004) suggests, it is necessary to supplement consideration of intra-individual cognitive processes with an examination of the social context. The authors describe a theoretical model of processes of distributed social cognition that takes account of 3 levels: the individual perceiver, the interacting dyad, and the social network in which they are embedded. The authors' model assumes that perceivers elicit or create as well as interpret impressionrelevant information in dyadic interaction and that perceivers obtain information from 3rd-party sources who are linked to perceivers and targets in social networks. The authors also present results of a multiagent simulation of a subset of these processes. Implications of the theoretical model are discussed, for the possibility of correcting biases in person perception and for the nature of underlying mental representations of persons.Keywords: person perception, gossip, social networks, multiagent People's impressions or mental representations of others are fundamental tools for social life. Whether they are valid or invalid, based on years of acquaintanceship or just a cursory glance, our impressions of other people shape our choices of romantic partners, our judgments about political candidates or job applicants, our detection and sanctioning of cheaters and norm violators, and our daily interactions with colleagues, friends, and family.Motivated by the fundamental importance of person perception, researchers have intensively studied how individual perceivers select, interpret, and integrate information about other people. We know a good deal, for instance, about the types of cues social perceivers notice and integrate into their impressions, the conditions under which they automatically access their existing knowledge structures (such as stereotypes), and the ways they use their impressions to make judgments and decisions about other people (Gilbert, 1998;E. R. Smith, 1998). Rigorously controlled laboratory studies have given a clear picture of the nature, time course, and effects of these and other subprocesses of impression formation.However, as advocates of the "situated cognition" approach have argued, even a detailed understanding of the properties of isolated psychological processes cannot fully account for the ways the processes actually operate in concrete social contexts (Robbins & Aydede, 2008;E. R. Smith & Semin, 2004). When people act and interact with other individuals and groups, additional processes often become relevant, and psychological processes are often "scaffolded" b...

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