Adolescence is a critical stage in the development of attitudes and behaviors, and peers play a crucial role in it. I will present a project in which we aim to identify the most influential adolescents in schools who could spread attitudes and behaviors among their peers. In a series of studies, we (1) distinguished and contrasted different forms of peer influence; (2) investigated different mechanisms underlying social influence; and (3) examined whether a potential indicator of social influence identified individuals who were especially effective in spreading attitudes and behaviors. Social influence in schools is a complex process that can be addressed with network science, such as stochastic actor-oriented modeling. We conducted an empirical investigation of our models, which were subsequently used in empirically anchored agent-based simulations. In simulations, adolescents who were popular in terms of being frequently selected as friends were particularly effective in spreading attitudes and behaviors in their schools. These adolescents are preliminarily considered ideal candidates to be targeted in school interventions.
