Social: Social Cognition and Teamwork - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 234

Table 8.2 Social distance measures from Ethington ( 1997 )

Distance Bogardus (1925) Bogardus ( 1933 - 1967 )

''Would willingly admit
members of each race…''

1. To close kinship by marriage Would marry

2. To my club as personal chums Would have as regular friends

3. To my street as neighbors Would work beside in an office

4. To employment in my occupation

in my country

Would have several families in my neighborhood

5. To citizenship in my country Would have merely as speaking acquaintances
6. As visitors only in my country Would have live outside my neighborhood
7. Would exclude from my country Would have live outside my country
His work looked at race using scales developed by Bogardus ( 1933 ) and later works cited by
Ethington, but it can also be applied to other social groups

''[s]imilarity on attributes such as attitudes, values, and beliefs will facilitate
interpersonal attraction and liking.'' (p. 31), which will lead to more cohesion and
integration within a team and hence to better teamwork performance. They note
that diversity can help if it is task relevant, pointing out that ''underlying differ-
ences, such as differences in functional background, education, or personality, are
more often positively related to performance—for example by facilitating crea-
tivity or group problem solving—but only when the group process is carefully
controlled.''
The composition of a team will inevitably change over time as people change
positions within the organization, change roles, or even move to other employ-
ment. Studies suggest that group performance and cohesiveness correlate more
strongly with similarities in attitudes and values than with phenological charac-
teristics (Terborg et al. 1976 ; Turban and Jones 1988 ), and that negative outcomes
associated with surface-level diversity—ethnicity, social status, and so on—
decrease the longer a team remains together (Milliken and Martins 1996 ).
These findings highlight how important organizational continuity is to organi-
zational functioning. Large turnovers in personnel lead to a drop in overall group
functioning as the members of the new team take time to acquire new deep
knowledge about one another (Carley 1992 ; Carley and Hill 2001 ).

8.3.5 Social Distance

Social distance, a concept introduced by Park ( 1924 ), refers to the distance in
social terms between two groups or between people. You may find it helpful to
think of it in terms of a sense of belonging to a team. The scales for measuring
social distance, such as Bogardus' ( 1933 ) social distance scale for race, and Westie
and Westie's ( 1956 ) social distance pyramid for caste and class, are somewhat
informal. Table 8.2 shows an example of social distance measures. The table