Echoes of power: Language effects and power differences in social interaction

Understanding social interaction within groups is key to analyzing online communities. Most current work focuses on structural properties: who talks to whom, and how such interactions form larger network structures. The interactions themselves, however, generally take place in the form of natural language --- either spoken or written --- and one could reasonably suppose that signals manifested in language might also provide information about roles, status, and other aspects of the group's dynamics. To date, however, finding such domain-independent language-based signals has been a challenge. Here, we show that in group discussions power differentials between participants are subtly revealed by how much one individual immediately echoes the linguistic style of the person they are responding to. Starting from this observation, we propose an analysis framework based on linguistic coordination that can be used to shed light on power relationships and that works consistently across multiple types of power --- including a more "static" form of power based on status differences, and a more "situational" form of power in which one individual experiences a type of dependence on another. Using this framework, we study how conversational behavior can reveal power relationships in two very different settings: discussions among Wikipedians and arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court.Comment: v3 is the camera-ready for the Proceedings of WWW 2012. Changes from v2 include additional technical analysis. See http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/www2012 for data and more inf

Weighted Banzhaf power and interaction indexes through weighted approximations of games

The Banzhaf power index was introduced in cooperative game theory to measure the real power of players in a game. The Banzhaf interaction index was then proposed to measure the interaction degree inside coalitions of players. It was shown that the power and interaction indexes can be obtained as solutions of a standard least squares approximation problem for pseudo-Boolean functions. Considering certain weighted versions of this approximation problem, we define a class of weighted interaction indexes that generalize the Banzhaf interaction index. We show that these indexes define a subclass of the family of probabilistic interaction indexes and study their most important properties. Finally, we give an interpretation of the Banzhaf and Shapley interaction indexes as centers of mass of this subclass of interaction indexes

Quebec hypnotherapists' social representations of hypnosis and power

Hypnosis appears as a practice that features practitioners who deliberately display their power and the power of their technique. During a therapeutic interaction, the actors involved will mobilize representations and knowledge related to their membership groups. The aim of this research was to highlight the hypnotherapist’s social representations of hypnosis and power. A qualitative research was carried out based on semi-structured interviews with hypnotherapist (n = 21) in private practice in Quebec (Canada). According to our data, we observed and interpreted hypnosis as a staging, where power games take place between the practitioner and client. A common hypnotic dialectic is articulated including words, representations and a narrative discourse of the hypnotic experience, definition and categorization of the hypnotic phenomenon. Also the results revealed three conceptions of power: a) power-resource; b) power-substance; and c) egalitarian power. Legitimacy is a prerequisite for the exercise of power by individuals and appeared as a central element of the research study on power. The search for legitimacy is carried out through strategies, games of power, that take place in the interaction at several levels of interaction. Legitimacy appears not as an objective fact, but rather as a feeling. In fact, not feeling legitimate fits into the intersubjective space and could be thought of in terms of an absence of recognition. The discourses of practitioners have proved relevant in the development of themes and have allowed for an original interpretation of hypnosis and power relations. This study can serve as a starting point for expanding and animating discussions on power, hypnosis, and on psychotherapeutic practices in general

Incoherent interaction of nematicons in bias-free liquid-crystal cells

We study experimentally the propagation dynamics and interaction of a pair of mutually incoherent nematicons: spatial optical solitons in nematic liquid crystals. In contrast to earlier studies, we consider a bias-free liquid-crystal cell and compare the soliton interaction in copropagating and counterpropagating geometries. We analyze the dependence of nematicon interaction on input power and observe a direct manifestation of a long-range nonlocal nonlinearity. Attraction of counterpropagating solitons requires higher powers and longer relaxation times than that of copropagating nematicons due to losses-induced power asymmetry of counterpropagating nematicons.Comment: 5 pages, z figure