When will they ever make up their minds? The social structure of unstable decision making

French (1977), Harary (1959), and Abelson (1964) initiated a prominent line of social influence models to explain social norms or collective decisions from the structure of influence networks. These models fail to generate unstable decision dynamics, a phenomenon that can be observed in collective decision-making. To capture instability, we assume that decision-makers raise their level of salience to reduce expected losses from decision-outcomes. Our model generates persistently unstable outcome patterns under conditions related to the social network and to intolerance for expected losses, A 6-actor example reveals stable out-comes for low intolerance, complex oscillations for intermediate levels of intolerance, and simple and regular oscillation for high intolerance. We discuss implications for the predictability of collective decision-making.