Seeing Is Behaving

Abstract

The "Steinzor effect" has been studied for 30 years, but the effect of visibility on interaction has escaped precise theoretical and empirical analysis. The purpose of this article is to present more precise measures of visibility, and to test some hypotheses about its effect on participation in small groups. The role of visibility in small group interaction is discussed, and then some operational definitions of various dimensions of visibility are made. Several hypotheses are tested, and data from an earlier study reanalyzed. In all cases, behavioral data on interaction were obtained by systematic observation of the groups. The results give clear support for the basic hypothesis that visibility has a direct impact on participation: overall, correlations were above .40 in the settings studied.