Year: 1964
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Chapter V.Analysis of Data and Acceptance or Rejection of the Hypotheses 53 V.l.Introduction 53 V.2.The cohesion levels in the experimental groups. . .53 V.3.Agreement as to reasons for group membership as a function of group cohesion 54 VI V.4.Agreement as to the tasks of the group as a function of group cohesion 57 V.5.Level of communication as a function of group cohesion 58 V.6.Adhesion and being communicated to 61 V.7.Adhesion and the amount of communication received from fellow adhesive group members 63 V.8.Mutuality of interpersonal evaluation as a function of group cohesion 63 V.9.Adhesion and preference for fellow adhesive group members 65 V.10.Group cohesion and members' agreement as to the group's status hierarchy 66 V.ll.Accuracy in predicting own status in the group as a function of group cohesion 68 V.12.The relationships between high-evaluation and/or rejection of fellow members and group cohesion. . .69 V.13.Centralization of group structure as a function of group cohesion 71 V.14.The relationship between clique formation and group cohesion 72 V.15.Summary 74 Chapter VI. Discussion and Summary: the Nature of the Cohesive Group 76 VI.l.Introduction 76 VI.2.Summary of the development of a test of cohesion . .76 VI.3.Festinger's cohesive group 79 VI.4.Conformity, deviation and agreement 80 VI.5.Adhesion hypotheses : communication to adhesive subjects 81 VI.6.Communication among adhesive subjects 82 VI.7.Choice between adhesive subjects 83 VI.8.Cohesion hypotheses: reasons for group membership .84 VI.9.Agreement as to the relative importance of various tasks to the group 84 VI. 10.The communication level in cohesive groups .... 85 VI.ll.Mutuality of evaluation in cohesive groups 85 VI. 12. Agreement as to the groups' hierarchical structures 86 VI. 13.Cohesive groups' subjects' accuracy in estimating their positions in the group 87 VI. 14. Acceptance and rejection of fellow group members .88 VI. 15.Centralization of group structure 88 VI. 16.Cliques and cohesive groups 88 VI. 17.The cohesive group : summary of conclusions .... 89 VII Samenvatting 91 Zusammenfassung 93 Appendix I. Cohesion questionnaire 95 II.Cohesion test scores in the pilot study 100 III.Reasons for desiring membership in a group .... 101 IV.Grouptasks 102 V.Illustration of the communication measure 104 VI.Cohesion test scores in the experiment proper. . . .105 VII.Data from subjects' rankings of the reasons for group membership 106 VIII.Data from subjects' rankings of group tasks .... Ill IX.Communication data 114 X.Data from mutual sociometrie evaluations of interper sonal dyads 119 XI.Subjects' status scores in the groups 128 Bibliography 133 Ш 1 Numbers in parentheses refer to citation which may be found in the bibliography.1 (35, 1) type experiment concerned with so-called "gr ou P norms".In the classical Sherif experimental situation the subject's estimate of the distance that a point of light in a darkened room appears to move is recorded under two separate conditions: 1) with the subject in the darkened room alone, and 2) with the subject in the company of other subjects who also render their estimations of the amount of apparent movement in such a manner as to be known to the first subject.These other "subjects" are usually in the confidence of the experimenter and paid to render certain pre-experimentally determined "estimations".The almost universally observed result of these experiments is that the judgment of the bona fide subject when alone tends to change in the group condition in the direction of his "fellow subjects" judgment.This effect is then interpreted in terms of the bona fide subject's conforming to a hypothesized "group norm" with regard to how far the point of light moved.As a result of these studies it is probably universally accepted by students of social behavior that the behavior of individuals is affected by interaction with their fellows.The acceptance of the theoretical model of the "group norm" as a convenient way of conceptualizing this problem is widespread.We are as a general rule concerned with attempting to generalize from such restricted and controled experimental situations to what for convenience' sake we may call a "real life" situation.We are concerned with applying our concept of group norm to natural socia] situations for practical as well as theoretical reasons.When we do this a number of additional problems come to light.Let us, for the sake of illustration, dream up such a situation.We will consider the Communist Party as constituting a group and will say that all card-carrying communists are members of this group.Let us then assume further that there exists in the Russian Communist Party a certain opinion (norm) to the effect that Mao Tse-Tung is a "left-deviationist".Now if we were to sample the opinion on this question of 100 Moscovite communists we might find, say, that 90 of them adhered to this "norm" with regard to perceiving Mao as a left-deviationist and that the remaining ten communists were of other mind regarding the question 2 .We might then, at this point, ask a number of questions.If this overwhelming agreement indicates a group norm how can we adequately conceptualize it at the theoretical level, i.e., what is a "norm"?This amounts to asking how the norm came into existence and how it maintains itself.We should perhaps ask the added question of how it came about that ten of our group members don't adhere to the norm.How is this possible?In just what way did they successfully manage to avoid conforming to the norm?It might further occur to us that had we asked the question of another 100 communists, e.g., 100 members of the Communist Central Committee instead of just any 100 communists in Moscow we might well have found this time that 99 observed the norm and only one did not.It is apparent that these sub-groups of communists differ in some way from each other which has some effect upon observation of the norm regarding Mao.To seek meaningful answers to questions of this type we shall have to know more about the type of group in which the norm is extant.2We shall, for the sake of argument, not concern ourselves with the question of whether this is in effect a "norm" as opposed to one-hundred opinions independently arrived at.This question involves us immediately in other questions which are at the present time of more interest to us.We shall beg the question for the purposers of this example and assume that it is a "norm".Theoretical constructs useful in understanding these problems with regard to "norms" represent the principal contributions of Festinger's research program. I. 3. Festinger's research programFestinger's research program falls into two separate parts.The first part was a field study of certain social processes in a housing development at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (11) and the second part was an entire series of integrated experiments designed to test experimentally a number of hypotheses concerning social communication growing out of the former research project (8).In point of fact the theories developed to explain all experimental results in the M.I.T. or Westgate study were developed ad hoc.A number of results were explained, not predicted.These results were for the better part later tested in hypothesis form under laboratory conditions and provided collaborative evidence (8).We shall principally concern ourselves with the former study and in Chapter II consider in lesser detail those parts of the latter program bearing upon our research hypotheses.We shall also take the liberty of presenting the M.I.T. study as if it had been a hypothesis testing experiment, i.e., for clarity of presentation we shall first present the theory and only thereafter the results of interest to us.It seems, however, first of value to describe the research setting, before turning to Festinger for aid in understanding the circumstance described in our fantasized Mao norm problem. I. 4. The sample in the Westgate studyA description of the sample used in these investigations will be only as detailed as we feel to be necessary for the later explanation of results relating to Festinger's theories.A detailed description of the sample can be found elsewhere (11, chapter II), we include only its major characteristics.The sample consisted of 270 families of married graduate students attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology.These students were living in two university housing projects just after the termination of the Second World War.The subjects were characterized by a high degree of uniformity with regard to sociological dimensions (age, class), interests (scientific, industrial), and aspirations.They may be regarded as an exceptionally homogeneous sample with regard to these dimensions."In summary, the people living in these projects were highly homogeneous along the dimensions of occupation, age, class and family background, education, interests, aspirations, and attitudes toward the community in which they lived.They were an older and more mature group than the general run of students at M.I.T.They probably differed from people living in other similar college housing developments in only one way -their interests were much narrower."(11, p. 20).A second point of interest is the housing development's lay out in the two projects and the length of time that the subjects had resided in the projects.The Westgate court project consisted of 100 single-family houses arranged in nine distinct court units in the shape of a U.The Westgate West project consisted of seventeen two story barracks with five separate housing units on each floor.The importance of these differences in structural design is that in Westgate most houses faced other houses in the court and this had a marked effect upon contacts among residents of the individual units.This was not the case in Westgate West where units were arranged in a row on each of the two floors in a given barrack.In as much as w
Author: Gary Moran
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W763193787