Small Group Research

Theories of social interaction focus on attributes of persons, situational expression of these attributes, and relation of personal attributes to those of others in groups. Task groups are the main topic of interest in these studies. This article briefly reviews core ideas of one theory of interaction. This theory emphasizes the relational explanation of organizing interaction. Developments within the theory based on research that is both supportive of it and challenging to it are discussed. The article concludes with a brief overview of other articles in this special issue.

This experiment recreates several features of a hiring decision in a professional field. The authors use ideas from expectation states theory to formulate predictions about the evaluation of applicants in a context where they are assessed one ata time. The variables examined are sex of applicant, sex of assessor, applicant's academic record, and type of decision (whether assignment of ability or allocation of rewards). Results show that academic record had a stronger effect than either sex of assessor or sex of applicant. Effects of the latter variable were noticeable in reward allocation but not in ability assignment, and they were affected by the applicant's record: Rewards showed bias against the female candidate when her record was average but not when it was outstanding. All three findings are in clear support of the proposed hypotheses. Sex-of-assessor differences were observed only in reward allocation, also as predicted, but they did not achieve the expected statistical significance.

Extensive research has explored apparent differences in task group members'preferences for reward allocation. Some seem to prefer distributions based on equity, others a distribution based on equality. At one time, the research strongly suggested that men tended to prefer equity and women tended to prefer equality. However, in recent years that result has only been inconsistently found Using the conceptual tools of Berger, Fisek, Norman, and Wagner's reward expectation theory, an account of differences in reward preferences based on status positions in the group is developed and tested experimentally. Basically, the reward expectation argument is that group members differentiated by status will prefer equity allocations and members equated (or never differentiated) by status will prefer equality allocations. The results strongly support the reward expectation interpretation.

This study addresses the debate regarding the way in which status-ability inconsistency is resolved in task-oriented groups. Most recent research supports the combining principle, according to which actors aggregate performance expectations based on all relevant status and ability information. The research reported here represents an attempt to test the validity of the combining principle in a more interactive context than is the case in the standard experimental design used by expectation states theory. The authors conducted an experimental investigation of the joint effects of differences in gender (male vs. female) and specific task ability (high vs. low) on influence and also examined changes in social influence patterns over time. Overall, although the combining mechanism does not predict the exact ranking of influence among the different conditions, it is supported in that subjects incorporated expectations based on both their ability and gender in making their decisions.

The complex relationship between power and status requires clarification. Why does power seem to confer more status in some situations than in others? Theoretical ideas used to answer this question come from three major areas of social psychology: exchange theories ofpower, the status characteristics and expectation states theoretical research program, and attribution research. Results of an experiment provided partial supportfor the main hypothesis derivedfrom the theory: Differences in status will result consistent with power differences between actors. Power differences produced differences in expectations of ability on selfreport measures but not on a behavioral measure of interpersonal influence. Although knowledge about the power structure was predicted to reduce the status derivedfrom power, no effect of knowledge wasfound. During the experiment, participants'emotional reactions were observed to play a role in the relationship between power and status.

Expectation states theories of status processes have consistently shown that participation and influence patterns in groups are a function of differences in external status characteristics. A branch of this theoretical research program, Status Characteristics Theory (SCT) deals specifically with the processes by which external status characteristics come to determine the allocation of status positions within groups. The authors pose three arguments relevant to this program. First, agreement on thefinal choice is a much more likely outcome than disagreement in situations that meet most of the conditions of the standardized experimental setting, even when the probability of staying with one's own answer given disagreement is highfor group members. Second, agreement is yet more likely to be thefinal outcome in groups that are differentiated on some status characteristic that leads to differential likelihood of staying with one's own initial choice. Third, cooperative allocation of status position is more likely to occur in these groups than competitive position allocation.