Modifying the Effects of

Social Structure

ELIZABETH G. COHEN
Stanford University

The problem of racial inequality has been the focus of a large

number of investigations in recent years. The imbalance evident
at the societal level is reflected at all levels from the
institutional to the interpersonal. Numerous studies document
inequality in desegregated schools where white children tend to
receive better grades, are better &dquo;adjusted to school,&dquo; and
typically complete more years of formal schooling than do
black children. At the small-group level, behavioral measures of
interaction and influence reveal patterns of white dominance in
problem-solving groups (Katz et al., 1958; Cohen, 1972). It
would be possible to document this imbalance in an almost
limitless variety of settings.
The applied social psychologist is, however, more interested
in modifying social behavior and altering the social structures in
which social behavior originates. A common goal of those
concerned with interracial relations is the realization of truly
integrated schools where prejudice and stereotyping will weaken
as blacks and whites interact with one another. To this end, the
social psychologist directs his response toward the production
of equal status relations among students.

AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, Vol. 16 No. 6, July/August 1973

@ 1973 Sage Publications, I nc.
[861]
[862]

Toward this end, this paper will discuss two major questions:
(1) how can the effects of interracial imbalance in the status
order be modified; and (2) how can the structure of the school
be altered so that it will foster and reinforce equal status
behavior? The need for answers to these questions is critical.
Simple desegregation has not produced the changes in racial
relations, academic performance, and self-esteem of blacks that
we anticipated. To the contrary, there is evidence that such
efforts intensify the dominance of whites and strengthen
stereotypical beliefs (Seidner, 1971 ).
In the typical desegregated school, the phenomenon of white
domination is compounded by the competitive norms of the
classroom; those who enter the school with an academic
disadvantage are made to feel generally incompetent across
school tasks. There is considerable evidence that blacks in
segregated schools have higher self-esteem than blacks in
integrated schools (Rosenberg and Simmons, 1971: 24-25).
Black students may well suffer a decline in academic self-
concept as they experience unfavorable comparisons taking
place in the competitive system of the classroom, with its
emphasis on individual accountability. It is clear that the school
environment as it is now structured inhibits the development
and maintenance of the desired outcomes.
The following analysis of these problems is presented in five
parts. The first section describes the phenomenon of interracial
interaction disability as observed in a tightly controlled labo-
ratory setting and includes a brief presentation of the theo-
retical framework which explains it. The second section reports
two attempts to modify racial imbalance. The third section
explicates how the research was translated from the laboratory
to a field setting. This stage of the research involved the design
of an experimental summer school by means of a theoretical
analysis and the previous basic experiments. The fourth section
reports on the experimental school itself. A comparison of two
treatments occurring within the structure of a cooperative
setting is analyzed briefly. Finally, we summarize what has been
learned about the modification of expectations and the redesign
 [863]

of schools necessary to support equal status behavior. An

outline of future work and a brief discussion of the problem of
improving academic performance concludes this section.

INTERRACIAL INTERACTION DISABILITY

Baseline data illustrating interracial interaction imbalance was

collected on nineteen four-person groups. Two black and two
white junior high school boys played a game requiring them to
make decisions as a team. Results of our behavioral measures
revealed that whites had higher initiation rates and were more
influential than blacks (Cohen, 1972). The players had no basis
for expecting special competence on the game from previous
knowledge of the task, from knowledge of each other, or from
perceived relevance of the task to school performance. Yet, in
fourteen of the nineteen groups, a white boy had the highest
initiation rate, and, in thirteen of the groups, a black had the
lowest rate.
The game, especially designed as a criterion task for these
studies, is called &dquo;Kill the Bull.&dquo; The group is required to make
repeated decisions on a direction of travel on the board; they
have fourteen turns to reach the goal and are to maximize the
group score. The roll of a die determines the number of squares
they advance on a turn.
Katz also reported a pattern of white dominance in inter-
racial groups. In his study of college students, the blacks
displayed marked social inhibition and subordination to white
partners in a cooperative problem-solving situation. Black
subjects made fewer proposals than did whites. Even when
subjects were matched on intelligence and made to display
equal ability on certain group tasks, blacks ranked whites higher
on intellectual performance (Katz and Benjamin, 1960; Katz et
al., 1958).
In order to manipulate expectations, a systematic under-
standing of the conditions under which expectations produce a
self-fulfilling prophecy is necessary. Beginning with the first
[864]

study, we have utilized the Theory of Status Characteristics and

Expectation States, developed by J. Berger, B. Cohen, and M.
Zelditch at Stanford, as an explanatory framework and as a
basis for inferences concerning the manipulation of expec-
tations.
The theory affects the research process in three major ways:
First, we are not just studying racial relations but one of a much
larger class of status phenomena. Race is only one of a number
of what the theory calls diffuse status characteristics, all having
the capacity to affect the prestige and power order of
interpersonal relations. Other examples of diffuse status char-
acteristics are sex, age, social class, and occupational rank
within an organization. The critical features of a diffuse status
characteristic are as follows:

(1) various states of the characteristic are differentially valued in the

society;
(2) associated with these various states is a set of specific abilities
perceived as related to that state (blacks are athletic, musical;
women, sensitive and aesthetically oriented);
(3) each state also arouses general expectations for relative competence
or incompetence at socially valued tasks.

Second, the theory specifies the conditions under which we

may expect the diffuse status characteristic to become activated
and relevant to performance on a new task. The group task
must have outcomes seen as success or failure; the individuals
must be motivated to succeed. In addition, they must believe it
both legitimate and necessary to take others’ behavior into
account-i.e., the task must be a collective one (Berger et al.,
1972). The game of &dquo;Kill the Bull&dquo; was constructed to meet
these conditions. At a later stage in the research process, these
same conditions aided analysis of features of the classroom we
wished to change.
Third, the theory directs us to general expectations for
superior competence of high-status members, held by both low-
and high-status subjects, as a causal factor in producing status
 [865]

imbalance within the group. In the case of race, these

expectations are similar to what has been called &dquo;racist&dquo; beliefs
about intellectual superiority of whites. It is, however, nowhere
stated that expectations must be consciously held. What makes
the problem such a difficult one to attack is the self-fulfilling
nature of the interaction process; the white expects the black to
participate on a lower level in quality and quantity; the black
accepts the white’s evaluation of him as less capable and
therefore fulfills these very expectations of inferiority-thus
proving to himself and to the whites that he cannot participate
in a cognitive task on a truly equal status basis.

MODIFICATION OF
INTERRACIAL INTERACTION DISABILITY

Laboratory experience showed that changing expectation is a

far more difficult proposition than imagined by those who

point to teacher expectations as damaging and urge that

teachers be &dquo;retrained.&dquo; If one wants to change expectations for
incompetence to expectations for success and have those new
expectations transfer to new tasks, intuitive techniques applied
by researcher or practitioner will probably fail.

EXPECTATION TRAINING I

The first attempt to manipulate expectations for competent

performance in interracial groups (Expectation Training I)
failed to alter the pattern of white dominance. We attempted to
produce black competence on a training task, reasoning that
expectations for competence on &dquo;Kill the Bull&dquo; would change
so that race would be unrelated to performance. The blacks and
whites built a radio crystal set together as a training task. Prior
to this group effort, the blacks viewed an excellent film
illustrating how to assemble a radio set; the whites, on the other
hand, viewed a highly technical and nonhelpful film. Although
the blacks were usually more active in radio-building than the
[866]

whites, the effects of this treatment did not transfer to the

criterion task. Treated groups were just as white-dominated as
the untreated control groups. Furthermore, although we may
have seen the favorable effects of better instruction, the blacks
themselves tended to underrate their contribution to the group
in comparison with the way they were rated by their white
teammates and by neutral observers (Cohen et al., 1970).
Concurrent theoretical work by Freese (1970) and Freese
and Cohen (1972) suggested that we needed at least two skills
implying each other to make up the training task in order to
prevent the diffuse status characteristic from being activated on
the criterion task of &dquo;Kill the Bull.&dquo; An experiment by Freese
and Cohen (1972) confirmed that the effects of a diffuse status
characteristic may be offset by assigning high competence on
two related abilities (referred to as a general performance
characteristic) to the low-status person.

EXPECTATION TRAINING II

The revised version of Expectation Training I sought to

activate expectations of competence for black group members
through construction of a general performance characteristic in
the training process. In this study, the training tasks were
building a transistor radio and teaching someone else how to
build one. To activate expectations of competence, the black
subjects functioned as teachers of white subjects. Thus, both
black and white subjects were made aware of the high level of
competence achieved by the blacks on two related training
tasks.
In order to ensure rapid acquisition of self-confident,
competent behavior on the training task and to convince the
black subject of his own competence, we made use of powerful
role-modeling techniques and videotapes of the subjects’ com-
petence ; tapes were played back, and the competent behavior
displayed by the black was reinforced. In addition, the host
experimenter elicited confirmation of black competence from
the white subject. We have continued to use role-modeling ever
 [867]

since Lohman (1970) showed that it was highly effective in

producing assertive behavior in black subjects.
Expectation Training II was markedly more effective in
producing equal status interaction than were previous experi-
ments (Cohen and Roper, 1973). In these treated groups, one
cannot predict by skin color who will be more active and
influential. Unlike Katz’s version of Assertion Training (Katz
and Cohen, 1962), there was no white hostility as a negative
side effect. Roper (1971) could find no evidence of white
hostility in response to black assertiveness either in behavioral
measures of socioemotional behavior during the game or in

responses of subjects to the postgame questionnaire. She

concluded that the cooperative nature of the task helped to
produce this result, as well as the implication that the whites
believed that if they had received instruction like the blacks,
they, too, could have been competent instructors. We success-
fully avoided threatening the whites.
In retrospect, a third factor was responsible for the socio-
emotional success of this experiment; the children were
certainly aware that the adults expected cooperative and
pleasant relations between the races. Expectations of those in
positions of authority, such as experimenters, are often a
powerful explanation for behavior of subjects.
Expectation Training II had some strong implications for
future research. It appeared possible to structure new environ-
ments with experiences radically different from those currently
present in society. Whites do not often experience black
teachers of their own age who make an impressive display of
competence in a teacher’s role. Nor do they often experience
people in authority who expect them to profit from this
experience, enjoying themselves in the meantime. The speed
with which individuals can accustom themselves to new
situations and can behave according to new norms is gratifying.
If a high level of black competence proved essential, equally
important for the restructuring of interracial relations is a
powerful treatment of white expectations. In the third study,
which we just described (Expectation Training II), we included
[868]

a &dquo;control&dquo; condition in which only the black expectations

were treated. They experienced success and reinforcement just
like the blacks in the experimental condition; the whites,
however, were untreated and onlyjoined the group to play
&dquo;Kill the Bull.&dquo; Results for this condition were just as
white-dominated as the untreated groups in the initial study.
Because interracial interaction disability stems from expec-
tations held by both races, it is necessary to treat expectations
of both. It is clearly the case that the success experiences and
reinforcement of Expectation Training I were not sufficient to
produce equal status behavior on the criterion task. The lack of
success when only the blacks are treated cannot be over-

emphasized. The failure of compensatory education programs

can be traced to the failure to treat white expectations.

BUILDING A BRIDGE TO THE CLASSROOM

Relevant theory and laboratory success in producing equal

status behavior is still a far cry from producing and maintaining
equal status behavior in a racially integrated classroom. Some
kind of a theoretical and empirical bridge to the complexities of
the ordinary public school classroom had to be constructed.
In the summer of 1972 in a large West coast city, the author
and two coinvestigators, Drs. Marlaine Katz and Mark Lohman,
conducted an experimental summer school, entitled Center for
Interracial Cooperation. The purpose of this field experiment
was to see if Expectation Training could produce equal status
behavior that would be observable after four weeks of class-
room experience.
The classroom experience designed for the field experiment
bore little resemblance to the conventional classroom. It was
assumed from the start that whether or not the effects of
Expectation Training were to endure would depend on the
nature of the classroom experience following experimental
intervention. If summer school classes were the conventional
remedial reading, mathematics, science enrichment, and art, we
felt sure that the effects of training would disappear rapidly.
 [869]

In theexperimental summer school classrooms, evaluation of

performance flowed to the group engaged in a collective task
rather than to the individual. The range of classroom tasks was
dramatically broadened to include a variety of human talents
and mental abilities. Opportunities for participation and peer
evaluation were sharply increased by designing curricula for
small classroom groups. The teacher was a resource person
rather than prime evaluator and major speaker. Authority
largely rested in detailed directives to the group contained in
the curriculum materials. Elimination of grades, of public
recitation in front of the whole class, and of teacher evaluations
of individual performance greatly reduced opportunities for
invidious comparison and competition.
These were planned changes of two basic features of the
conventional schoolroom: ( 1 ) the tendency to build up a clearly
perceived single rank order of general academic ability, and (2)
the competitive system of individual accountability. In the
integrated classroom, the difference in social status combines
with difference in academic status to lower academic task
activity and academic self-concept in blacks and other low-
status students.
This is not a plea for homogeneous grouping. Analysis
suggests that, even within a group homogeneous as to skill,
classrooms typically develop a status order based on perceived
academic ability. Some students come to be regarded as
generally more competent than others-they get better grades;
the teacher praises their performance in public; they are
selected as leaders for academic tasks.
The development of a single status order is aided by the fact
that, by the time the student reaches seventh-grade reading and
writing skills are part of almost every task. The overlap in
required skills from task to task builds up a belief system that
there is only one dimension of human ability. Furthermore, the
limited range of classroom tasks and domination of classroom
interaction by the teacher give the children little opportunity to
develop a differentiated view of each other’s capability.
These conditions lead to the creation of a general perform-
[870]

ance characteristic-i.e., a set of skills where competence at any

one implies competence at the others. Just like the diffuse
task
status characteristic, the general performance characteristic is
associated with general expectations for competence and
incompetence; it can be activated when new tasks are intro-
duced. Students with high academic expectations thus turn out
to be more active and competent while those with lower
academic expectations thereby become less active or com-
petent.
In addition to the diffuse status characteristic of race in the
integrated classroom, the general performance characteristic can
affect rates of participation and expectations for success. If
black children become defined by the teacher, themselves, and
other students as having a relatively low level of academic skill,
then there are two sources, rather than one, of general
expectations for incompetence-i.e., low social status and low
perceived academic ability.
General performance characteristics can be constructed in a
laboratory by assigning relative competence to people on
successive tasks. Freese (1970) demonstrated that they can
produce a self-fulfilling prophecy on new and unrelated tasks.
Reasoning that comparable assignments on competence are
constantly made in the classroom, Hoffman (and Cohen, 1972)
demonstrated that perceived academic ability functions as a
general performance characteristic. Groups of youngsters from
the same classroom, whose different ranking on perceived
academic ability was perceived by all four members of the
group, showed differential rates of participation on a new task
which reflected their classroom ranking. This occurred despite
the fact that the criterion task was a game with a high
component of luck and was unrelated to classroom gkills or to
academic intellectual achievement.
The results of this experiment confirmed the suspicion that,
unless we changed the evaluation process, the nature of
classroom tasks, and the role of the teacher, a new status order
would form. This status order would then affect expectations
for competence on the curricula, no matter how ingenious and
interesting they were.
 [871]

A further experiment by Awang Had supports the propo-

sition that a competitive system of evaluation is likely to
aggravate the operation of diffuse status characteristics. He
studied groups of seventh and ninth graders. When the children
were told that the group’s answer would be evaluated (group

accountability), there were no differences between the age

groups in their participation. With individual accountability,
students were told that they would be evaluated individually
according to whether they had argued for a right or a wrong
answer. Under these conditions, age and grade differences acted
like a powerful status characteristic; the younger children
became hesitant to initiate or argue for their point of view
(Awang Had, 1972).
These were strong grounds for the elimination of a com-
petitive system of grades or other kind of individual, compar-
ative public evaluation so characteristic of the public school. We
wanted to avoid reconstructing the effect of the diffuse status
characteristic in the classroom experiences following Expec-
tation Training.

THE CENTER FOR INTERRACIAL COOPERATION

The design of the field experiment called for a short

intervention to produce equal status behavior followed by a
four-week classroom phase. There were two major measures of
equal status behavior: small group interaction was measured just
after intervention and four weeks later at the end of the
classroom phase. Throughout the experiment, there were two
treatment groups who were totally segregated from each other.
One group received a longer and stronger form of Expectation
Training; the other experienced an alternative treatment de-
signed to produce interracial cooperation.
The Center operated in a busy urban area in a junior high
school building loaned to us by the school district. This junior
high school was the center of an interracial problem for the
school district. During the school year the students were racially
[872]

integrated, but they came from predominantly segregated

neighborhoods and elementary schools. Black and white parents
complained that little learning and too much fighting took
place. Realizing the urgency of the problem, the local school
district contributed to the project, although it was primarily
supported by the Office of Education.’ The two populations
-the inner-city black students and the children of white
business and professional people-were virtual strangers to each
other; distrust, fear, and stereotypical views were palpable in
the summer school from the first day. Needless to say, many
felt that running a social experiment under these conditions
&dquo;could not be done.&dquo;

INTERVENTION: EXPECTATION TRAINING

The black students in the Expectation Training condition

came a week early (33 completed the training); black college
students taught them four new tasks and how to teach these
tasks to someone else. Two tasks were academic-Malay
language and culture and a geometry task; two were non-
academic-building a radio transmitter and playing a spatial
problem-solving game.
When the white students in this condition arrived (n 33), =

they became students on the four different tasks. Each task

required daily lessons for five mornings. The Malaysian language
task used videotapes and reinforcement procedures. Everywhere
one looked, there was a serious and intent young black person

working with a teaching manual and directing the behavior of a

well-motivated white student-surely a massive dose of black
competence.

INTERVENTION: ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT

The other half of the summer school (n = 76) also

experienced something new. Each of the four racially mixed
classrooms (two female and two male) met an interracial team
of teachers and teacher aides. Immediately they were divided
 [873]

into small interracial groups and introduced to the concept of

group cooperation. As in the other treatment condition, they
learned about Malays and their language, constructed geometric
figures, built a radio transmitter and played the spatial
problem-solving game. But, in this case, the materials prepared
for the young black teacher were adapted by an adult working
with one small group at a time.22
The children soon preceived a high probability of success;
some of the tasks were interesting to each student. They

frequently fell into patterns of working together under the

supervision of a teacher who could praise and give attention to
each member of the group. Groups rotated between the four
adults during the five mornings of the first week.

THE CLASSROOM PHASE

Following intervention and the first measurement, classrooms

were formed, segregated as to sex, integrated as to race, and
completely separating the children who had experienced dif-
ferent treatments. For the first time, children in Expectation
Training met their interracial team of teachers and teacher
aides.
Experienced educators volunteered to create the curricula
according to the principles of social structure selected as
essential. In order to prevent a status order based on perceived
academic ability, very little reading and writing was required;
tasks demanded many different abilities; there was no grading;
the teacher was not to be the major evaluator; the the curricula
demanded active, competent participation in one’s group. In
order to create a noncompetitive accountability system, tasks
were collective, and the group was responsible for its product.
In addition to these specifications, we asked that the
curricula be intellectually defensible and intrinsically inter-
esting. One curriculum taught the children how to make a
movie documentary, from filming and editing to splicing and
projection of the final product. Small interracial groups each
made their own film. The other curriculum taught observation
[874]

skills, communication through symbolism, and the distinction

between fact and inference. There were two major measure-
ments of small group behavior. Four-person interracial groups
were composed and instructed in the criterion task of &dquo;Kill the
Bull&dquo; just after intervention and again at the end of the summer
school. Membership in the second measurement group was
always different from membership in the first measurement
group.

RESULTS OF THE SUMMER SCHOOL

The results for boys in Expectation Training were a real

surprise. By the end of the classroom phase, we could observe
black dominance in the classrooms, in sociometric data and in
data from &dquo;Kill the Bull&dquo;-a pattern of dominance not
observable in the first measurement just after Expectation
Training. The Alternative Treatment resulted in nearly equal
status relationships on the early measurement and a perfectly
equal status pattern on the late measurement. The data on girls
were difficult to interpret because of a shortage of whites and
other confounding variables. Although fairly &dquo;equal status&dquo;
after treatment, they appeared to lose some ground during the
classroom phase. We cannot tell for sure, but it may be harder
to treat girls than boys.
The success of the Alternative Treatment for boys led us to
reexamine the effect of the unique interracial organization
created for the experiment. Not only were the classroom teams
in the Alternative Treatment balanced as to race, but admin-
istrative positions were also carefully racially balanced, starting
with a black and white codirector.
The balance of power and authority between the races was
initially seen as a control variable necessary to prevent undoing
the effects of treatment. If the children were to perceive that
this equal status condition was a game suitable &dquo;only for
children,&dquo; the effects of treatment and classroom experience
might weaken. The results have suggested that the organization
of the summer school may have acted as a &dquo;treatment&dquo; of
 [875]

expectations during the Alternative Treatment and for the

entire school during the classroom phase.
What does it mean to conceive of an organizational arrange-
ment as a treatment variable? Like the arguments in sociology
concerning contextual effects, it does not become meaningful
until one can specify the process by which it comes to affect
expectations. Possibly the organizational arrangements were not
a sufficient condition for changing the general expectations
until children were exposed to model equal status behavior of
adults in the teaching team. Probably, three elements were
critical to the modification of expectations: (1) student
participation in racially mixed groups; (2) experience of success
in these groups; and (3) strong, explicit norms for interracial
cooperation. Just how these factors operate and interact cannot
be answered by data analysis of the experiment. Further
theoretical work is necessary to handle the effect of organi-
zational factors on the operation of diffuse status charac-
teristics ; tests of this new theory would be in a controlled
laboratory analogue of the organizational setting.

EQUAL STATUS CONDITIONS IN THE SCHOOL

In review, what has been learned about fostering equal status
relations in the school? This line of research suggests different
approaches as alternatives to conventional school organization
and practice at three levels.
The first approach is a direct attack on expectations for black
competence, held by both blacks and whites. By intervening
with a specially constructed experience clearly assigning high
competence to black students, it is possible to produce equal
status behavior. It is critical to treat expectations of both blacks
and whites and to make the assignment of competence utterly
convincing to the blacks.
The second approach is an attack on classroom social
structure. Results of the field experiment suggest that the
classroom experiences constructed following the treatment are,
[876]

to some extent, a treatment in and of themselves. The curricula

were based on group tasks designed to develop an unstereo-
typed and highly differentiated view of each student in the
class. Theoretically, as the groups work on a wide range of
tasks, each child comes to be seen as able to make important
and valued contributions. Essential to this change is the
prevention of a single status order based on perceived academic
ability. Also critical is the use of group rather than individual
accountability.
The third approach is a change in the power and authority
structure in the school as a whole, in order to produce racial
balance among the adults as well as the children. Results from
the Center for Interracial Cooperation suggest that the sharing
of authority between black and white on the administrative and
teaching staffs in conjunction with successful interracial task
activities and norms for cooperation may be an effective
method for treating expectations.
The first approach is far better conceptualized and treated
than the second or the third. Even with Expectation Training,
further work is needed to clarify the effects of treatment on
girls. We also need to find out how to weaken the treatment for
boys in order to produce equal status behavior in the long run
rather than black dominance.
The most challenging theoretical question for the future is
the conceptualization of how organizational context comes to
affect expectations for success held by students. What are the
linkages between the organization and the individual? If the
nature of the classroom task and its attendant evaluation
processes are changed, that may be one form of organizational
&dquo;treatment.&dquo; Still another form is a change in the authority
structure of the school. At the level of authority structure, we
have a theoretical problem: how do power and authority affect
the operation of diffuse status characteristics and general
performance characteristics?
 [877]

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

At this point, the objection will surely be raised: What has

happened to reading, writing, and arithmetic in this educational
Disneyland? The goal of improving black achievement is
separable from the goal of improving interracial relations.
Nevertheless, this work is relevant to an integrated classroom
where academic skills are taught. Unless the basic problem of
expectations is attacked, purely curricular treatment such as
remedial work will be viewed by students and teachers as proof
of generalized incompetence at present and future tasks. It is
our position that, in order to prevent this from happening,
fundamental reorganization of the public school will prove
necessary.

CONCLUSION

Gordon Allport may have been correct in positing that

prejudice will lessen under equal status conditions, but until one
knows how to produce equal status conditions in an organi-
zation like the school, the proposition is not very useful.
Clearly, the formal equality achieved by putting black and
white children in the same building is not sufficient.
The possibility of constructing alternative schools, not on an
ideological basis as is now common, but by inferring changes in
the organizational context and social structure from a sys-
tematic theoretical base is especially challenging. We find that
building an experimental organization for six weeks raises about
as many questions as it answers.

Substantively, we have learned that it is possible to modify

expectations stemming from race and to sustain these changes
with a systematically restructured school environment. Meth-
odologically, we have found it possible to start with a rigorously
explicated social process and build outward from the laboratory
to the school setting. It is not simply a question of emerging
from the laboratory to the field with all its extra variables
acting to dilute the initial experimental effect. It is instead a
 [878]

question of conceptualizing and abstracting those features of

the larger social context capable of destroying the newly altered
behavior. A by-product of this process is a fundamental critique
of present-day classroom organization.

NOTES

1. USOE Grant OEC 9-71-0037.

2. The classrooms in this treatment had more blacks than whites.

REFERENCES

AWANG HAD, B. S. (1972) "Effects of status and task outcome structures upon
observable power and prestige order of small task-oriented groups." Ph.D.
dissertation. Stanford University.
BERGER, J., B. P. COHEN, and M. ZELDITCH, Jr. (1972) "Status conceptions and
social interaction." Amer. Soc. Rev. 37, 3: 241-255.
(1966) "Status characteristics and expection states," pp. 29-46 in J. Berger et
———

al. (eds.) Sociological Theories in Progress. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

COHEN, E. G. (1972) "Interracial interaction disability." Human Relations 25, 1:
9-24.
and S. ROPER (1973) "Modification of interracial interaction disability."
———

Amer. Soc. Rev. 37, 6: 643-647.

COHEN, E. G., M. LOHMAN, K. HALL, D. LUCERO, and S. ROPER (1970)
"Expectation Training I: altering the effects of a racial status characteristic."
Stanford University School of Education Technical Report 2.
FREESE, L. (1970) "The generalization of specific performance expectations."
Ph.D. dissertation. Stanford University.
and B. COHEN (1972) "Eliminating the effects of a status characteristic."
———

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S MALL GROUP
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