Leadership and Group Geography

Although many discussions of leadership use spatial coordinates such as central figure, dominant position, upper echelon, or high status, there has been very little study of the way that people in groups arrange themselves. We lack information as to whether there are geographic analogs to such concepts as social distance, inner circle, and isolate. In spite of Sputnik, many social scientists still take space for granted as a variable in small group research. There has been far more study of group size, type of leadership, and various personality traits as they affect group interaction than of the way people in groups arrange themselves. This neglect is surprising since the location of people is one of the key variables in any type of social intercourse. Often patterns of interaction can be predicted without error from knowing where people sit, especially on buses, trains, and airplanes, or at banquets, lectures, and concerts. The few controlled studies of the effects of the physical arrangement of a group have usually involved post-hoc consideration of data collected for other purposes. Steinzor (9) reanalyzed his data from a previous study of small group discussions and concluded that people were more apt to interact with those sitting opposite them than with people at their sides. Several years later Bass and Klubeck (1) examined the records of group discussions they had available in order to learn the effect of seating position on leadership. Hearn (5) examined the data from his study of the training of discussion leaders and concluded that Steinzor's results occurred only when a group contained a strong leader. These studies, all based on data collected for other purposes, appear to be the only experimental investigations of the physical arrangements of groups. Fortunately, social scientists have provided many important clues from their observational studies. Whyte (10) describes how members of adolescent gangs gathered around their leader in a cafeteria and a bowling alley. Hall (3) provides a perceptive account of the way people in different cultures use space, pointing out, for example, that in Latin America the interaction distance is much less than in the United States. Simmel (7) describes how an insult to a person's honor is called coming too close and speaks of an ideal sphere of space surrounding each person. Groups with several status levels are usually described as having a leader occupying the head position, flanked by lieutenants who are followed