This report is a consolidation of the knowledge and skills imparted during the 1973-74 Information Management Training Institute sponsored by Tennessee State University, Meharry Medical College, and the Institute for Services to Education, Inc. Section one of the report includes the proceedings from the sessions conducted on data collection,…

Group members tend to like other members of their own group more than members of groups to which they do not belong. This paper focuses on some of the initial determinants of this own-group preference and on the isolation of factors which increase or decrease it. The major finding appears to be that the mere anticipation of cooperation or…

This paper is an analysis of some of the literature concerning group mediated risk taking. Jhangiani explores Brown's V-theory, which states that members of a society try to realize its cultural ideals in their behavior; Nordhoy's theory of cultural values, which states that "In the group, the impact of values which are commonly accepted in the…

The project investigated aspects of group dynamics and group behavior with mentally retarded adolescents, aged 18 to 25 years with a mental age ranging from 3 to 7 years, who worked in citriculture in Israel. The report began with an examination of the peer group principle, its relationship to childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and its…

All human development is social-situational--that is, it is the result of continued interaction between personal maturation and socialization into group life. For most Americans, it is families and schools under whose direct influence a large proportion of preadult life is spent. Within these communities are subgroups based on age, sex,…

Georg Simmel's influence in the area of general theoretical orientations and with respect to research traditions on the stranger and social distance is reviewed. (Author/DE)

(Available from Subscription Section, APA, 1200 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036; $30.00 annually)

The impact of community leadership and attitudes indicated in news coverage on the subject of school integration is discussed as it relates to the flight of white families to the suburbs. (JD)

Examines the rhetoric of "popular" atheists in the U.S. and argues that their rhetoric possesses distinctive features that are the natural results of existential failure. (MH)

This article presents a brief overview of Gestalt theory, the group interventions utilized to experiment with interpersonal contact in a conference workshop along with their theory base, an evaluation of the workshop, and some experimental ideas and recommended activities that group leaders may want to incorporate into similar interpersonal…

Social traps, such as the overgrazing of pasturelands, overpopulation, and the extinction of species, are situations where individuals in a group respond for their own advantage in a manner damaging to the group. Alaboratory analog was devised to simulate conditions that produce social traps. The intent was to cause an immediate positive…

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of varying leader selection systems on the performance of political decision-making groups (judges). The type of leadership choice of the court was the independent variable and degree of dissent the dependent variable. As predicted, merit choice had less dissent. (NG)

A major means by which a culture maintains self-division and violence is abstraction. In the social sciences too, the process of employing abstraction to divorce us from ourselves is becoming increasingly more institutionalized. States that the meanings that emanate from some sectors of psychological research are also not congruent with human…

Investigates how adolescent friendship groups become homogeneous. Analysis of 49 student friendship groups indicates that homophilic selection is most important for group homogeneity, conformity pressures are somewhat important, and disproportionate group leaving contributes nothing to homogeneity. The conclusion is that the magnitude of peer…