Group Power and Social Reinforcement

Abstract

If Skinner (3) is correct in asserting that human behavior is controlled by reinforcement, then group behavior may also be so controlled. The most powerful members of the group conceivably would be those who share the most positive reinforcement. Although the existence of group reinforcement has been inferred, most recently by Doreian ( 1) and Gray, Broembsen, Kowalczyk, and Williams (2), no one has yet attempted to measure it directly. The Cumulative Operants Record was devised by having raters score each incident, sent or received, of agreement or approval in a meeting as positive reinforcement, +I, and each expression of disagreement or disapproval as negative reinforcement, -1. Reinforcement sent was counted kause the expression I agree not only reinforces the receiver, but also implies that the sender has just heard something pleasing (hence, reinforcing) to himself. A group member's reinforcement scores from interaction with all other group members (including those not voting) were summed algebraically to create a Power Index score. After three training sessions2 of 2 hr. each the average reliability of four raters was .912 for the index. Five public meetings of the Kent; Ohio city council and one undergraduate class simulation of a city council meeting were scored. Each meeting lasted 1Y2 to 2Y2 hr., and had 6 to 9 voting members present. A Power Index for each participant in each meeting was calculated. During the five meetings, a total of nine non-unanimous votes were taken. The Power Indexes of the persons on the majority of each vote (winners) were compared with the scores of those on the minority side (losers). It was expected that the winners would have significantly higher Power Indexes than the losers. The data confirmed the prediction. The 52 winners had a cumulative net Power Index of 155 while the 21 losers had a Power Index of 0 (x2 = 51.2, p < .001). The means and standard deviations of the nine group votes were, respectively, 0 and 12.3 for the losers and 17.2 and 27.2 for the winners. The range of the losers' scores was -3 to 27 and for the winners -13 to 74. These findings suggest that the dirm record of reinforcement is a convenient and reliable measure of at least one important type of group power. Because the Cumulative Operants Record can be used in field studies, it has utility.