The influence of social networks tie strength and authority on attitudes: The case of attitudes toward delayed retirement

Social networks can influence people's attitudes toward social issues. The current research examined how online and offline tie strength and alter authority shape egos' attitudes toward delayed retirement across two studies. In Study 1, each ego nominated eight alters from their own social network, and we used a questionnaire survey to assess ego–alter attitudinal consistency. In Study 2, a between‐subjects experiment was conducted to test the causal effects of tie strength and alter authority on individuals' immediate attitudes toward delayed retirement. Results showed that egos' existing attitudes were more consistent with those of alters with strong offline ties. In addition, online tie strength influenced immediate attitude change in the online exposure context, with the online tie effect most evident when offline ties were weak.