Elizabeth Suhay sent me this article examining the mechanisms underlying social influence. Here’s the abstract:
Citizens often feel pressured to adopt the beliefs held by their peers, conforming to the views of the majority even in the absence of rational argument. However, few scholars have investigated the mechanisms underlying this “mindless” conformity to group pressure. Drawing on recent research in psychology, this manuscript puts forward a new theory of group influence called Social-Emotional Influence Theory which states that subjective group identification and self-conscious emotions (e.g., pride and shame) are critical to understanding political conformity. We feel pride when we conform to, and shame when we deviate from, in-group beliefs and behaviors; these emotional reactions motivate conformity. SEI Theory is tested with an experimental study of group influence among Midwestern American Catholics with respect to social conservatism. The evidence supports SEI theory: Identification with other Catholics mediated group influence over participants’ conservative views, and self-conscious emotions appeared to play a key role in explaining that influence.
I like the idea that Suhay presents her theory as complementary rather than competitive with more traditional quasi-rational information-processing models of Diana Mutz and others.
Regarding the social conservatism of American Catholics, I wonder what Suhay would say about Rudy de la Garza’s finding that Latino Americans have conservative views on abortion, but very few of them state abortion as an important determinant in their vote. This suggests that there’s another choice point, which is how much to consider attitudes on social issues when deciding how to vote.
And here’s her picture (sorry, no cool data graphs this time):
When Suhay comes to speak at Columbia, we’ll see if we can get some pretty graphs from her experimental results.
Granted, I am strongly influenced by my peers, and the influence goes far beyond exchange of argument. Suhay acknowledges this is not in question. Rather, she advances a theory about how the influence is mediated.
The results are suggestive, but not compelling. Indeed, she uses p<.1 as a cutoff to get positive effects for the "Catholics progressive" and "Evangelicals conservative" manipulations. But the "Catholics conservative" still had no effect.
The results of the study do not help
That was never seriously in question, as her introduction describes.
More interesting for future research methods is her finding that degree of group identification made a big difference to her analysis. It may be obvious (as many things are in retrospect), but it suggests that should be part of future designs, so it does not appear ad hoc.
Regarding Charles' comment on my study, let me first acknowledge that the straight-forward "influence" findings could have been stronger. (Empirical evidence too often disappoints!) He is also right to note that the key to the paper is not influence per se, but what mediates influence. On that subject, let me add that the role played by identity (and emotion) as influence mediators is absolutely integral to my theoretical framework. So, examining identity as a mediator was not exploratory (and the explanation not post hoc), it was a test of a clearly stated hypothesis. -Liz Suhay