Group Cohesiveness

The extension’ of explanatory principles derived from the controlled environments characteristic of laboratory experimentation to natural environments, which at best allow for a minimal degree of control, is cited frequently (e.g., Bickman and Henchy, ’1972) as an objective of behavioral science research. The intent of this paper is to illustrate by example how the concept of group cohesiveness, which has largely been developed and utilized in laboratory experimentation, can serve both a predictory and an explanatory function in field studies. There is a considerable amount of work describing the effects of the level of group cohesiveness on the willingness of group members to adopt various innovations (see Havelock, 1971), but there have been relatively few attempts to extend or test, in actual field or natural experiments, the hypotheses derived either from laboratory experiments or field surveys.