Role Differentiation in Small Groups

Bibliographic Data

ID5247126
AuthorsPhilip E Slater (corresponding author)
Year1955
Volume20
Issue3
Pages300
Publication date1955-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-1224 • E-ISSN: 1939-8271
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2087389
OpenAlexW2334834617
LanguageEN
Citations received104

SMALL group research provides a most fruitful meeting-ground for psychological and sociological thinking. Few fields of study lend themselves so easily to this dual perspective. The concept of holds a potentially strategic position in this rapprochement, but its use in empirical studies has thus far left this potentiality unexploited. We might define a role as a more or less coherent and unified system of items of behavior. With even this minimal definition it becomes apparent that role performance in the small group situation will have both consequences which are important to the functioning of the group in which the role is performed and personal consequences of importance to the individual who performs it. Similarly, an individual may be motivated to perform a role both by specific inducements offered by the group and by more general needs operating within the individual himself. The rather general failure to consider simultaneously both of these aspects of role performance has constituted a very real stumbling-block in small group research. This paper will attempt to illustrate the way in which consideration of both psychological and sociological factors may aid in the interpretation of tendencies for members of small experimental groups to behave in systematically differentiated ways. Our research in this area 1 has been centered around five problems

Economic geography · Geography · Political science · Sociology · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Team Dynamics and Performance

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