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I would direct your attention to a study by Visser and Mirabile in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2004. The abstract and
full reference are available by clicking on the following link:

http://content2.apa.org/journals/psp/87/6/779

Quoting from the procedural overview of Study 1 (p. 781):

"...we invited groups of 6 participants into the lab ostensibly to take
part in a study on group interactions. Participants were stationed in
individual cubicles... In fact, all participants interacted with a
computer program designed to simulate responses from the other
participants... Participants were randomly assigned to attitudinally
congruous social networks (in which all network members held attitudes
that were congruent with the participants') or to attitudinally
heterogeneous networks (in which network members held a range of
attitudes, some of which were congruent with and others discrepant from
participants' attitudes). We then assessed the impact of network
composition on attitude change when participants were presented
individually with a counterattitudinal persuasive message later in the
study."

Alan Reifman

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