229

10Social Justice in Local Systems of Interpersonal Influence

Noah E. Friedkin

J. D. McLeod et al. (eds.), Handbook of the Social Psychology of Inequality, Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9002-4_10, © Springer Sciences+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

N. E. Friedkin ()Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93107, USAe-mail: friedkin@soc.ucsb.edu

Introduction

The public sphere of visible local events and is-sues has dramatically enlarged as transportation and communication technologies have facilitated the dissemination of information. Cooley (1902, 1927) linked such enlargement with an increas-ing demand for social justice that is not restricted to matters of criminal behavior, and that gener-ally penetrates into social life as a superordinate evaluative dimension of all action. Here I take an “issue of social justice” to be any matter con-cerned with the appropriate (that is, equitable, fair or just) treatment of particular persons or groups who are either the source (S) or target (T) of an S T→ action. Actions that may trigger so-cial justice issues include cases in which a father has murdered the rapist of his daughter, an em-ployer has paid females less than males for the same work, and a selection committee has reject-ed a candidate for a position on the basis of reli-gion. Given an S T→ action (i.e., the event is undisputed), the social justice issue is the appro-priate reaction to the S T→ action. Such issues may involve disputes regarding whether the ac-tion was justified, its definition and meaning, and what punitive or compensatory responses, if any, are called for. The implications of ubiquitous

conversations about issues of social justice in-clude changes in the social justice cultures of communities.

A variegated body of law and tradition pro-vides a context for all social justice issues as de-fined above, e.g., the Book of Leviticus. These laws and traditions reflect the importance that individuals accord to issues of social justice. The meme of social justice as embodied by the Greek Goddess of Justice, with her sword and balance scale, supports an enormous apparatus of civic and religious law and their enforcement. But is-sues of and sensibilities to social justice are broader and deeper than any codification of the appropriate and inappropriate treatments of par-ticular actions. Codifications do not eliminate diverse initial positions on the appropriate re-sponses to particular actions. Such diversity makes social justice an issue in a large domain of actions, and preludes the construction of interper-sonal influence systems that may modify and ex-plain individuals’ emergent orientations to par-ticular objects and positions on issues. Observed S T→ actions and social justice issues are spe-cial cases of objects and issues—among many other types of objects and issues—on which indi-viduals may have cognitive orientations that are affected by an interpersonal influence system composed of other individuals who are attending to the same object or issue. Evolving attitudes to-ward particular classes of S T→ actions are components of the living (i.e., present) social jus-tice culture of a community.

230 N. E. Friedkin

Because of the ongoing enlargement of the set of visible local events, issues of social justice are increasingly included in the domain of “common objects” of interest and arousal for collectivities of individuals. These collectivities include the source, target, and direct observers, if any, of the S T→ action, plus other individuals residing within and outside the locality of the action who have become aware of it. A particular S T→ action becomes a “common object” of an inter-personal influence process on an issue of social justice when a group of individuals (e.g., a jury, panel of judges, religious congregation, commit-tee of an organization, or informal coalescence of aroused individuals) display their positions on the appropriate treatment of the particular persons or groups who are either the source or target of an S T→ action. Interpersonal influ-ences allow emergent patterns of individuals’ issue-related feelings, thoughts, and actions. The most dramatic emergence involves changes of orientations that reduce an initial chaotic array of orientations on an issue to a settled consensus, or to two opposing factions. A jury is a familiar setting in which such emergence occurs on issues of social justice, but there are many other formal and informal settings in which local systems of interpersonal influence operate to transform in-dividuals’ positions on social justice issues that are not yet or perhaps never will be brought to a court of law.

This chapter is concerned with the social pro-cess of interpersonal influence that may alter in-dividuals’ positions on particular issues of social justice, and the implications of interpersonal in-fluences unfolding in social network structures. I assume a reader who is acquainted with the classic lines of work on social influence covered in undergraduate survey courses on social psy-chology. A substantial amount of research has been conducted on bases and antecedents of in-terpersonal influence relations, i.e., relations in which individuals’ attitudes or behaviors toward an object are affected by the displayed attitudes or behaviors of one or more other individuals to-ward the same object. A less familiar terrain is the research frontier on social influence that begins with a network of interpersonal influences on a

specific issue and addresses the implications of interpersonal influences unfolding in the network structure. For sociologists, this research fron-tier on interpersonal influence systems is theo-retically significant in its formal elaboration of the agenda of the symbolic interaction tradition (Blumer 1969; Cooley 1902, 1927; Mead 1934). The premises of this tradition are that (1) indi-viduals’ actions toward particular objects depend on their cognitive orientations towards these objects, (2) individuals’ cognitive orientations towards particular objects are affected by inter-personal interactions that allow their orientations to be influenced by the orientations of others, and (3) individuals are active enablers and synthesiz-ers, as opposed to passive recipients, of interper-sonal influences. I employ somewhat different language to describe these premises than does the classical literature (Blumer 1969) because, as stated above, they have a maintained and increas-ing force in the modern advancement of work on interpersonal influence systems.

In the research frontier on social influence networks, investigation of the origins of network structures may be put aside in order to focus on the implications of an interaction process of in-terpersonal influence unfolding in network struc-tures. We may start with the construct of realized relations of interpersonal influences, for the pairs of individuals in a collection of individuals who are oriented toward a common object, such as the S T→ action of a social justice issue. We also may start with individuals’ independent initial evaluative orientations to the S T→ action, which by definition are unaffected by other indi-viduals’ responses to the action, and put aside the antecedents of these initial orientations. In the research frontier on interpersonal influences in network structures, individuals’ initial responses to objects are subject to modifications via inter-personal influences, and we are more interested in these modifications than in the origins of indi-viduals’ initial responses. It should be evident that we cannot take the direct antecedents of indi-viduals’ initial positions on a social justice issue as the direct antecedents of their settled positions when interpersonal influences disrupt the direct linkages of antecedent conditions and individu-

23110 Social Justice in Local Systems of Interpersonal Influence

als’ cognitive positions on the issue. As an inter-personal influence process unfolds in a network structure, consensus may be formed, the average orientation toward the action may become more extreme, individuals’ orientations may coalesce into two opposing factions, or individuals’ orien-tations may change without crystallizing into a faction structure.

The reader is likely to be familiar with the idea of a social network (see Cook, this volume) and comfortable with a modest abstraction in which directed lines ( )→ may indicate interpersonal influence relations. But I do not expect that the reader has any detailed understanding of how those researching attitude and opinion dynamics define a social influence network, define a social influence process on individuals’ attitudes to-wards objects, and derive the implications of the process unfolding in the network. The literature on these matters perforce relies on mathematical formalization. The mathematics is the theory, or the model, of the influence process in a network. The goal of this chapter is to provide a broadly useful and minimally technical introduction to the general features of the work that is being con-ducted on this frontier. The chapter consists of three major sections dealing with influence net-work structures, interpersonal influence process-es, and derivable implications of interpersonal influence processes unfolding in influence net-work structures.

I cannot avoid presenting some mathemat-ics, where mathematics is needed to precisely describe the theory. Active lines of work on this frontier include contributions from investiga-tors in both the social and natural sciences (e.g., Acemoglu and Ozdaglar 2011; Deffuant et al. 2000; Friedkin and Johnsen 2011; Hegselmann

and Krause 2002). I concentrate the exegesis on one approach—social influence network theory (Friedkin 1998; Friedkin and Johnsen 1999, 2011). This approach has a long heritage in social psychology (Anderson 1981; French 1956; Hara-ry 1959) and conceptual linkages to various lines of sociological work (Friedkin 2001, 2010, 2011; Friedkin and Johnsen 2003, 2011). In the large domain of proposed models of opinion dynam-ics in networks, Friedkin and Johnsen’s standard applied model (a special case of their social in-fluence network theory) is parsimonious in its as-sumptions and constructs (one equation suffices to define the model), and distinctive with respect to empirical support (gathered in both laboratory and field settings) for its predictions (Friedkin 1999; Childress and Friedkin 2012; Friedkin and Johnsen 2011).

The Influence Network Construct

It is useful to start with a familiar network con-struct. Figure 10.1 displays a structure (D) of nine nodes and twelve directed lines. In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, this structure is a digraph, i.e., a directed graph.1 Digraphs cor-respond to how we usually describe social net-works.

Let each line ( )i j→ in Fig. 10.1 indicate that i directly influences j on a common issue. The i j→ line is a path of length 1. Longer paths indicate the existence of indirect influence, e.g., 4 has indirect influence on 6 based on the path

1 Figure 10.1 appears in Harary et al. (1965), a book that many investigators in field of social networks have found valuable.

Fig. 10.1 The digraph formalization of an influence network

232 N. E. Friedkin

4 5 6→ → of length 2, and 1 has indirect influ-ence on 4 based on the path 1 2 3 4→ → → of length 3. The network consists of three strong components {S1, S2, S3}. Each such component is a maximal subset of individuals in which, for every (u,v) pair of the component’s members, there exists at least one path from u to v, and at least one path from v to u in D. In the condensa-tion of this digraph, with respect to its strong components, the S Si j→ lines indicate the exis-tence of at least one direct influence relation from any member of Si to any member of Sj. From the condensation it is evident that there are flows of influence from the members of S1 to S2 and from the members of S3 to S2, but no flows of influ-ence from any member of S1 to any member of S3, or vice versa, and no flows of influence from any member of S2 to any member of S1 or S3.

The influence structure of Fig. 10.1 has clear implications with respect to constraints on oppor-tunities for direct and indirect influence, but the reader should see that we are gnawing on a bone with little meat on it. Because every individual is influenced by at least one other individual, we can see that all members of this network are open to interpersonal influence, but the displayed structure does not indicate the extent to which each individual is open or closed to interper-sonal influence. Six of the nine individuals are influenced directly by one other individual, but depending on the extent to which an individual is open or closed to interpersonal influence, the strength of these interpersonal influences will vary. We also see that individuals 5, 6 and 7 are influenced directly by two other individuals, but there is no indication of their relative influences. The digraph formalization is an important but weak specification of an influence network, with respect to the amount of information that it con-veys.

The literature on interpersonal influence net-works presents a remarkable interdisciplinary convergence to a more informative definition of an interpersonal influence network than the di-graph formalization illustrated in Fig. 10.1. This more informative definition is introduced in Fig. 10.2. The focal (largest) node in Fig. 10.2 has a particular self-weight 0 1≤ ≤wii , which

corresponds to the extent to which the individual is open or closed to interpersonal influence on a specific issue. An individual who is not com-pletely closed to interpersonal influence on the issue accords some positive weight to one or more others, and the particular weight that indi-vidual i accords to another individual j is 0 1 ( )ijw i j≤ ≤ ≠ . The focal node distributes weights to self and particular others, and these accorded weights sum to 1. We represent a posi-tive accorded weight as a valued directed line i j

wij → for the instances of wij > 0 , keeping in mind that each such line implies that j has a direct influence on i. Note that in Fig. 10.2, the focal node is also accorded weights by par-ticular others. Some of these others may be indi-viduals to whom the focal node has accorded weight.

We may represent all of the accorded weights among n individuals as a n n× matrix, [ ]iiw=W, also shown in Fig. 10.2. Each row of W de-scribes the weights that are accorded by a partic-ular individual. Each column of W describes the weights that are accorded to a particular individ-ual. The row values w w wi i in1 2, , ,…{ } for each i are the direct relative weights accorded by i to the displayed positions on an issue of each mem-ber j n= 1, ,… of the network. A subset of these weights will be 0 when individual i is unaware of the orientation of individual j, and others will be 0 when individual i completely discounts the orientation of individual j. The diagonal values w w wnn11 22, , ,…{ } of the matrix are individu-

als’ self-weights. If wii = 1, then the individual is completely closed to interpersonal influence,

If wii = 0, then the individual is completely open to interpersonal influence,

The importance of this Fig. 10.2 formalization is indicated by the consequence of a loss of confi-dence in it: if confidence in it were substantially eroded, then a large number of models of influ-ence in networks would be set aside.

wijj in =

≠∑ 0.

wijj in =

≠∑ 1.

23310 Social Justice in Local Systems of Interpersonal Influence

The matrix W allows for an infinite set of corresponding network structures. This flex-ible architecture is necessary. In the absence of extreme conditioning, the theoretical expecta-tion is a set of individuals who not only vary in their extents of openness vs. closure to in-terpersonal influence, but also vary in their al-locations of influence to particular others. Such individual differences are non-ignorable and are based on numerous individual, relational, and contextual variables that affect individuals’ openness to interpersonal influence and their al-locations of weights to the orientations of other persons. Interpersonal influences involve “em-bodied” orientations, i.e., orientations toward an object that are displayed by particular individu-als, and perforce are confounded with diverse features of the individuals who are conveying their orientations, and diverse features of the

interpersonal relationships involved. Moreover, the reception of the content of other individu-als’ displayed orientations is confounded with the observers’ characteristics and association of diverse memories and meanings to the lan-guage, tonality, and gestures involved in the displays. As a consequence, the basis of a di-rect influence relation, in which an individual accords some weight to another individual’s orientation, is complex, and simplifying homo-geneity assumptions about the values of these weights are suspect.

In addition, note the theoretically important shift of perspective from Fig. 10.1’s display of who-influences-whom to Fig. 10.2’s display of who-accords-influence-to-whom. The latter is the more fundamental definition of influence re-lations. Interpersonal influence is an accorded re-lation of the individual mind. Mead comes close

Fig. 10.2 The situa-tion of each individual in the group’s matrix of direct accorded influences

234 N. E. Friedkin

to this postulate when he states that “He had in him all the attitudes of others, calling for a certain response; that was the ‘me’ of that situation, and his response is the ‘I’ ” (1934, p. 176). Barnard comes close to this postulate in his analysis of authority relations when he states,

Authority is the character of a communica-tion (order) in a formal organization by virtue of which it is accepted by a contributor to or “member” of the organization as governing the action he contributes; that is, as governing or determining what he does or is not to do so far as the organization is concerned…. If a directive communication is accepted by one to whom it is addressed, its authority for him is confirmed or established. Disobedience of such a communica-tion is a denial of its authority for him. Therefore, under this definition the decision as to whether an order has authority or not lies with the persons to whom it is addressed, and does not reside in “per-sons of authority” or those who issue these orders. (Barnard 1968 [1938], p. 163)

The individual attends to all the attitudes of oth-ers to which he or she is aware and allocates a particular weight (including zero weight) to each of these attitudes. Interpersonal influence is a fi-nite distributed resource of the mind.

This social psychological approach empha-sizes that interpersonal influence networks are social cognition structures that are assembled by individuals’ allocations of weights to their own and other individuals’ orientations toward spe-cific objects. In their classic typology of bases of social power, French and Raven (1959) are careful in defining the bases as grounded on the perceptions of the individuals who might be in-fluenced; for example, i’s perception of j’s ex-pertise. More generally, classical literature on bases of interpersonal influence supports the meta-analytic conclusion that individuals’ al-locations of weight to self and particular oth-ers may be affected by numerous contextual, relational, and individual level conditions. An individual’s allocation of weights to his or her own and other individuals’ orientations toward a specific object is the individual’s response to the combination of all relevant conditions. The collective assemblage of these allocations of

accorded weights is an influence network as it exists at particular time, with respect to a par-ticular object of orientation.

The influence network, assembled on a spe-cific issue of social justice, is composed of indi-viduals who are active in displaying their atti-tudes on the issue. The variation of these indi-viduals’ initial positions on the issue may be modest or substantial. Attitude change can occur only if individuals are according influence to other individuals who are displaying different at-titudes than themselves on the issue. Interperson-al influences on attitudes are ubiquitous because individuals frequently do accord influence to oth-ers (e.g., authorities, experts, and friends) who hold different, more extreme, or more moderate positions on an issue than themselves. Diverse cultures of social justice are formed when local systems of interpersonal influence, which enable and maintain agreements on social justice issues, are based on different social structures. Distinc-tive social structures are defined by individuals’ arrays of initial responses to S T→ actions and their influence networks. Some influence net-works may privilege particular responses be-cause of the perceived power bases (expertise, authority, charisma) of the individuals who are displaying particular responses.

The Mechanism of Interpersonal Influence

The implications of an influence network are am-biguous in the absence of a theory of the influ-ence process that unfolds in the network. Investi-gators in the field of attitude and opinion dynam-ics have proposed and examined the implications of a number different influence process models (e.g., Friedkin and Johnsen 2011; Groeber et al. 2014; Hegselmann and Krause 2002). Each of these models specifies some mechanism of inter-personal influence, that is the cognitive algebra by which individuals synthesize their own and other positions on an issue, and some temporal sequencing of the interpersonal influences that are occurring among individuals.

23510 Social Justice in Local Systems of Interpersonal Influence

The Cognitive Algebra of Convex Combinations

Rational calculation, logical reasoning, math-ematical deduction, and scientific methods of empirical inquiry remain the bulwark against ill-considered action, but they do not describe how individuals usually respond to issues and objects. With advancements in cognitive science, it has become increasingly evident that the mind, i.e., the human brain, automatically attends to and synthesizes available information with heuristic mechanisms, and that what constitutes “informa-tion” includes everything that is available to its sensory faculties. A corollary of this remarkable capacity of the mind is that embodied informa-tion, i.e., the displayed orientations of other indi-viduals toward a particular object, is confounded with all available information associated with its embodiment in the particular individuals who are displaying their orientations. Such confounding, which may be reduced in experimental designs that present only abstract objects to subjects, is a social fact which contextualizes much of the information that individuals receive and presents a challenge to the exercise of pure logic and rea-soning.

A manifestation of the evaluative activity of the mind is its automatic heuristic attitudinal re-sponses to any perceived object, which are posi-tive or negative cognitive orientations of particu-lar intensity (Bargh 1997; Bargh and Ferguson 2000; Bargh et al. 1992; Zajonc 1980, 1998). The accumulating evidence on the automaticity of at-titudes is consonant with the startling findings of Osgood et al. (1957, 1975) on the cross-cultural existence of a three-dimensional cognitive space in which individuals immediately locate the ob-jects they encounter on the dimensions of evalu-ation (good-bad), potency (strong-weak), and ac-tivity (active-passive). Kahneman (2003, p. 701) remarks that

The evidence, both behavioral (Bargh 1997; Zojonc 1998) and neurophysiological (see, e.g., LeDoux 2000), is consistent with the idea that the assess-ment of whether objects are good (and should be approached) or bad (and should be avoided) is carried out quickly and efficiently by specialized

neural circuitry. Several authors have commented on the influence of this primordial evaluative system (here included in System 1) on the attitudes and preferences that people adopt consciously and deliberately (Epstein 2003; Kahneman et al. 1999; Slovic et al. 2002; Wilson 2000; Zajonc 1998).2

The available evidence also suggests that heu-ristically generated evaluative orientations are quickly translated by the mind into a variety of other forms of displayed attitudes and evalua-tions, e.g., subjective probabilities, rank orders, and monetary allocation preferences ( Kahneman and Ritov 1994; Lowenstein et al. 2001; Slovic et al. 2002).

The associative systems of the mind (self-schema) that generate these attitudinal orienta-tions are the normative foundations of individu-als’ initial responses to objects. But the internal normative systems of individuals may differ in their evaluations of appropriate (good) and inap-propriate (bad) emotions, thoughts, and behav-iors. The minds of different individuals may and often do generate different initial responses to the same objects. In the absence of extreme forms of conditioning, which are sometimes involved in the socialization and training of individuals in families, military units, therapeutic settings, and cults, the baseline expectation is diversity and variation, i.e., heterogeneous automatic initial attitudinal orientations (individual differences of sign and intensity) toward the same object in any collection of individuals. An allowance for such heterogeneity of initial attitudinal responses, as opposed to an assumption of initial consensus or even near consensus, may be taken as a postulate and point of departure for a theory of interper-sonal influence. We cannot construct a general theory of interpersonal influence on the assump-tion that interpersonal influence is a conformity process that brings deviant individuals into com-pliance with shared norms that are the extant pre-

2 Kahneman distinguishes two systems, 1 and 2, and lo-cates the “hard work” of logic and reasoning in System 2. A simple example of System 2 activity is a countdown by sevens from 100.

236 N. E. Friedkin

vailing orientations of other individuals to par-ticular objects.

Evaluative orientations to an object are im-mediate, and so are responses to the displayed orientations of other individuals toward the same object. The informational value of the displayed orientations of other individuals is determined automatically by the individual who observes the display(s). With respect to a common object, if an individual i observes the displayed orientation of one other individual j to the object, then i’s automatic heuristic response is an allocation of weights to his or her own orientation and the ori-entation of j, and the synthesis of these orienta-tions. If an individual observes the displayed ori-entation of two or more other individuals to the object, then the individual’s automatic heuristic response is an allocation of weights to his or her own orientation and the displayed orientations of the others, and the synthesis of these orienta-tions. Some such synthesis must occur when an individual’s orientation to an object is modified by the displayed orientations of other individuals toward the same object.

Intellective issues (i.e., problems with cor-rect and incorrect positions) are typically dealt with by the same automatic heuristic mechanism. As the biases of individuals’ responses to such issues have been elaborated, the assumption of ubiquitous rational actors has become increas-ingly suspect (Kahneman 2011; Kahneman et al. 1982). With the accumulating findings of the cognitive revolution in social psychology, indi-cating ubiquitous heuristic mechanisms, it has become increasingly anomalous to assume logi-cal reasoning and rational calculation as the main mechanisms of interpersonal influence. Although the slow hard work of logical reasoning and ra-tional calculation may be done by some individu-als, on some occasions in which such work is aroused, the quick work of an automatic heuristic mechanism appears to be more a more generally accurate basis on which to construct models of influence in networks.

A formalization of the process of interperson-al influence involves a postulated heuristic mech-anism by which individuals cognitively synthe-size orientations of others toward an object, in-

cluding their own orientation, during the tempo-ral process of interpersonal influence. A preva-lent assumption is that the synthesis is a convex combination. In general, for a finite number of positions x x xm1 2, , ,… in a real vector space, a convex combination of these positions is defined as any position w x w x w xm m1 1 2 1+ + +… , where wk ≥ 0 for k m= 1, ,… and w w wm1 2 1+ + + =… . Clearly, the assumption of a cognitive algebra that is a convex combination is consistent with the prevalent specification of the influence net-work construct described in the previous section.

If the developing cognitive science on auto-maticity and heuristics applies to the objects en-tailed in social justice issues, then individuals’ attitudes on justice issues are more often auto-matic responses to the objects involved in the issue than deliberative responses, and the mecha-nism that may alter these attitudes is more often a quick heuristic convex combination of displayed attitudes than a slow rational calculation or logi-cal analysis of their relative merits. While formal authorities and legal procedures are engaged in their work on the issue, local interpersonal influ-ence systems include formal authorities, legal process, and their outcomes as objects of evalua-tive orientation, along with other issue-related objects. Hence, when this formal work is com-pleted, the social justice issue may not be settled in the minds of the individuals who have been aroused by the issue. In general, justice is never done and there is, instead, an evolving living cul-ture of justice that is manifested in individuals’ present attitudinal responses to S T→ actions.

Group Dynamics

In the classic and simplest case, the convex com-bination is constrained to current orientations, and all individuals are simultaneously synthe-sizing their own and others’ displayed orienta-tions. The seminal work on attitude and opinion dynamics (French 1956; Harary 1959; DeGroot 1974) is just such a mechanism,

y w y i n tit

ijj

n

jt( ) ( ) ( , , ; , , ),= = =

=

−∑1

1 1 1 2… …

23710 Social Justice in Local Systems of Interpersonal Influence

where y jt( ) is the time t orientation of individual

j, which may be any number in an interval of the real number line, 0 1ijw≤ ≤ for all i and j, and w w wi i in1 2 1+ + + =… for all i. The classic French–Harary–DeGroot mechanism is memory-less with respect to all orientations that were pre-viously held. In particular, individuals accord no continuing direct weight to their initial orienta-tions and, by implication, they accord no con-tinuing direct weight to any condition (circum-stance, experience, norm, interest) that affected their initial orientations. The self-weights,

11 22, , , nnw w w… , that are involved in this mecha-nism are the direct weights that individuals ac-cord to their current positions on an issue. This mechanism will generate consensus depending on the social structure in which it unfolds; e.g., consensus will be generated in most “strongly connected” influence networks where at least one path exists from u to v, and from v to u, for all u v≠ members of the network. Figure 10.1 is not a strongly connected network.

In Friedkin and Johnsen (1999, 2011), the French–Harary–DeGroot mechanism is sub-sumed as a special case of a more general for-malization, which allows influenced patterns of settled agreements and disagreements in a broad-er domain of structural conditions. In this gener-alization, individuals’ initial orientations toward an object may have an enduring salience:

where a wii ii= −1 for all i. Note that

and that aii describes the extent to which an in-dividual is closed to interpersonal influence and attached to the initial orientation, or open to in-terpersonal influence and unattached to the ini-tial orientation. Again, the influence network is a collective social cognition construct assembled by the n individuals’ accord of weights to them-selves and particular others.

y a w y a y

i n t

it

ii ij jt

ii ij

n( ) ( ) ( )

( , , ; , , ),

= + −( )

= =

−

=∑ 1 0

11

1 1 2… …

a w aii ij iij

n+ − =

=∑ 1 1

1

Other models of attitude and opinion dynam-ics have been proposed. Most incorporate the as-sumption of an individual-level information inte-gration mechanism that is a convex combination of available information. The literature includes models of interpersonal influences on qualitative positions ( Sznajd-Weron and Sznajd 2000; Watts and Dodds 2007), models in which the influence network is not a stationary construct ( Hegsel-mann and Krause 2002), models that allow sto-chastic sequences of interpersonal influences (Deffuant et al. 2000), and models that entertain Bayesian mechanisms of belief updating ( Ac-emoglu and Ozdaglar 2011). In the midst of the accelerating stream of proposed formalizations, it is easy to lose sight of the central unresolved problem of the field—the achievement of a nor-mal science that advances work on empirically validated formalizations of the systems of inter-personal influence that are affecting individuals’ cognitive orientations to objects. Progress on this problem requires models that are researchable, and that have been researched. To date, remark-ably few models have been researched in detail and, in particular, with respect to the accuracy of their predicted changes of individuals’ positions on specific issues. Below, I show how such pre-dictions are obtained in the framework of Fried-kin and Johnsen’s formalization.

Interpersonal influences on issues of justice generate attitudes that are convex combinations of individuals’ initial attitudes. Thus, local sys-tems of interpersonal influence are conservative and non-chaotic in preserving an initial consen-sus and in constraining emergent attitudes to the range of individuals’ displayed initial attitudes. If all initial attitudes to the S T→ action are negative (positive), then all emergent attitudes will be negative (positive), and they cannot be more negative (positive) than the most extreme initial attitude. With an enlargement of the public sphere of visible local responses to issues of so-cial justice, the displayed attitudes of individuals who are located outside the locale of the S T→ action may be accorded influence by individu-als who are located near the action. Thus, social justice attitudes on specific issues, and a local

238 N. E. Friedkin

culture of social justice, may be modified with suitable changes of social structure, i.e., changes of the array of displayed initial attitudes and/or changes of the influence network. The approach for addressing the implications of particular so-cial structures is now presented.

The Derivation of Implications

A key sociological postulate is the existence of social constructions that cannot be reduced to and understood as aggregations of independent individual attitudes or behaviors. With respect to individuals’ positions on social justice issues, which have been affected by an interpersonal in-fluence process unfolding in a network structure, the interdependency of individuals’ social justice orientations is palpable. However, when network structures are involved, it is not obvious what the particular destinations are for individuals’ trans-forming orientations. As individuals modify their orientations, each individual may be located in a changing landscape of influential orientations, and repetitive responses to these changing dis-played orientations enable complex indirect in-fluences.

Figure 10.3 illustrates the dynamics for the Friedkin-Johnsen influence mechanism unfold-ing in the D structure of Fig. 10.1. Recall from Fig. 10.1 that the four members of component S2 are being influenced by the three members of S1 and by the two members of S3. I have set up a scenario in which the initial attitudes of S1 and S3 are polarized extremes, and the initial attitudes of S2 are more moderate. I also have set up a par-ticular structure of accorded weights. The influ-ence process generates changes of positions, which are traced in Fig. 10.3, in which three of the four moderates of S2 alter their positions to-ward the positive positions of S1 and the remain-ing moderate alters position toward the negative positions of S3. For the same array of initial atti-tudes and a different structure of accorded weights, the same process (here, the Friedkin-Johnsen standard process) may generate mark-edly different temporal dynamics. For the same structure of accorded weights and different array

of initial attitudes, the same process may gener-ate markedly different temporal dynamics. The particular dynamics depend on the social struc-ture and social process, where the relevant issue-specific social structure is defined by the influ-ence network corresponding to W and the indi-viduals’ initial positions on the issue,

(0) (0)(0) (0)1 2 .ny y y =             y …

The elementary unit of interpersonal influence is a direct influence relation i j

wij > →0

for an ordered pair of individuals ( , )i j in which indi-vidual j’s displayed emotional, attitudinal, or be-havioral orientation toward a particular object is accorded positive weight by i. The more complex unit of interpersonal influence is a total influence relation for each ordered pair of individuals ( , )i j in which individual j’s orientation has influenced i’s orientation on the basis of the direct and indi-rect flows of influence in a network. The Fried-kin-Johnsen formalization allows solutions for time t influences that are the total (direct and in-direct) contributions of other network members’ initial positions to the determination of individu-als’ time t positions. When the influence process presents equilibrium, as it does in the case illus-trated in Fig. 10.3, the model presents a control matrix,

in which 0 1≤ ≤vij for all i and j, and

for all i, that describes the total influences of each group member’s initial issue position on a group member’s settled position on an issue,

for all i. For example, in Fig. 10.3, individual 7’s moderate initial position (−15) is transformed by

11 12 1

21 22 2

1 2

,

n

n

n n nn

v v vv v v

v v v

=

V

……

� � � �…

vijj

n=

=∑ 1

1

y v yi ij jj

n( ) ( ) ,∞

== ∑ 0

1

23910 Social Justice in Local Systems of Interpersonal Influence

∞

Fig. 10.3 Illustration of Friedkin-Johnsen opinion dynamics

240 N. E. Friedkin

the process into the more extreme position (−75) by the disproportionate total indirect influence of an intransigent extremist, individual 8, in

Thus, the matrix V of Fig. 10.3 describes the rela-tive power of each network member in determin-ing the cognitive destinations of other members, with respect to their orientations toward a spe-cific object.3

Discussion

The classical approach to social influence fo-cused on the bases of interpersonal influence re-lations, including conditions affecting individu-als’ openness or closure to influence. This clas-sical approach has generated a large literature. Recent work has advanced the development of dynamic models of attitude and opinion forma-tion in which the bases of influence among group members are mixed and interpersonal influences unfold in network structures. As lines of research on groups have been abandoned by psycholo-gists, and their work has increasingly become concentrated on cognition, work on group dy-namics and social networks has been maintained and dramatically advanced by investigators lo-cated in other disciplines of the social and natural sciences. In this renaissance of work on social groups, which takes structures of interpersonal relations as core constructs, the investigation of bases of interpersonal influence now appears within a broader framework of interest in condi-tions and social processes that affect the structure of social networks.

3 The analysis presented in Fig. 10.3 is for a one-di-mensional cognitive orientation toward a specific object, which may be an evaluative position on whether justice would be served by a particular response to an S → T ac-tion. More complexly defined multi-dimensional issues also may analyzed. See Friedkin and Johnsen (2011).

( )

9( ) (0)7 7

1

(0)78 8

75

0.869, 95

j jj

y v y

v y

∞

== = −

= = −

∑

In this chapter, I have described how systems of interpersonal influence may affect individu-als’ attitudinal orientations toward objects. The social structures of such systems are defined by two constructs: the array of individuals’ initial at-titudinal orientations toward a common object, and their network of accorded influences. All conditions that affect this social structure may be moved into the background for an analysis of a system’s implications. Particular social struc-tures, as defined above, have particular impli-cations that may be analyzed case by case. The effects of families on their children, schools on their students, workplaces on their employees, neighborhoods on their residents, and small towns, cities and nations on their citizens depend on the attitudes of the particular individuals in-volved in these social units toward objects and their assembled networks of accorded influences. Although many objects in individuals’ environ-ments are not novel, they are often importantly particularized by features that trigger heteroge-neous initial responses among those who are at-tending to them. Independent individual agency, not structural constraint, is central to the perspec-tive of this chapter. Such agency is manifested in the heterogeneity of individuals’ displayed initial attitudinal responses to objects, and in the het-erogeneity of individuals’ accorded influences to their own and others’ displayed orientations to objects.

A special case of an influence system is one in which interpersonal influence processes un-folding in networks operate to maintain widely shared norms and reinforce the internalization of these norms as constraints on individuals’ dis-played emotions, attitudes, and behaviors toward objects. Parsons (1951, 1971) and others have as-sumed the existence of a social order of pervasive agreements and concordant behaviors that legiti-mizes social controls, which dampen and correct deviance from the normative consensus of the society in which individuals and social groups are situated. Such “well ordered” social systems have existed in the past, and do so now. In these systems, normatively constrained interpersonal influence relations (e.g., regularized patterns of deference) are manifested in all interpersonal

24110 Social Justice in Local Systems of Interpersonal Influence

interactions, and social influence is reduced to instances of conformity or disobedience. We see the postulate of such a social system whenever it is asserted that local interpersonal influence sys-tems serve to “reproduce” a normative consensus that covers a large domain of displayed emotions, attitudes, and behaviors, and that is often detailed and unambiguous in its applications to what are appropriate and inappropriate individual orienta-tions in various circumstances.

In the absence of an extreme conditioning of individuals’ initial responses to objects, issues of social justice become foci of arousal and un-resolved tension. At any given time, a massive set of social justice issues exists based on S→T actions in the locales of particular interpersonal relationships, families, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, small towns, and cities. The vis-ibility of some of these social justice issues may expand in scope as they arouse the concern and interest of larger numbers of persons. The oc-currence of diverse displayed social justice po-sitions on specific actions is a context in which broader (more or less coherent) religious, philo-sophical, and ideological paradigms of conduct are addressed, and the emergent orientations on specific actions, are markers of small and large movements toward or away from particular para-digms. The interpersonal work that gives rise to accommodations and agreements on social justice issues may be viewed as one of the pri-mary engines of cultural change. The drama of this engagement with social justice issues is not restricted to the courts or governments of soci-eties. The penetrating social controls that attend to matters of social justice are mostly informal interpersonal influences buttressed by local ac-tivism. Social control includes the interpersonal work that continually constructs and modifies a disarrayed patchwork of ad hoc local agreements and accommodations that are formed among persons within groups who disagree on issues (Janowitz 1975). Although formal social controls via legislation and litigation are important instru-ments of social change, informal social controls exercised in local areas of interaction may have more penetrating fundamental effects on the cul-ture of social justice.

References

Acemoglu, D., & Ozdaglar, A. (2011). Opinion dynamics and learning in social networks. Dynamic Games and Applications, 1(1), 3–49.

Anderson, N. H. (1981). Foundations of information inte-gration theory. New York: Academic.

Bargh, J. A. (1997). The automaticity of everyday life. In R. S. Wyer Jr. (Ed.), The automaticity of everyday life: Advances in social cognition (Vol. 10, pp. 1–61). Mahwah: Erlbaum.

Bargh, J. A., & Ferguson, M. J. (2000). Beyond behavior-ism: On the automaticity of higher mental processes. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 925–945.

Bargh, J. A., Chaiken, S., Govender, R., & Pratto, F. (1992). The generality of the automatic attitude activa-tion effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychol-ogy, 62(6), 893–912.

Barnard, C. (1968 [1938]). Functions of the executive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Childress, C. C., & Friedkin, N. E. (2012). Cultural recep-tion and production: The social construction of mean-ing in book clubs. American Sociological Review, 77(1), 45–68.

Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Cooley, C. H. (1927). Social organization: A study of the larger mind. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Deffuant, G., Neau, D., Amblard, F., & Weisbuch, G. (2000). Mixing beliefs among interacting agents. Advances in Complex Systems, 3(01n04), 87–98.

DeGroot, M. H. (1974). Reaching a consensus. Jour-nal of the American Statistical Association, 69(345), 118–121.

Epstein, S. (2003). Cognitive-experimental self-theory of personality. In T. Millon & M. J. Lerner (Eds.), Com-prehensive handbook of psychology: Vol. 5: Person-ality and social psychology (pp. 159–184). Hoboken: Wiley.

French, J. R. P. Jr. (1956). A formal theory of social power. The Psychological Review, 63(3), 181–194.

French, J. R. P. Jr., & Raven, B. H. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150–167). Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research.

Friedkin, N. E. (1998). A structural theory of social influ-ence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Friedkin, N. E. (1999). Choice shift and group polariza-tion. American Sociological Review, 64(6), 856–875.

Friedkin, N. E. (2001). Norm formation in social influ-ence networks. Social Networks, 23(3), 167–189.

Friedkin, N. E. (2010). The attitude-behavior linkage in behavioral cascades. Social Psychology Quarterly, 73(2), 196–213.

Friedkin, N. E. (2011). A formal theory of reflected appraisals in the evolution of power. Administrative Science Quarterly, 56(4), 501–529.

242 N. E. Friedkin

Kahneman, D., Ritov, I., & Schkade, D. (1999). Economic preferences or attitude expressions? An analysis of dollar responses to public issues. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 19(1), 220–242.

LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 23(1), 155–184.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Loewenstein, G., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C. K., & Welch, N. (2001). Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 267–286.

Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957). The measurement of meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Osgood, C. E., May, W. H., & Miron, M. S. (1975). Cross-cultural universals of affective meaning. Urbana: Uni-versity of Illinois Press.

Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. New York: The Free Press.

Parsons, T. (1971). The system of modern societies. Engle-wood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Slovic, P., Finucane, M., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. D. (2002). The affect heuristic. In T. Gilovich, D. Grif-fin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases (pp. 397–420). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sznajd-Weron, K., & Sznajd, J. (2000). Opinion evolution in closed community. International Journal of Mod-ern Physics C, 11(06), 1157–1165.

Watts, D. J., & Dodds, P. S. (2007). Influentials, networks, and public opinion formation. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(4), 441–458.

Wilson, T. D. (2000). Strangers to ourselves: Discovering the adaptive unconscious. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-versity Press.

Zajonc, R. B. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35(2), 151–175.

Zajonc, R. B. (1998). Emotions. In D. T. Gilbert., S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psy-chology (4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 591–632). New York: Oxford University Press.

Friedkin, N. E., & Johnsen, E. C. (1999). Social influence networks and opinion change. In E. J. Lawler & M. W. Macy (Eds.), Advances in group processes (Vol. 16, pp. 1–29). Greenwich: JAI Press.

Friedkin, N. E., & Johnsen, E. C. (2003). Attitude change, affect control, and expectation states in the formation of influence networks. In S. R. Thye & J. Skvoretz (Eds.), Advances in Group Processes (Vol. 20, pp. 1–29). New York: Elsevier/JAI.

Friedkin, N. E., & Johnsen, E. C. (2011). Social Influence Network Theory: A sociological examination of small group dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Groeber, P., Lorenz, J., & Schweitzer, F. (2014). A micro-foundation of social influence in models of opinion formation. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, forth-coming.

Harary, F. (1959). A criterion for unanimity in French’s theory of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 168–182). Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research.

Harary, F., Norman, R. Z., & Cartwright, D. (1965). Struc-tural models: An introduction to the theory of directed graphs. New York: Wiley.

Hegselmann, R., & Krause, U. (2002). Opinion dynamics and bounded confidence models, analysis, and simula-tion. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simula-tion, 5(3), 1–33.

Janowitz, M. (1975). Sociological theory and social con-trol. American Journal of Sociology, 81(1), 82–108.

Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Psy-chologist, 58(9), 697–720.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Kahneman, D., & Ritov, I. (1994). Determinants of stated willingness to pay for public goods: A study in the headline method. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 9(1), 5–38.

Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1982). Judg-ment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.