Advances in examining preferences for similarity in seating: Revisiting the aggregation index

Behavior Research Methods, Nov 2014

Past research finds that people prefer to sit next to others who are similar to them in a variety of dimensions such as race, sex, and physical appearance. This preference for similarity in seating arrangements is called aggregation and is most commonly measured with the aggregation index (Campbell, Kruskal, & Wallace, Sociometry 29, 1–15, 1966). The aggregation index compares the observed dissimilarity in seating with the amount of dissimilarity that would be expected if seats were chosen randomly. However, the current closed-form equations for this method limit the ease, flexibility, and inferences that researchers have. This paper presents a new approach for studying aggregation that uses bootstrapped resampling of the seating environment to estimate the aggregation index parameters. This method, compiled as an executable program, SocialAggregation, reads a seating chart matrix provided by the researcher and automatically computes the observed number of dissimilar adjacencies, and simulates random seating preferences. The current method’s estimates not only converge with those of the original method, but it also handles a wider variety of situations and also allows for more precise hypothesis testing by directly modeling the distribution of the seating arrangements. Developing a better measure of aggregation opens new possibilities for understanding intergroup biases, and allows researchers to examine aggregation more efficiently.

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Advances in examining preferences for similarity in seating: Revisiting the aggregation index

Behav Res Advances in examining preferences for similarity in seating: Revisiting the aggregation index Ivan Hernandez 0 0 I. Hernandez ( 1 Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , 603 East Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61820 , USA Past research finds that people prefer to sit next to others who are similar to them in a variety of dimensions such as race, sex, and physical appearance. This preference for similarity in seating arrangements is called aggregation and is most commonly measured with the aggregation index (Campbell, Kruskal, & Wallace, Sociometry 29, 1-15, 1966). The aggregation index compares the observed dissimilarity in seating with the amount of dissimilarity that would be expected if seats were chosen randomly. However, the current closed-form equations for this method limit the ease, flexibility, and inferences that researchers have. This paper presents a new approach for studying aggregation that uses bootstrapped resampling of the seating environment to estimate the aggregation index parameters. This method, compiled as an executable program, SocialAggregation, reads a seating chart matrix provided by the researcher and automatically computes the observed number of dissimilar adjacencies, and simulates random seating preferences. The current method's estimates not only converge with those of the original method, but it also handles a wider variety of situations and also allows for more precise hypothesis testing by directly modeling the distribution of the seating arrangements. Developing a better measure of aggregation opens new possibilities for understanding intergroup biases, and allows researchers to examine aggregation more efficiently. Similarity; Seating; Aggregation; Intergroup bias; Software Introduction The expression “birds of a feather flock together” suggests that people prefer being around similar others. One common way to measure this preference for similarity in an environment, or “aggregation,” is by examining people’s seating choice. Sitting next to a person expresses a liking towards that person and, therefore, choosing to sit next to some people but not others can reveal what traits we value (Holland et al., 2004) . Indeed, research finds that people prefer to sit next to other people who are similar on a variety of traits including race, sex, and physical appearance (Batson, Flink, Schoenrade, Fultz, & Pych, 1986; Sriram, 2002) . This preference to sit next to similar others leads to less contact between groups (e.g., races, sexes), which can promote further separation and prejudice (Campbell, Kruskal, & Wallace, 1966). Although studying aggregation is important, the current method for studying aggregation is difficult to implement, unable to accommodate many situations, and provides limited statistical information. This paper presents a new method for studying aggregation that addresses these limitations and allows researchers more opportunities to understand intergroup biases. Seat choice and preference for similarity Even without explicitly stating their attitudes, people often reveal their biases towards others with subtle non-verbal cues, such as how near or far they are sitting from them. A person, or group of people, may not admit on self-reports to liking people who are similar to them on some dimension (e.g., race), but their non-verbal behavior, such as whether they choose to sit next to them, could indicate a preference (Snyder, Kleck, Strenta, & Mentzer, 1979) . A variety of past research has used seating patterns to understand the dynamics between groups and the diversity of a setting. Campbell, Kruskal, & Wallace (1966) found that students tend to sit next to students of the same race and sex. Further, when examining several different schools, how much a school’s White students preferred to sit next to others of the same race, on average, predicted students’ average level of positivity towards Black students within that school. This association between grouplevel seating preferences and group-level attitudes was found for both direct attitude survey measures and indirect measures of attitude such as projection tests and electrodermal response. More recently, seating aggregation has helped examine racial relations in areas with strong racial divisions such as South Africa (Koen & Durrheim, 2010) and Singapore (Sriram, 2002) . By unobtrusively examining seating behavior, these studies showed how a population’s underlying intergroup biases manifest in daily life. In addition to revealing preferences for well known individual differences, studying seating aggregation also allows researchers to understand very subtle preferences people hold that are less immediately obvious, such as liking those whom they physically resemble (Mackinnon, Jordan, & Wilson, 2011) . People with glasses are more likely to sit next to people who wear glasses and vice versa. Therefore, measuring aggregation is important because it all (...truncated)


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Ivan Hernandez. Advances in examining preferences for similarity in seating: Revisiting the aggregation index, Behavior Research Methods, 2014, pp. 1328-1342, Volume 47, Issue 4, DOI: 10.3758/s13428-014-0541-4