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telepathy
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telepathy
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TELEPATHY

psychology
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Written and fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have
extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that
content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify
and edit content received from contributors.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Article History
Table of Contents
Category: Science & Tech
Key People: J.B. Rhine ...(Show more) Related Topics: communication ...(Show
more)
See all related content →

telepathy, direct transference of thought from one person (sender or agent) to
another (receiver or percipient) without using the usual sensory channels of
communication, hence a form of extrasensory perception (ESP). While the
existence of telepathy has not yet been proved, some parapsychological research
studies have produced favourable results using such techniques as card guessing
with a special deck of five sets of five cards. The agent may simply think of a
random order of the five card symbols while the percipient tries to think of the
order on which the agent is concentrating. In a general ESP test the sender
concentrates on the face of one card at a time while the receiver tries to think
of the symbol. Both subjects are, of course, separated by a screen or some
greater obstacle or distance. Scores significantly above chance are extremely
rare, particularly as testing methods have become more rigorous.



communication network
Table of Contents
communication network
Table of Contents
 * Introduction
   
 * 
   Classic studies
   
 * 
   Later research
   

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COMMUNICATION NETWORK

society
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Written by
Nicholas G. Schwab
Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Northern Iowa. His
contributions to SAGE Publications's Encyclopedia of Group Processes and
Intergroup Relations (2010) formed the basis of his...

Nicholas G. Schwab,
Martin J. Bourgeois
Professor of Psychology, Florida Gulf Coast University. His contributions to
SAGE Publications's Encyclopedia of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations
(2010) formed the basis of his contributions...

Martin J. BourgeoisSee All
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have
extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that
content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify
and edit content received from contributors.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Article History
Table of Contents
Category: Science & Tech
Related Topics: communication ...(Show more)
See all related content →


communication network, the structure and flow of communication and information
between individuals within a group. Within many groups (e.g., in a typical
office), formal and informal communication is often characterized by a top-down
hierarchical pattern, in which members direct communication to others at the
same level or below but not above.




CLASSIC STUDIES

The first systematic research on communication networks was conducted by
American organizational psychologists Harold J. Leavitt and Alex Bavelas in the
1950s. That work was stimulated by formal mathematical models derived from graph
theory. By placing partitions between participants seated at a table, Leavitt
and Bavelas manipulated communication structures within groups of varying sizes.
For example, in a five-person group, members could communicate within a circular
structure in which each person could only share messages with those on either
side. Alternatively, communication could take place within the structure of a
wheel with one central member (the hub) through which all communications must
pass. Later research by the American social psychologist Marvin E. Shaw showed
that centralized groups solve relatively simple problems better than
decentralized groups. When problems become more complex, however, Shaw found
that centralization can hamper problem solving.




LATER RESEARCH

Most of the research on small-group decision making from the 1950s through the
1980s was conducted in groups with symmetrical communication networks in which
each member’s communications were received by the entire group. Bibb Latané, an
American social psychologist, and his colleagues revived interest in
communication networks in the late 1980s by pointing out that individual members
of large groups cannot easily communicate with the entire group at the same
time. Latané developed what came to be known as dynamic social-impact theory. It
includes a principle of immediacy, which assumes that influence between any two
members in a group is predicted by the likelihood that they can easily share
communications.

Latané tested the implications of his theory by conducting computer simulations
in which agents were situated in a two-dimensional space where the strongest
influence between agents occurred with immediate neighbours. Each agent was
randomly assigned a binary opinion on an issue. In keeping with other
assumptions of the theory, individual agents in the simulations also varied in
strength (i.e., some were more influential than others), and agents were
influenced by the number of other agents sharing or opposing their preferences.

After simulating some rounds of communication in which each agent’s opinion was
compared with the opinions of fellow agents, the researchers found that opinions
were either maintained or changed as a function of the strength, immediacy, and
number of other agents. In addition, two significant group-level phenomena
emerged. Whichever opinion was most commonly held within the group became even
more common after simulated communication. And, because communication networks
constrained communication, opinions also became regionally clustered, such that
agents shared opinions with other agents who were physically close to them in
the two-dimensional space.



Latané and his colleagues then tested whether those phenomena also occur within
actual groups discussing issues in communication networks configured via e-mail
exchanges. Both of the group-level phenomena observed in the computer
simulations—consolidation and clustering—also emerged within groups of people
discussing issues. The “geometry” of communication networks—how they are
organized—can determine the extent to which a group’s opinions will consolidate
and cluster as a function of communication. For example, as communication
networks become more “clumpy,” or hierarchical, consolidation and clustering of
opinions tend to increase.

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Mathematicians and physicists have also used computer simulation to test
constrained communication networks within large groups. The Australian
sociologist Duncan Watts and his colleagues used computer simulation to solve
the “small-world problem” (posited by the American social psychologist Stanley
Milgram): if most people communicate with others within local networks (as
social-impact theory assumes), what accounts for the fact that any two randomly
chosen people within the larger group are connected by a surprisingly small
number of links? (The phrase “six degrees of separation,” coined by the
Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy, refers to this phenomenon.) Watts showed that
simply adding a small number of random communication links to a computer
simulation of a large group would create such small-world networks.



The Hungarian-born physicist Albert-László Barabasi and his colleagues showed
that communication networks within large groups share properties with what are
known as “scale-free” networks. In a scale-free network, some individuals within
the larger group have many more communication partners than others; in the terms
of earlier work on communication networks, such members can be said to be more
centralized. Scale-free networks are another way to solve the small-world
problem: when a small number of members within a large group have a large number
of communication partners, it takes a relatively small number of links to join
any two randomly chosen group members.

Martin J. Bourgeois Nicholas G. Schwab The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica


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