集団の体制化に及ぼす課題条件の効果

個々人の活動の関連性の効果について

抄録

Despite the importance of task for leadership and small group analysis, there have not been enough psychological studies on task structure. It seems increasingly clear that task structure is intimately related to the results obtained in many experiments on the interaction process between individuals or leader-follower relations. The task to which group is exposed is defined as the structures of the path the group should follow in reaching the goal.
The purpose of this study was to clarify the effects of the relevance of the individuals' goal-oriented activities upon their organization process.
Six three-person groups were used as subjects in each of Exp. I and Exp. II. All of the subjects were 10 to 11 years old primary school boys.
Relevance was defined as the degree of freedom of each individuals' goal-oriented activities. The degrees of relevance were operationally produced by the two kinds of task. One consisted of “6 questions” (high relevant), and the other consisted of “30 questions” (low relevant). Both of them were similar to the well known game called “twenty questions” which is a very popular radio program.
In these tasks, the importance of one question should be increased as the number of questions allowed are decreased. Particularly, the first 6 questions of the 6 question game are more important than the first 6 questions of the 30 question game. Therefore we compare the group organization process observed during the first 6 questions (decisions) in the 6 question game with that of the 30 question game. And the greater the importance of each question, the greater the restriction of the freedom of the individuals' goal-oriented activities.
Discussion or interaction in each group raised during the first 6 questions (decisions) process under the two task conditions was systematically observed and analysed by categories similar to Bales' interaction process analysis (Table 1).
Each group performed co-operatively two 6 question and two 30 question games alternately.
The main results of our expeiments were as follows:
1. Group-oriented activities, which were made for the purpose of controlling the individuals' goal-oriented activities, were more frequently observed under the 6 question game than the 30 question game (Table 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17), It seemed to be clear that the pressures toward uniformity were stronger under high relevant condition than under low relevant condition.
2. In Exp. I where the subjects were instructed to ask questions in turn, the high relevant task conditon induced more group steering role differentiation than low relevant task conditon, but the degree of group task role differentiation did not differ significantly between the 6 and 30 question games (Table 4, 5).
3. In Exp. II where such instructions as used in Exp. I were not given, the low relevant task condition induced more role (group steering and task role) differentiation than high relevant task condition (Table 12, 13).