Power-at-a-Distance and Power Reversals: Testing New Predictions for Exchange Networks

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This is a study of power in social exchange networks that will test two extensions of Network Exchange Theory (NET) through laboratory experimentation. In the first extension, NET offers predictions for power-at-a-distance, where unlike previous studies power exercise is not limited to immediately adjacent positions, but reaches outward two or three network steps. In the second extension, NET predicts that coalitions which eliminate power under some network conditions will bring power reversals under other conditions. In the research, a system of linked microcomputers called ExNet connects human subjects in experimental networks allowing communications and facilitating resource transactions. The existing versions of ExNet would not permit the intended experiments, so software will be written to add these and other capabilities to ExNet, and the system will be made available to the community of laboratory exchange researchers to facilitate experiments of many kinds. %%% This work is an important step in linking laboratory experimentation on social exchange with phenomena in the real world, most notably because it increases the size and complexity of social network processes that can be studied. These experiments are fundamental research on social-capital aspects of human capital theory, exploring the ways that structural location in a social network can be a vital resource conferring power and thus resources, quite independently of the individual characteristics of the person occupying that location. An extension of one of the most promising lines of work in social-psychological research on group processes, this project will contribute fundamental insights on how the structural properties of social exchange networks influence the fates of human beings.