Chapter Two. Social Combination Models

2011 ◽  
pp. 8-21
Keyword(s):  
Social Combination

Social Combination Models

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick R. Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Group Process ◽  
Group Performance ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Decision Scheme ◽  
Group Response ◽  
The Social ◽  
Combination Approach ◽  
Social Decision Schemes ◽  
Model Formation ◽  
Social Combination

This chapter studies the historical development of social combination models. The social combination approach assumes that groups combine the group member preferences by some process to formulate a single collective group response. A social decision scheme formalizes any assumption about the group process that assigns probabilities of each group response given each distribution of member preferences. The assumptions may come from the constitutions or bylaws of a group, from previous research, or any other hypothesized group process. Different social decision schemes or social combination models may then be tested competitively against actual group performance as a test of the assumptions formalized by the social decision schemes. Stasser gives an excellent overall presentation of social decision scheme theory, including model formation, model testing, and using the equations for prospective modeling.

scholarly journals State-capitalism and Globalization – a challenge to whom?

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr.Sc. Henrique Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
State Capitalism ◽  
Institutional Economic ◽  
Social Combination

State-capitalism is an economic system in which governments manipulate market outcomes for political purposes. Governments embrace state-capitalism because it serves political as well as economic purposes—not because it’s the most efficient means of generating prosperity. This paper examines the institutional, economic and social combination in which state-capitalism is possible and contributes to prosperity. It is argues that state-capitalism works best under authoritarian rule because there is no constituency to provide for. However, this article also argues that state-capitalism has fundamental flaws

Group Ability Composition on World Knowledge Problems

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick R. Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Group Size ◽  
Group Performance ◽  
Cooperative Groups ◽  
High Ability ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Unique Information ◽  
Intermediate Pattern ◽  
Social Combination ◽  
Low Ability

This chapter examines group ability composition and social combination processes on world knowledge tasks. On difficult world knowledge tasks, high-ability persons performed better in cooperative groups with other high-ability members than they did alone, and this difference increased with group size. In contrast, low-ability persons did not perform better in cooperative groups with other low-ability members than they did alone, and there was little improvement as group size increased. Low-ability members contributed very little unique information to one another and virtually none to high-ability members. Medium-ability members displayed an intermediate pattern that was more like low-ability than high-ability members. Consequently, the performance of groups of mixed high-ability, medium-ability, and low-ability members was basically proportional to the number of high-ability members: the greater the proportion of high-ability members, the better the group performance.

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