A New Round Robin Analysis of Variance for Social Interaction Data

Experimental social psychology has dealt primarily with situations that are not true social interactions; in a typical study, a subject responds to a fixed, artificial social stimulus such as a photograph, written description, or performance by a confederate. Although these artificial social stimuli provide experimental control over independent variables and can be analyzed using the types of statistical models originally developed for nonsocial experimental research, they provide little or no information about the interactive aspects of social behavior—the reciprocity or mutual contingency of the behavior of interaction partners. This paper describes a nonexperimental design specifically tailored to social interaction data that provides more information about individual differences and social influence in social interactions: a round robin design in which each person interacts with every other person. After a brief review of available models, a new and more general model for the analysis of social interaction data is presented, with an empirical demonstration using vocal activity data.