Leadership and Crises Hamblin, Robert L.
Sociometry,
12/1958, Volume:
21, Issue:
4
Journal Article
A report on a laboratory investigation of 2 hyp's about leadership during crises. Crisis is defined as an urgent situation in which all members face a common threat. Leadership is here defined in ...terms of situational variables rather than traits of the leader as heretofore thought of. However, since there are in the observational technique of what the leader does, many degrees of leadership, this study investigates the substantive or task leadership. The experiment involves the before-after observations of 12 3-person groups in crisis situation & a like number in control groups. Crisis was produced by changing the rules of the game. A given member's influence ratio or acceptance ratio represented his score by number of influence suggestions measures. The result of the number of accepted suggestions study shows: (1) high influencers have more influence during crises than during periods of noncrises; (2) replacement of the old leader for a new one took place at about the 4th period of the 6 tasks if the old leader did not provide obvious solutions to the crisis problem. These findings are at variance with those of Mills & Simmel; they do not show that in a 3-person group a development of 2 & an isolate is formed, or a tertius gaudens. The findings support both hyp's: (a) leaders have more influence in crises than in noncrises periods; & (b) groups tend to replace their old leader with a new leader if the old leader has no obvious solution to a crisis problem. A. L. Rosenblum.
This experiment was designed to assess the effects of peer tutoring and token reinforcement on the rate of learning to read. The children read i. t. a. materials 10 minutes a day with a teacher and ...learned symbols and words on a Language Master 10 minutes a day with a peer or an adult tutor. Tokens and material backups were earned by attending or by learning symbols and words. The results show that peer tutoring (versus adult tutoring) and tokens for reading (versus tokens for attendance) did substantially and significantly improve the rate at which the children learned to read. The effects were additive.
Arms Races: A Test of Two Models Hamblin, Robert L.; Hout, Michael; Jerry L. L. Miller ...
American sociological review,
04/1977, Volume:
42, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This is an investigation of two models of arms races: Lewis F. Richardson's linear, additive, symmetric model and a curvilinear, asymmetric alternative based on the same interaction paradigm but with ...empirical equations from psychophysical experiments on perception as premises. Two hypotheses derived from each model are tested using data from seven arms races. In general, the data give stronger support to the curvilinear, asymmetric model which predicts the follower in the arms race will increase its armaments through time as an exponential function of the leader's armaments, and the leader will increase its armaments as a power function of the follower's efforts at the previous time period. The conclusions are based on the relative fit of the models to the seven sets of data, parsimony, reasonableness of the parameter estimates as adjudged by their signs and magnitudes, and predictions about the outcomes of the races--war or armed truce.
This is the first of a number of investigations of the socio-economic basis of politics, with a special focus on voting for the radical left or right. In this case, the voting data are the percentage ...of votes cast for Allende, the socialist candidate in the 1952 presidential elections in Chile.
Cultural diffusion occurs as a logistic process and the dependent variables in this investigation are origin, rate and asymptotes from logistic equations which were fitted by Zvi Griliches to ...through-time data on the adoption of hybrid corn in each of 132 crop-reporting districts. In multiplicative power functions measures, actual reinforcement to farmers explained 57 percent of the variance in the rate of adoption, expected reinforcement to farmers explained 59 percent of the variance in the asymptotes of the logistic processes and expected reinforcement to developers explained 91 percent of the variance in the origins. This is evidence for the possible importance of reinforcement in explaining variations in macro social change processes.
The basic hypothesis tested is that the 'husband-dominated' family becomes more equalitarian as a result of the wife's employment outside the home. Power is defined as the share group members have in ...originating group policy. Ex post facto testing was done by means of questionnaires containing scale items & other questions. A sample was chosen according to the criteria: (1) half of the wives were employed full-time outside of the home; the remainder were housewives, (2) length of marriage ranged from 1 to 6 yrs, & (3) wives were in their present role at least a yr. Certain control variables showed consistent association with dependent variables. Application of these controls to the sample resulted in the sample employed in this study - 160 couples. Trained upper division students administered the questionnaires in their home towns, primarily in the state of Michigan. If relative power varies with control over the flow of resources into the group, these hyp's should follow: (a) on the average, working wives (WW's) change toward equalitarian authority expectations more than do housewives, & (b) on the average, husbands of WW's change toward equalitarian authority expectations more than do husbands of housewives. Spouses replied to a Guttman-type Marital Authority Expectations Scale (CofR = .91) in terms of their present reaction & their reaction before `going with' their spouse. WW's changed more often toward equalitarian authority expectations, housewives toward traditional authority expectations (Coefficient of Differentiation: 20%; Marshall's C: 2.93; p less than .005). No statistically signif diff's were observed between the respective husbands. The next set of hyp's stems from the theory that power varies with control (the relative ability of group members to sanction one another). If the theory holds, so would the hyp: on the average, WW have a larger % of adopted suggestions than do housewives. Analysis of 30 questions designed to discover who made given suggestions did not show signif diff's between WW's & housewives. The final hypothesis stated: husbands of WW's on the average, do a greater proportion of housework than husbands of housewives. The hypothesis was verified, not only for the proportion of work (Coefficient of Differentiation: 32%; Marshall's C: 4.06; p less than .001) but also for the amount of work. Conclusions are offered that the power structure of both types of families seems remarkably equalitarian. The family should be viewed as a primary group governed by moral imperatives which may render inappropriate some theories derived from the analysis of large scale soc org's. G. A. Hillery, Jr.
A reanalysis of data from a recent article in this journal on deviant females provides a reinterpretation of their self-destructive behavior. The more elaborate path analysis presented fails to ...support the dominant psychiatric theory that reactive depression leads to suicide attempts and ultimately suicide. In interpreting the paths, depression is reconceptualized as a defense mechanism inhibiting suicide for a female who has a history of a deviant career pattern. Secondly, the contention that suicide attempts are self-therapy is clarified by introducing the concept pseudocide, with no implication that pseudocides eventually lead to suicides. Finally, the path analysis suggests that female suicide is primarily attributable to weak defenses, those of a female who has evidently pursued a straight career pattern.
