The measurement of interpersonal interactions with continuous spatiotemporal data: Application to a study of the effects
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The measurement of interpersonal interactions with continuous spatiotemporal data: Application to a study of the effects of resource competition on racial group interactions John Tawa 1 & Rosalyn Negrón 2 & Jürgen Pfeffer 3
# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2019
Abstract We describe a sequential qualitative ➔ quantitative mixed-method procedure used to construct conceptually grounded quantitative metrics of interpersonal behavior from continuous spatiotemporal data. Metrics were developed from data collected during an experiment in which racially diverse participants interacted with self-resembling avatars at social events hosted in the virtual world Second Life. In the qualitative stage, the researchers conceptualized four distinct patterns of movement from overhead video recreations of participants interacting during the social events. In the quantitative stage, these patterns of movement were operationalized into metrics to reflect each type of observed interpersonal behavior. The metrics were normalized through a series of transformations, and construct validity was assessed through correlations with self-report measures of intergroup behavior. Finally, the metrics were applied to an analysis of the virtual-world study examining the influence of resource competition on racial group interactions. The findings contribute to our understanding of the influence of resource competition on Blacks’, Asians’, and Whites’ group dynamics. Applications of these metrics for the future of the psychological study of interpersonal behavior are discussed. Keywords Dynamic spatiotemporal data . Group dynamics . Race . Mixed methods
The American Psychological Association (APA) declared the first decade of the 21st century as the “decade of behavior,” a response to the recognition that research examining actual behavior—in lieu of self-report behavior—had declined dramatically since the 1970s. Within intergroup psychology, studies examining groups of people interacting in real time have declined considerably, once exemplified by studies such as Muzafer Sherif’s Robber’s Cave experiment and Philip
The authors would like to thank the following people: Fred Morstatter for his assistance in creating the short video re-creations of the virtual social events; Marcos Anello for development of the data collection script within Second Life; and Alison Leung for her graphic design in Figure 1. Questions and comments concerning this article should be addressed to the first author, John Tawa, at [email protected]. * John Tawa [email protected] 1
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, USA
2
University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA
3
Bavarian School of Public Policy, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison study. A review of the literature within social psychology suggests that as a discipline, we have not adequately responded to APA’s call (Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder, 2007). New technological developments might help fill this void, and in particular, might enable a breadth of research linkin
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