nucleation

THEORY-1212: In 30 four-person student groups discussing 15 choice dilemmas, a member's self-reported closure to influence on the next issue rose with their influence over prior outcomes, increasingly so along the sequence, and the groups' influence networks thinned and their discussions shortened while the rate of consensus did not change: evidence for a reflected-appraisal step by which influence concentrates in deliberating groups

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Properties4
StatusProposed
Tagssocial-science, network-science
SourceLIT-1482 — A Theory of the Evolution of Social Power: Natural Trajectories of Interpersonal Influence Systems along Issue Sequences
ExtendsTHEORY-902 — In Friedkin, Jia and Bullo's study of 30 four-person student groups discussing 15 choice dilemmas, a member's self-reported closure to influence on the next issue rose with their influence centrality on the previous issue, an effect constant along the sequence, and with their average centrality over all prior issues, an effect that grew along it; influence networks thinned and discussions shortened while the rate of consensus did not change. Closure and centrality both come from the members' own chip allocations, and prior closure is not controlled

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Source

LIT-1482, read in full in NOTE-1126. What the source measured is THEORY-902, which this entry extends.

The claim

Friedkin, Jia and Bullo argue that in a group deliberating a sequence of issues, each member’s closure to influence on the next issue is set by their realized influence on the last (reflected appraisal), and that iterated over issues this concentrates influence, toward one closed member. Their laboratory groups showed the individual association and structural signals of it.

What would settle it

The promote_when, carried word for word from THEORY-902 when that entry was narrowed. More readings of the same source cannot settle it.

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