Modeling the Effects of Task-external Status in Small, Task- Oriented, Groups

Several papers and one invited talk at UM2003 suggest a growing interest in both user and group models grounded in socialpsychological research. This paper describes a simulation based on the application of a mathematically formulated social-psychological model to small, task-oriented, groups. Also presented is a simple model of influence that captures the phenomenon of “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer”. These models are applied to a set of data collected independently, and for a different purpose, by other researchers. The probability that the observed differences across two experimental conditions involving a task-external status manipulation were due to chance alone is 0.138, suggesting a degree of systematicity to the status effect. The possibility that such a model could be deployed in purpose-driven decentralized group modeling is briefly considered.