Mediating Communication within and between Population Groups

Abstract

Four small groups, each composed of three racial categories, and varying along the dimension of conservative to radical, met In one-hour weekly sessions to discuss fundamental change in South Africa. Group 1 was the most conservative politically, Group 2 was the most radical, while Groups 3 and 4 had more moderate ideas about political change. During Sessions 1 and 2 the members of the groups were instructed to focus on clarifying their own opinions and ideas about changing South Africa, as they communicated with each other. The groups were then made more heterogeneous by intermingling of Groups 1 and 2, and Groups 3 and 4, and met for Sessions 3 and 4 during which they were instructed to focus on walking in each other's shoes. All discussion sessions were mediated by using group sensitivity techniques to facilitate communication.

The discussion sessions were all tape-recorded and, after being transcribed, a reliable scoring manual was constructed to code the interaction patterns between members into eight categories which could be used as indices to measure changes In effective communication. The quantitative results Indicated that there were significant directional changes in four of these indices from Session 1 to Session 2, and in six of these indices from Session 3 to Session 4. While the relatively fast change groups showed more change from Session 1 to Session 2, the combination of the two moderate rather than the two extreme groups showed more improvement in communication from Session 3 to Session 4. The groups also produced 20 workable, consensual suggestions for constructive change in South Africa. These findings, which reveal that skilled mediation in supportive group dynamic atmospheres can facilitate and improve communication transmission, are interpreted in the light of an outflow theory of perception.