This paper proposes a central idea in diffusion research is that influential –a minority of individuals who influence an exceptional number of their peers- are important to formation of public opinion. Here we examine this idea, which we call the “influential hypothesis”, using the experiments of Watts-Salganik-Dodds in computer simulation of interpersonal influence processes with the works of Herbert Simon in “Bounded Rationality”. Under most conditions that we consider, we find that large cascades of influence are driven not by influential, but by a critical mass of easily influenced individuals. Although our results do not exclude the possibility that influential can be important, they suggest that the influential hypothesis requires more careful specification and testing than it has received.
