Examining Status and Power Processes in Virtual Environments
Abstract
This project supports the purchase and installation of virtual reality (VR) equipment to update and upgrade the small groups laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The laboratory was constructed in 1994 and is used to study interaction processes, particularly interaction in task groups that are structured along dimensions including performance skill, status, authority, and power differences. The laboratory uses computers and video to control interaction to test predictions from formal theories, often theories involving status and other forms of inequality structures. VR equipment will bring the laboratory to present-day state of the art and transform it into the front rank of small groups laboratories in the world. VR presents two main advances that make possible the study of research questions that have been inaccessible. First, controlled VR interaction will be much more immersive and involving than interaction controlled by video and computer as presently in use in most laboratories. This means that VR research will exclude most extraneous factors that can affect interaction, including random interpretations, fatigue, and varying attention to the independent variables in a study. Excluding extraneous variables means that VR experiments can be used to assess very precise theoretical predictions and predictions for unusual settings that have been difficult or impossible to study using video equipment. Second, VR equipment can record predicted behaviors that have been difficult or impossible to study with existing equipment. These include eye contact, speech loudness, and gestures, all of which are thought to be directly related to an individualÕs status position. At present, study of such variables must rely on coders using videos of interaction, and that approach suffers from problems of blocked vision and low intercoder reliabilities. Initial research using VR equipment will assess predictions from a general theory of the behavior of status cues, which are information that interactants use to infer status positions of each other and which also vary with an interactantÕs position in a task group. A large body of literature in social psychologyÑmostly observational and atheoreticalÑposits that individuals in task situations quickly assess the power and prestige positions of themselves and others using a variety of status cues, and those assessments then structure their future interaction. A second body of literature, also largely atheoretical, has observed that people in different status positions emit different kinds and levels of status cues. Recently, formal theories have been developed to account for these phenomena, but testing those theories requires precisely controlling structuring information and precisely measuring behavior, both of which are beyond the capabilities of video equipment. Confirming theoretical understanding of status cues will open new possibilities for, among other things, using cues to augment status structures and strengthen authority, or, in other cases, to promote greater equality in interaction. One use of augmenting authority might be found in organizations, especially those where quick action or large-scale coordination is important. Reducing inequality might be desirable in cases where a status disadvantageÑgender, say, or youthÑmust be overcome to promote greater inputs of group members. Understanding status cues also may be valuable for assessing the structures of groups that are only observed non-reactively; for instance, at a distance. VR equipment supported by this grant is modular, so it can be expanded for studying groups of larger sizes, and as improved equipment becomes available, the laboratory facilities can be updated. This equipment will be state of the art in studying small group interaction, and the modular structure of the equipment means that it can be kept at state of the art well into the future.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Feb 14, 2019
- Source ID
- W911NF1910042
Entities
People
- Joseph Dippong
Organizations
- Army Contracting Command
- United States Army
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill