The preliminary analysis of emergent social structure in groups

The problem of detecting emergent social structure in small groups is examined in terms of establishing a baseline or expected structure. The standard proposed here is equalitarianism; that is to say, every member is equally likely to interact with every other member. Using information theory, a formal statement of the equalitarian argument is possible. In addition to detecting a deviation by a single group, the structural tendency of several groups assigned to some experimental condition is discussed. This technique is designed for the preliminary analysis of structure; it deals only with the general character of the total structure.The author is indebted to Frank Restle for valuable criticism and comment upon an earlier draft of this paper.This baseline problem is similar to one encountered in studies of group problem solving. Faust [5], Davis [3], and Davis and Restle [4] have proposed the statistical pooling model of Lorge and Solomon [13] as a proper standard against which to compare the group's product in certain cases. (See Restle and Davis [22] for a more extensive theoretical discussion of individual and group problem solving.)