Social power and communication in small groups

Abstract

“Social Power” was defined and manipulated, in the context of 5-person interactim, as the conditional probability that a communicative act would succeed once it had been initiated. Five subjects sent content-free signals to each other, which they were instructed to accumulate for an eventual payoff of 1 cent per signal received. The only way a subject could control his receipts was by varying his own sending behavior. Unknown to the subjects, the probability (π) that their signals would reach their intended target was controlled by the experimenter. Ten different patterns of π values in five person groups were studied: .3.5.5.5.7, .3.4.5.6.7, .3.3.5.7.7, .1.5.5.5.9, .1.3.5.7.9, .1.1.1.1.5, .1.5.5.5.5, .5.5.5.5.9, 5.9.9.9.9. These patterns provided variations in average group power (π) and variance of group power (σπ2). The results showed that a subject's receipts depended in a simple linear manner in his own π value relative to π. If an individual's share of the receipts is designated P and there are N individuals in the group then the equation P = (1/N) + b(N - 2/N - 1) (π - π) provided a reasonable fit to the receipt data. This result follows from the more molecular assumption that each individual asymptotically sends signals to another with a probability that depends linearly on the other's relative power position among the possible targets. If Pij is the probability that i sends to j and πi is the mean power of subjects other than i in the group, then Pij = (1/N - 1) + b(πj - πi). The degree of differentiation in receipts in a group thus depends on the slope b; here b = .169 provided the best fit to the individual sending proportions. The value (N - 2/N - 1)b = .126 for receipt data was compared with a slope of .284 found in a previous study with three person groups, supporting a conjecture that differentiation would decline with size of the group.