Further Studies of Small Group Ecology

Abstract

To learn how groups arrange themselves, pairs of students were observed in a cafeteria where interaction was encouraged and in a library where interaction was discouraged. In the former situation, people chose to sit across from one another while in the library people chose a distant seating pattern. Several paper-and-pencil instruments were used to gauge seating preference in casual, cooperating, competing, and co-acting groups. In general, casual groups prefer corner seating, cooperating groups to sit side-by-side, co-acting in a distant arrangement, and competing groups opposite one another. The role of eye contact in regulating spatial arrangements of small groups is discussed.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 109 citations exist upstream.