Quantitative Evidence of Students’ Use of Social Networks and Social Categorization When Self-Selecting Teams

Abstract

This article presents two studies aimed at understanding consequences of giving students complete decision-making authority to select team members for a team assignment. Study 1 concludes that students place a high level of importance on cognitively categorizing their classmates as those to approach and avoid when self-selecting teams, and they put forth a good deal of effort to actually approach some classmates and avoid others. The approach category forms for most students as they develop a team assignment social network comprised of classmates who are highly trusted and believed to be high in trustworthiness. Study 2 finds evidence that, in the absence of network members and prior knowledge of each other, students use social cues (style of dress) to cognitively categorize classmates and make inferences about their trustworthiness based on the category in which they are placed. Study 2 also finds that style of dress influences students' trust in their classmates, preference for who they want on their team, and effort they would put forth to approach some classmates and avoid others. Implications and opportunities for future research are discussed.

Conceptualising, Operationalising, and Measuring Trust in Participatory Health Research Networks: a Scoping Review

“…was only discussed in social network focused literature, (32,34,41) while again, O2.8 'power sharing and coownership' was only mentioned in CBPR literature. (43,44) As the rst scoping review exploring all three concepts (trust, CBPR, and social networks) together, this research adds to existing literature in a few key ways.…”

“…"First, initial trust depends on personality; people simply differ in their general disposition to trust/distrust." (32) "If no other situational information is available, one will rely on one's general belief that nonspeci c individuals can be trusted" (32) Legend: ST: Sub-Theme, C(#): Conceptualisation of Trust, Conceptualisation: how does the study de ne trust?…”

“…Indeed, individuals are unique in their disposition to trust, which is in uenced by their personality and their experiences of trust, but also by the context surrounding those individuals such as the structural aspects including institutional barriers, norms and values that surround trust: "First, initial trust depends on personality; people simply differ in their general disposition to trust/distrust." (32) "trust must be understood from the perspective of all parties and within its context " (44) This notion that trust depends on context, was widely discussed across the extracted literature (n = 18), (30, 32-35, 40, 41, 43-47, 49, 51-55) from both CBPR and social network focused studies.…”

“…Speci cally, only social network focused studies appeared to operationalise trust as O2.2 'vulnerability'. (32,34,41) However, a CBPR focused study by West K, (47) did operationalise vulnerability in regards to trustworthiness, but not as trust speci cally. Furthermore, similar to conceptualisation, two CBPR focused references (43,44) operationalised trust as O2.8 'power sharing and co-ownership'.…”

“…(39) "We found that OCBIs and trust transferability had direct relationships with trust (Hypotheses 1 and 4)" (42) Legend "Network members are highly trusted classmates and the ones with whom students actually do or would team up given the opportunity to selfselect their team." (32) "Two ndings stand out: First, the connection between trust and social network is robust to most differences between individuals, especially business and political differences. Trust variance is 60% network context, and 10% individual differences" (33) "As the number of positive relationships between individuals from the community and NGOs increase, a 'web of trust' is developed."…”