In this chapter, we evaluate social influence network theory with data from a series of experiments on small groups: dyads, triads, and tetrads. First, we evaluate whether certain general implications of the standard model, which do not depend on the merits of our measures of A and W, are consistent with the spectrum of observed group outcomes of the attitude change and consensus formation process in groups. Second, we evaluate the accuracy of the model, drawing on subjects' reports of their initial and final (end-of-trial) attitudes on issues, and their allocation of subjective weights to themselves and others in forming their final attitudes. On each issue, we compare the accuracy of this model with the accuracy of a baseline model that predicts the convergence of attitudes to the mean of group member's initial attitudes on an issue. Third, we assess the performance of an optimized model in which group members' susceptibilities are fitted to the data that group members provided about their attitudes and interpersonal influences; and we evaluate the correspondence between the fitted susceptibilities and group members' reported subjective self-weights. Our examination of the latter correspondence is a probe of the phenomenological validity of the model via its derived susceptibility values. Other predictions and applications of the model will be presented in subsequent chapters.

Three Experiments

We begin with a description of the experiments on dyads, triads, and tetrads that we employ to assess the model.