Sociometry and Familial Status-Role Relations

Abstract

One of the contemporary social psychology di­rections, sociometry, has played a vital role in small groups investigation. That direction was formed, de­veloped and widely applied in the first decades of 20th century by Moreno who was first of all con­cerned with primary, i. e. intimate, emotional rela­tions of people in small groups, emergence of fee­lings among group members such as sympathy and dislike, love and hatred, respect and contempt, the desire to be in mutual communication or isolation from each other, etc. With the help of sociometric method created and currently applied by Moreno the latter tries revealing such inter-group relations that are nearly not perceptible for  “naked eyes“ (to observe superficially), however they often have serious, sometimes also critical influence on people’s behavior and state of mind. And though there has been put forth the viewpoint that sociometry is not as efficient in family investigation as when studying other small and medium groups, nevertheless, family sociometric research is compulsory  and useful for investigating family psychology.