Membership, Prototypicality, and Influence in Small Groups

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SES-0853593Barry MarkovskyChristopher BarnumUniversity of South CarolinaThis research studies the joint effects of status and group membership in collective task settings. In these settings, people come together to solve common problems--from policy-setting committees in political parties to informal gatherings such as a group of strangers working to free a stuck car from a snow bank. Frequently there are complexities and ambiguities in the course of reaching collective solutions, and so people in such settings look to one another for guidance. In the absence of more explicit knowledge, it is common for participants in such settings to make inferences about one another's abilities on the basis of observable characteristics. Previous research demonstrates that people use information on group memberships and status characteristics to form expectations for one anothers' task performances. Self categorization theory has focused on the effect that the cognitive aspects of group membership have on interaction, and status characteristics theory has studied how attributes such as age, race, gender and ability effect interaction. Although these theories share some common areas of investigation, to date there has been little overlap between the two. The investigators will conduct a set of experiments to test an integration of the two theories to study the cognitive aspects of group membership and the impact of social characteristics on members' evaluations of one another's task contributions. The experiments will test predictions that influence is enhanced by acting in accord with group prototypes or by being perceived as an in-group member and, further, that such effects can be countervailed by introducing information on certain other social characteristics such as education levels. The research provides stringent tests and crucial data for evaluating the self categorization and status characteristics theories' potential for subsequent applications and interventions. This work builds on a nascent, integrative research program that expands the ranges of applicability of two long-standing theories in sociological social psychology. The research contributes to a new kind of status intervention, contributing to a body of applied research in school settings that has transformed classroom interactions--being an accepted member of a group is what counts most for increased classroom participation and thus learning