Esprsso has alpha launched into quasi-obscurity with a decidedly web 0.4 design philosophy.

Basic functionality is feature-complete and now the fun stuff begins. So now that users can add friends, discover neighbors, import sources, create channels, read and forward items… so what? Well, we can develop a sophisticated metacontent layer subsuming these features, silly. What do people want with their esprsso? I’ll tell you:
-clean atmosphere
-conversation with friends and rude intrusions from the occassional neighbor
-attractive women to ogle (for men)
-unattainably stylish men, women, and children to fantasize about (for women)
-pretty pictures with short descriptions

As things currently stand, as Shannon pointed out, we plumb the depths, but we don’t provide much sense of the “breadth” of the community. You don’t immediately see the ugly snivelling creatures in the corner who remind you how great you really are. We provide links to similar people, but not to those who you would like to believe you have nothing in common with.

We also have a system ripe for exploitation by special-interest groups. This is of course our whole concept – an anti-social social networking system. We are not yet another goddamn social-networking service where you have to yet again enter in your personal info and maybe have one or two email exchanges with a old friends who you stopped communicating with in real life for good reason. But a college class or corporate work-group or tightly knit special-interest group have real information-sharing needs that are not adequately addressed by any service out there. Setting up such a group should be a simple matter of picking some channels, picking some people, and setting up a closed-system where the selected channels and people can mix.

But our really BIG next development is extremely simple, top secret, and will bring us in competition with just about EVERYBODY. And I think we can take ‘em all at once.

p.67
at the Party Rally site in Nuremberg, Hitler asked Speers to dress in party uniform rather than civilian clothes. This was important because it indicated that Speers had become part of Hitler’s inner circle, all of whom wore party uniforms. (reminiscent of Canetti’s uniformed crowd crysals).

p.68
Amtswalter were middle and minor party functionaries who were in charge of various affiliated organizations. A problem developed as a result of their inability to form orderly marches, as had other parts of Hitler’s army.

The “Organization Section for Party Rallies” had conferences to address this problem. Speers came on the idea of having their marches in the darkness, thus avoiding people seeing just how disordered this group appeared visually.

Speers prepared to have thousands of flags to fly above the rally with bright lights shining on them to distract attention away from Amtswalter. Not satisfied with these lights, Speers brought in ant-aircraft searchlights and beamed them into the sky above the rally. This created mighty pillars of light, a “cathedral of light”.

p.70
Speers was Hitler’s “chief decorator.” He really loved flags during this time.

p.2
A crowd is not just a bunch of individuals next to each other. An organized or psychological crowd is a single entity with a unified mind.

Isolated individuals may in some cases form an organized crowd, for example, during a violent emotional national event.

p.4
Crowds possess some characteristics of the individuals involved, and others that are unique to crowds. This is like chemical reactions forming new bodies with different properties than the reactants. Unconscious qualities (racial qualities) take the upper hand. New behaviors arise from a sense of invincibility in numbers (leading to less restraint), and from contagion. Every act of a crowd is contagious.

Individual behavior is sacrificed to that of the crowd, as if it were a hypnotic force, unleashing the unconscious. Man descends several rungs of civilization when in a crowd, and becomes a primitive being.

p.9
“A crowd is often criminal, but also it is often heroic.”
Although individual is undoubtedly less intelligent when in crowd, a crowd’s actions may be good.

p.13
Crowds are irritable and impulsive.

p.22
Crowds are “only impressed by excessive sentiments”.

p.35
crowds have strong imaginations and conflate reality and fantasy. “Appearances have always played a much more important part in history than reality.” Theatrical representations and clear imagery work best on crowds.

p.38
Crowds demand religious sentiment.
worship of a superior being
fear of that being’s power
blind submissionto its commands
inability to discuss its dogmas
the desire to spread them
tendency to consider as enemies outsiders who don’t accept beliefs.

p.61
images evoke strong reactions in crowds.
words are effective by the images they evoke, independent of their meaning. Vagueness often gives words and images their power.

p.100
The Classification and Description of the Different Kinds of Crowds

A multitude of individuals of different races is the most inferior kind of crowd. These are usually bound by the will of a chief.

Next up is a multitude of individuals of a single race.

Each of these multitudes can be formed into organized crowds: the heterogenous and homogenous crowds.

Heterogenous crowds can be either anonymous or not anonymous.
Anonymous heterogenous crowds have no sense of responsibility.
Not anonymous crowds have some sense of responsibility and personal culpability.

Homogenous crowds consist of sects, castes, or classes.
Sects include religious or political crowds, which are linked by acommon belief.
Castes include military or priestly crowds. These are linked by the same education and status.
Classes are people of diverse origin, linked by interests or habits and education.

p.27
An arena is a doubly closed crowd. It is closed off from the surrounding city. This encapsulation ensures that the crowd both time and space with which to create its own rules and activities. It is also closed in on itself. The seats form a ring which cannot be broken without disprupting and leading to the dispersion of the crowd. One side of the arena faces the other, so the crowd is watching itself as a faceless blur of people on the other side. The only features visible are movement and raw emotion.

Attributes of crowds
1- always wants to grow
2- within a crowd there is equality
3- the crowd loves density
4- the crowd needs direction

Rhythmic vs. stagnating crowds:
In rhythmic crowds, density and equality exist from the start. Everything rests on movement.
The stagnating crowd lives for discharge, but it can’t wait. It starts with density and moves to equality.

Slow vs. quick crowds – these distinctions refer to the nature of the goal:
Slow crowds include religious crowds and pilgrims, both of which have very distant goals.
Quick crowds include political, sporting, and war-like crowd, all of which have immediate goals.

Classifications of crowds according to prevailing emotion:

p.49
The baiting crowd’s goal is to kill. It knows who it wants to kill, and cannot be cheated of its goal. The goal is the point of greatest density, where the actions of the participants unite. The final murder stands for all the murders which are not otherwise permitted of the individuals in the crowd. The murder deflects their own mortality onto the mortality of the murdered man. Reversal: one who had the power to kill (e.g. the king), has now been killed and made a commoner. Once dead, the dead man is one of them and the crowd therefore disperses – thus the tendency for authorities to give angry crowds a scapegoat to appease and disperse it.
p.52
Newspapers form a sort of baiting crowd, except the people never have to collect in physical space. Therefore it doesn’t have to disintegrate either. Papers form an irresponsible crowd since it has no sense of guilt or responsibility for the actions it observes.

p.53
Flight crowds: created by a threat. Danger is the same for all = equality. Nobody thinks they are the one who will be caught. They disperse away from the danger in all directions. The goal is safety and distance. Flight can last for days or weeks. Each person must not push others aside, or this crowd turns into a panic crowd, where people are out for themselves. Panic usually happens when direction of flow is impeded by obstacles, and this causes lateral movement.

p.55
Prohibition crowds area created by a refusal. Together, people refuse to do what they ordinarily had done willingly. Anyone who transgresses is outlawed by the others. In strikes, people are equal only in crowd, wheras otherwise they come from different backgrounds. A fictitious equality becomes real during strike. Strikes are contagious and spread to other sympathetic groups. Organization is key in keeping a strike going since the natural tendency of the people is to perform their usual function.

p.58
In reversal crowds, the sheep eat the wolves after having been eaten by the wolves for so long. This presupposes a stratified society. A sting is left in a person who carries out another’s orders. Once an order (and its accompanying sting) is received from above, people generally pass on the accompanying orders to others lower than them (if there are others who receive orders from them), or they return the sting they’ve received to their superiors as payback. Payback is only possible in a group.
Revolution is a form of reversal crowd. It seeks deliverance from a sting. Before they attack superiors, people attack those lower than them. Reversal crowds are often accompanied by baiting crowds, hunting individuals. Reversal is a longer term activity.
Religious reversal is the idea that “the least shall be first”. The poorest stand highest in heaven. This is a very long-term reversal. Also is a form of domestication – submission to God’s law. This is the opposite of the liberation by revolution, but also a reversal.

p.62
Feast crowds have abundance in a limited space – more than those present can consume, so more people are needed – growth. All are equal and can partake of it. People move to and fro in all directionsNormal prohibitions are generally loosened. The feast itself is the goal. Each feast leads to more future feasts. Earlier feasts are remembered by ritual dance and dramatic performances. Density of things and people promise more of life itself.

p.63
The double crowd. The surest way a crowd can preserve its own existence is in relation to another crowd. For examples, rivals in a game (individuals want to avoid shame), or war opponents (individuals resolve to defend themselves together). Individuals stand together – ensuring unity and causing increased density and vigilence. Both crowds must be perceived to be of equal number or strength or the lesser crowd disintegrates into mass flight or panic crowd.
Men and women form double crowd in primitive societies. For example, women dance war dance while men are away hunting. They act in reference to the absent other crowd.
Living and dead form double crowd. Dead are greater in number. The living cannot hope to win, thus explaining and individual’s death. The living must still fight to try to retain the person in the living although they know it is doomed. Some believe the dead souls are necessary for newborns to be born. Dead spirits also are thought to bring rain and food for the living.
p67
War. Goal is to transform the live adversary into a heap of dead. Slaves and captives increase one’s own number while diminishing the foe’s. Wars carry on well after defeat because crowds want to stick together. People are equal by shared threat of death. Killing others deflects one’s own mortality. Wars offer crowds the hope of a definite duration of life.

p.73
Crowd crystals are small rigid groups of people which serve to precipitate crowds. They are all about limits and consciousness of its every utterance and movement. Examples are orchestras and monks. Crystals can be comprehended at a glance – roles are obvious and familiar, individuals have clearly defined roles. Unity is more important than size. The members are always thought of as a group despite their individual professions, activities outside the crystal, etc. Group persists after individuals disperse – they often persist past their popularity, and can be revived many years later when times change, often after revolution. Crystals’ clarity, constancy, and isolation sit in contrast with that of the crowds that form around them. Uncontrollable growth and fear of desintegration do not affect crowd crystals like they do the surrounding crowd.
Closed crowds are different from crystals in size (larger), and are more spontaneous and not specified by individuals’ functions Closed crowds share the defined limits and repetition of crystals.

p.75
Crowd symbols are crowd like, but not composed of people. However, they are felt to be a crowd.

Fire: always the same, no matter how long or large. Contagious – spreads and wants to increase size. Can originate anywhere. Is multiple (i.e. made up of many flames). Is destructive – can be fought or tamed. Has an enemy – water.

p.80
Sea: multiple – dense and cohesive collection of waves. Waves yield to others as if they were oneself. Has a voice that sounds like a thousand voices. Is persistent – makes itself heard and never sleeps. Has constancy that a crowd lacks. Expresses desire of a crowd to stay together. Growth – consumes rivers and more and more water.

p.81
Rain: felt as a unit most strongly just before it rains. Drops fall in one direction. Sameness in drops and parallel lines of falling. Not as constant as sea, and not contagious like fire. Rain is crowd in moment of discharge and stands as signal of disintegration. Cloud has fallen apart. Who knows when it will reconvene again.

p.83
Rivers: striking in its direction. Absorbs other smaller streams in its flow. But cannot grow indefinitely or unexpectedly. Stands for processions of people, like demonstrations. Lack contagiousness of fire or universality of sea. A river is the crowd exhibiting itself – there is no river without banks (spectators).

p.84
Forest: is higher than man. Density consists of foliage – man has to look up to see the dense canopy. Equality consists only in uniformity of direction – up. Looking up at forest is preparation for looking up in church. Forest is symbol of army – immoveable – can be cut down, but not shifted.

p.85
Corn: is a diminished and subjugated forest under mans’ control. Uniform in height and fate (all sown together). Equality before death.

p.86
Wind: its voice varies with its strength – lives and dies like humans. Direction is always changing. Equivalent to an invisible crowd – roaring like spirits angry or in flight. Flags are wind made visible – make air seem as if its one’s own.

Sand: striking when grains are amassed together. Individually, grains are small and equal. Sand is always shifting. Suffocating like swarms of tiny enemies. Symbol of progeny and quantity of men rather than quality.

The heap: celebrated in feasts. Collections of things – all of one kind – grain, rice, etc. Density indicates success. Time of existence is limited – depleted, repleted frequently.

p.88
Stone heap: inedible and immoveable. Erected precisely for their permanence. Represent rhythmic exertion of many men in their creation (e.g. pyramids). Each stone represents a man.

Treasure: inedible and unperishable. Each unit has special value. Prestige also carries danger of others who want it. Greed which unites people rests on a confidence and commitment to the value of the units. Depreciation is like a flight crowd – men are depreciated, not money.

p.93
The Pack – a primitive form of the crowd and crowd crystals. Still permeate groups today.
Equality and direction really exist.
Growth and density are imagined.

Hunting pack: many men take down animal they could not catch alone. This leads to distribution of spoils among all even if only a few actually killed the animal. The prey behavior determines the behavior of the pack.

War pack: often focused on hunting one man, like a hunting pack, but often formed of loosely joined people, not a tribe as in the hunting pack.

Lamenting pack: forms to lament death of member. Each individual must be preserved or his life taken back from the dead. Members jump on the dead man to form a heap – joining him because he can’t join them.

Increase packs: intent to increase. Rites of ceremony symbolize dissatisfaction with number. Dressing like animals symbolizes the desire to achieve the large numbers of that animal. Totems identify men with an animal. Good fortune for animal means good fortune for men.

Categorizations of packs

Inward vs. outward packs
Inward packs include lamenting and increase packs. These circle around one man or a ceremony.
Outward packs include hunting and war packs. These are focused on capturing something external to the pack.

Tranquil vs. noisy packs
Tranquil packs include increase packs. They focus on some expectation, using concentration and stillness.
Noisy packs include hunting, war, and lamenting packs. For these, noise is important.

p.180
Germany. Unusual case of army as a closed crowd. Prussian Junker caste served as crowd crystals – this was the major source of officers for WWI. Closed crowd army was dissolved in Treaty of Versaille. Denied closed crowds long to form open crowds. Hitler fulfilled this need.

p.313
Soldiers: act in uniform manner. Participate in drills, but generally do not form crowds. If you seperate an individual soldier, they are expected to act the same as when they are in a group – different from crowds.

p.394
Orchestra: subservient to conductor. Is seated but conductor is standing. Conductor transforms individuals into a coherent group. The audience stops moving/talking when conductor appears even though they don’t do the same for the orchestra. Conductor must not turn around, or he will break the spell of the audience. Conductor leads players like a master, audience feels through him.

p.387
Standing: is sign of independence. Indicates superiority over four-legged animals. Done for a long time, it indicates endurance, like a forest. If there’s space between the man and the surrounding people it indicates power, especially if he is facing the others. Standing is a transition point to all other postures, and is thus the most adaptable posture.

p.389
Sitting: historically is a sign of privilege, especially if others are standing. Does not easily lead to other postures, so also leads to the expectation of staying seated for a long time. Getting up involves an obvious intent to change the current social arrangement. Sitting exerts pressure onto something else – a chair which is like a slave supporting weight.

p.390
Lying down: indicates disarmament and vulnerability. One withdraws into oneself. Thus it is startling to see someone go from standing (independence, control) to lying (vulnerability) quickly. The opposite transition proves how alive one is. Lying/falling down indicates an ill, wounded man.

p.393
Sitting and squatting on the ground: indicates absence of need, turning in on oneself. Contentment, self-containment, like a sac. Contains both wealth and poverty in same message.

p.394
Kneeling: active powerlessness (as opposed to lying down, which is passive powerlessness). Supplication, offering of one’s neck to a superior. Form of flattery, indulging another’s sense of power.

Possible names: Head Cheerleader, Thinking Cap, Drinking Cap, Salary Cap, Peopoll, Peopel

A question arose whether the to make the hats automatically (remotely activated via radio), or self-activated (the user hits a button to activate their own hat).

Nancy suggested starting with high-school students, rather than going directly to football stadiums.

Different designs depending on target market. This is basically a marketing project. Re-designing a simple product for different markets.

Thinking Cap: for High School students
-teaching device
-take fact memorization and make it fun
-students answer questions through hats (multiple buttons, create multiple sound/light responses from hat)
-sell to LeapFrog

Thinking Cap: for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire type game shows
-audience participation device
-audience asked to help game show participant answer question
-light up hats or make honking sounds to indicate suggested answer

Thinking Cap: Nascar version
-seperate sounds & announcements for different emotions
-stadium can light up all red with specs of blue, etc.

Other questions:
Does the message spread like an epidemic? For example, one person lights their hat red, another person sees the crowd all becoming red, and tries to spread his own blue virus. the individuals in the crowd compete for control of the color or sound of the whole.

How to indicate intensity of emotion or response? When people are yelling or booing in a crowd, they generally do it longer to indicate the severity of their excitement or disapproval. Longevity indicates intensity.

Colors must be correct. In other words a yeah for a team with a blue logo must result in the cap turning blue.

Hat must not fall off. Must be weight stabilized.

Inspiration from “Log” in Ren & Stimpy – using a simple product, and recontextualizing it over and over.

Talk to Yousef Birnboim mailto:yousef@birnboim.com about his research into making products for stadium entertainment and the barriers to entry therein.

Mobscene is an attempt to turn people into pixels, and turn a moving crowd-into a moving image.

The following is a brief lead-up to Mobscene where I will make obvious generalizations which are necessary to lay the foundation for this project, but are not sufficient to prove my theories correct. That is not my intent.

A powerpoint presentation that accompanies this short description can be found at http://amostle.com/mobscene/MobsceneHalfway.ppt

BACKGROUND

Historically, the visuo-spatial organization of crowds has followed a parallel path to the evolution of communications technology.

Starting with word-of-mouth type organization, people were instructed to show up at a particular location at a particular time. This led to the sort of crowd organization we refer to as the rally. The rally topological model is used for events such as Hitler’s Nuremberg rally of 1934, the annual Mass Gymnastics in North Korea, and other stadium stunts. A rally’s spatial topology is generally rigid and crystallized.

The next step towards decentralization is the cult-like organization with a clear leader in a hierarchical relationship with his followers. This sort of organization is generally smaller and more intimate. There is a looser structure to the spatial topology, and also to the way the participants interact.

What we consider to be more modern forms of mass activity have taken a looser form. Participants in concerts or raves tend to be thrown together spatially in a more-or-less ad hoc fashion. These semi-random organizations of people of course have their own clusters and subgroups, but in generally they appear looser and more informal. What is currently considered more interesting visually are such loosely-held organizations.

The use of technology to mediate crowd organization has tended to augment, rather than supplant, the traditional forms of crowd organization. Hence we have projects like Golan Levin’s Telesymphony, which is a very top-down model of rigid, crystallized organization. Flash Mobs represent an example of using flexible modern technology for the same old end – instructing people via email to show up at a given time and a given place. However the spontaneous nature of the organization Flash Mobs makes it unlike Telesymphony or rally-type organizations.

Pac-Manhattan promised a new use of cell phones. Although not a crowd organization, the Pac-Manhattan team used cell phones to instruct participants dynamically and reactively. The technology allowed for meaningful spatial movement on a moment-by-moment basis.

MOBSCENE CONCEPT

Mobscene is an attempt to combine the sponteneity of Flash Mobs with the reactive dynamics of Pac-Manhattan. The use of cell phones will allow a crowd to spontaneously self-organize to form a moving image.

Participants use their cell phones to obtain up-to-date information about the overall image the crowd is producting, and how then can help organize it. Based on the technological hierarchy of SMS, MMS, AIM, and speech, participants will have varying amounts of information about the group, and their own participation in it, based on which technology they choose to use.

NETWORK CHARACTERISTICS

Nodes: The nodes are the participants.

Protocols: existing SMS, MMS, AIM, and speech protocols, all via cellphones. In addition, pure speech between participants on the ground allows them to organize themselves.

Transport: the existing cell phone network handles all transport except pure speech, which requires no transport other than sound pressure.

Contents: text messages, multimedia messages, text chat, and voice are used, where available to transmit images, advice, and text instructions to participants on the ground. The content between people on the ground is left open-ended.

Addresses: phone numbers.

Topology: ad-hoc, loose.

STACK:

Application layer: Participants request information via their chosen protocol. Respondents in a control room react by transferring images, instructions, are simple guidance to participants. Participants talk or yell to each other on the ground however they wish.

Transmission layer: All application layer processes rely on the existing cell-phone transmission layer, or pure unadultered speech.

Physical layer: cell phones and people.

VISUAL EXPLANATION

please see the power point presentation linked at the top of this document.

PREDICTIONS

I expect the technological hierarchy (which cell phone technology the participants choose to use) to lead to a social hierarchy. This will be the result of the discrepancy in the abilities of the different protocols to transmit information. In other words, MMS, which includes images and other visuals, will allow a participant to request a copy of the whole image of the crowd. From this, they will make judgements about where they are located within the image, and where they should move to in order to change the picture. In contrast, a participant with SMS, will be restricted to text instructions about what to look for, or where to go. This will lead to limited independence of SMS users. They will rely on users with more information, such as those with SMS for instructions. The participants with the most information will end up instructing the surrounding participants as a result of their information superiority.

I expect voice to be at the top of the information hierarchy. Although MMS should provide rich media information. It seems as if there is nothing more efficient than human speech for dynamic, reactive communications.

RESULTS

Through a series of experiments, I found that SMS, MMS, and AIM are not suitable for real-time dynamic organization of crowds. The potential latency in transmitting the messages proved to be so great as to be of no use whatsoever for this project. In a series of tests using SMS, MMS, and AIM between two Cingular phones and one Verizon phone, it seemed that there was no correlation between the carrier and the latency. A few messages took half a day to be received. While most were received within a minute or two, there were enough outliers to disprove the feasibility of using these technologies.

In a sense, the disproof of the first prediction suggests another reason to believe in the second prediction. The fact that cell phone messaging technologies are not ready for dynamic instant communications, leads one to conclude that speech is still the best, most efficient, way for communicating in real-time. My indended prediction was that even if there were technologies that were capable of real-time messaging, speech would still be the preferred means of communication. This remains to be seen.

Notes on the introduction to “Theories of Group Behavior”, Brian Mullen, George R. Goethals (Eds.) (1987). New York: Springer-Verlag

p.6
Topographical Aspects of Groups
Topographical aspects include group size, density, and interrelatedness of group members. It can be thought of as the type of information one might try to obtain from a photograph.

It has been noted that free-forming groups tend to be small (mean size of 3, range of 2-7 people).

Density, proximity, and crowding are all features resulting from the mere number of people in a group.

Density = a measure of the number of people divided by the area they occupy.
Proximity increases with density given a constant area.
Crowding is a reaction to increased density. Crowding is perceived when increased density is accompanied by a perceived loss of control.

p.7
Bossard found that the number of possible symmetrical relationships (PR) between two individuals in a group is PR = (N²-N)/2

Kephart found that the number of possible relationships bewteen an individual and a sub-group, or between two sub-groups in a given group is PR = (3^N – 2^N-1 + 1)/2
This means that the complexity of a group increases drastically with the number of individuals. It might add reasons of efficacy and convenience to the noted tendency of people to form subgroups of “us” and “them” rather than viewing each individual as a seperate entity. The “us” and “them” distinction can be stimulated or exaggerated by differences such as gender (McGuire & McGuire, 1982), handedness , attitudes (Gerard & Hoyt, 1974), and roles (Mullen, 1983; Wegner & Schaefer, 1978).

A communications perspective characterizes a group in terms of who communicates, or shares information, with who.
An example is the adjacency density, which is a calculation of the percentage of all possible links which actually do exist in a given network.

Adjacency Density = a/[N(N-1)/2]
where a is the number of links between group members, and N is the number of group members. You can see this is based on Kephart’s formula. It is a measure using the group as the basic unit of analysis.

p.8

The centrality index is an index of the interrelatedness of a group member. Unlike adjacency, centrality uses the individual as the basic unit of analysis.

Centrality Index = Σd_jk/Σd_xk
where d_jk is the shortest distance between any two group members, and d_xk is the shortest distance bewteen group member x and any other group member.

Centrality measures the connectedness of an individual to all others. An individual with a high centrality index communicates with most people. Individual satisfaction is highest at positions of high centrality. A high centrality is only possible in a group of low adjacency since centrality is a relative quantity – a high adjacency leads to an even centrality across individuals.

p.10
Temporal Aspects of Groups
Temporal aspects are changes in a group over time. They can be thought of as the sorts of things you might notice listening to a tape recording of a group.

Members must change together in order to be seen as a group – covariation.

p.11
Most researchers looking into the temporal phases of group activity have artificially created groups and then halted them at a various phases in their development. Most groups follow the general phases set out by Tuckman (Tuckman, 1965; Tuckman & Jensen, 1977):

forming = group concerned with orientation and defining tasks and requirements.
storming = a phase of polarization and conflict, dissatisfaction with the group or individuals within the group.
norming = conflicts are resolved, and members agree on members’ tasks and requirements.
performing = members actively strive toward goals, and work toward task achievement.
adjourning = the group is expected or required to disband upon task completion.

Steiner analyzed groups at the performance phase (Steiner, 1972).
Blake & Mouton halted groups in order to study cooperation and competition (Blake & Mouton, 1979).

References

Blake, R.R., & Mouton, J.S. (1979) Intergroup problem solving in organizations: From theory to practice. In W.G.Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Bossard, J.H.S. (1945). Law of family interaction. American Journal of Sociology, 50, 292-294

Gerard , H.B., & Hoyt, M.F. (1974). Distinctiveness of social categorization and attitude toward ingroup members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 836-842.

Kephart, W.M. (1950). A quantitative analysis of intragroup relationships. American Journal of Sociology, 55, 548.

McGuire, W.J., & McGuire, C.V. (1982). Significant others in self-space: Sex differences and development trends in the social self. In J. Suls (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on the self (vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Mullen, B. (1983). Operationalizing the effect of the group on the individual: A self-attention perspective. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 295-322.

Steiner, I.D. (1972). Group process and productivity. New York: Academic Press.

Tuckman, B.W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63, 384-399.

Tuckman, B.W., & Jensen, M.A.C. (1977). Stages in small group development revisited. Group and Organizational Studies, 3, 419-427.

Wegner, D.M., & Schaefer, D. (1978). The concentration of responsibility: An objective self-awareness analysis of group size effects in helping situations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 147-155.