Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The analysis of social situations
- 3 The effect of the situation on behaviour
- 4 Drives and goals
- 5 Rules
- 6 Role-systems
- 7 Repertoire of elements
- 8 Sequences of interaction
- 9 Concepts and cognitive structures
- 10 Environmental setting
- 11 Language and speech
- 12 Stressful situations
- 13 Applications of situational analysis
- 14 Conclusions
- References
- Names index
- Subject index
8 - Sequences of interaction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The analysis of social situations
- 3 The effect of the situation on behaviour
- 4 Drives and goals
- 5 Rules
- 6 Role-systems
- 7 Repertoire of elements
- 8 Sequences of interaction
- 9 Concepts and cognitive structures
- 10 Environmental setting
- 11 Language and speech
- 12 Stressful situations
- 13 Applications of situational analysis
- 14 Conclusions
- References
- Names index
- Subject index
Summary
Introduction
Social psychologists have long been trying to understand the principles underlying sequences of interaction. It has often been assumed that there will be some universal principles, or ‘grammar’, common to all situations, although very little progress has been made so far in finding them. It is fairly obvious that interaction sequences take different forms in different situations, and this is what we shall explore in this chapter. But are they fundamentally different, or are there universal principles underlying these different kinds of sequence, in the way that the same grammar underlies different kinds of conversation? We saw in the last chapter that the repertoire of social acts varies with the situation, and that the repertoire for a situation is functional – it consists of the steps needed to attain the situational goals. A related hypothesis is that the repertoire elements, the steps to the goals, must be used in a special order. It is fairly obvious that the moves made by one person to perform a task must often be in a certain order, though this is not always so: it is true for climbing mountains, or building a house, less true for getting dressed or cooking a meal. What we are saying is that the alternating sequence of moves made by two or more people is similarly ordered.
The most widely used method of studying behaviour sequences is the analysis of transitional probabilities, as developed in ethology.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Situations , pp. 208 - 231Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981