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Bobby Kennedy bending President John F. Kennedy's ear during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Brian Mulroney advising Belinda Stronach to get into politics. Dick Cheney nudging U.S. President George W. Bush toward war with Iraq.

Svengalis and kingmakers are often suspected of changing the face of history from the wings.

Now, a group of researchers have started to unlock the mechanics of this kind of social influence.

In a new study, they shed light not just on how world leaders or celebrities think, but how we all do.

So, who's making up your mind?

Repeated exposure to one person's viewpoint can have almost as much influence as exposure to shared opinions from many people, according to the new research, published in this month's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and released Sunday by the American Psychological Association.

In a vacuum, familiarity seems like popularity, the researchers found.

This means that the more times an opinion is heard, the more comfortable the recipient will become with it.

In some cases, the study said, that can give a listener a false sense that the opinion is more widespread than it actually is.

From college students gauging their peers' views on alcohol to citizens wondering how scared others are about terrorism, "our estimates of group opinion affect not only the decisions we make on behalf of groups, but also our perceptions of reality," writes the study's lead author, Kimberlee Weaver of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

While there are many implications for the worlds of politics and media - consider the popularity of television commentators such as Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart to sway public opinion - some experts say this study illuminates many behaviours that happen right at home.

Montreal couples therapist Vikki Stark says this dynamic manifests itself frequently within couples - often perniciously.

"There's no question: If one person holds strong categorical opinions, described as the truth, and the other person admires him or her, it's so easy to fall into letting one person be the arbiter of what's right and what's wrong," she says. The social influence study included 1,044 students from the University of Michigan, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Princeton, Rutgers, Harvard and the University of Toledo, divided into three kinds of groups.

The researchers first set up control groups in which participants each read opinion statements to the others.

In another setup, called a "repeated opinion" group, the same opinions were read but all were attributed to a single group member.

In a third group, the "single opinion" group, members read a single opinion statement from one group member.

Issues discussed included the preservation of open space in New Jersey, the recruitment of a new CEO for Napster and political parties' reproductive-rights policies.

The research found that group members were most likely to assume an opinion was shared by the majority when it was expressed by multiple group members. But when members heard one person express the same opinion over and over, the repetition had nearly the same effect.

At home, Ms. Stark says, decisions as simple as buying a car or choosing a vacation destination can become tests of whose opinions really matter most.

If one person is saying, "It's ridiculous to vacation by the sea. People who go to the sea are idiots," it can not only affect decision-making in the household, but erode the relationship itself.

Although Ms. Stark says she has seen this influencer-influenced relationship work fine for some couples, it can be a clue that all is not well.

Before it gets to a breaking point, she finds herself reminding the more passive partner, most often the woman, not to lose herself in her husband's opinions.

While you may be exposed to other people's opinions at work or among friends, she says, "they don't have the intensity of the person you live with."

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Some noted advisers may have known the power of social influence all along

While John Lennon and Yoko Ono for years battled the rumour that Ms. Ono broke up the Beatles, she no doubt influenced his post-Beatles work, often for the worse, according to critics. "On his own, Mr. Lennon's solo albums sometimes reached real eloquence (above all, Imagine). But too often he degenerated into self-indulgent howling - frequently abetted by his wife, the Japanese-born conceptual artist Yoko Ono," wrote a critic in The New York Times in 1980.

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The late Earl Woods is one of many parents whose influence on their children's careers runs deep. The man who was behind every step of Tiger Woods's golf fame reportedly gave his golf pro son the nickname Tiger when he was only one day old.

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The close relationship between Vice-President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush has been credited with (or blamed for) speeding the country's decision to invade Iraq, among other policies. It's also been described as a ventriloquist-puppet arrangement. In 2003, New York Times columnist Bill Keller quoted journalist Lou Cannon explaining what it was about leaders such as Mr. Bush that allowed strong characters to influence them: "They don't have a huge ego, and that enables you to get really strong people around you. ... If Cheney or Rumsfeld gets credit, that's fine with him."

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In the last months of her life, the late Anna Nicole Smith was rarely seen without her attorney, Howard K. Stern, who appeared to wield considerable influence on the celebrity, even after her death. He was listed, erroneously, on her baby daughter's birth certificate. He was the executor of her will and did battle with her family members over funeral arrangements.