effect of the offset rhetorical reference upon the F groups is to shift them further toward the shoulder of the rhetorical function, thereby increasing the RIA effect. Synthesizing, we arrive at a prediction relating the reference point to polarization by policy side: When heuristic issue substitution results in an offset between the rhetorical and policy references, group polarization will be enhanced on the policy side that does not contain the rhetorical reference and suppressed on the side that does . Formally, we consider a triad whose members have initial policy positions ( x$_{1}$, x$_{2}$, x$_{3}$ ), where x$_{2}$ is intermediate between x$_{1}$ and x$_{3}$ , and rhetorical issue positions ρ$_{j}$ ≡ ρ ( x$_{j}$ ). Denoting the difference Δ ρ$_{ij}$ = ρ$_{j}$ − ρ$_{i}$ , the final group policy x$_{f}$ in the RPM model is given by the weighted average of the pair with the smaller rhetorical distance: where the communication weights ν$_{ij}$ account for the communication rate from j to i . We treat the communication weights using simple topological considerations. Our experiment involved triads in complete and chain networks. In the complete network, all members (“nodes”) could communicate with each other. As we expect that, on average, the communication rates will be the same for all nodes, we set ν$_{ij}$ = 1 / 2 for all dyads in the complete network. In the chain, the ends of the chain, x$_{1}$ and x$_{3}$ , could only communicate with the center node whereas the center node, x$_{2}$ , could communicate with both ends (separately or simultaneously). If the sequence in which messages are sent follows the chain path and the center node always sends its messages to both outer nodes, then we expect node 2 to have twice the communication rate with each of nodes 1 and 3. We therefore set ν$_{12}$ = ν$_{32}$ = 1 and ν$_{21}$ = ν$_{23}$ = 1 / 2. 4 These 18 x$_{f}$ =      ( ν$_{12}$x$_{2}$ + ν$_{21}$x$_{1}$ ) / ( ν$_{12}$ + ν$_{21}$ ) , | Δ ρ$_{12}$ | ≤ | Δ ρ$_{32}$ | ( ν$_{32}$x$_{2}$ + ν$_{23}$x$_{3}$ ) / ( ν$_{32}$ + ν$_{23}$ ) , | Δ ρ$_{12}$ | > | Δ ρ$_{32}$ | , (2)