SOCIOMETRY

measurement techniques used in social psychology, in sociology, and sometimes in social anthropology and psychiatry, based on the assessment of social choice and interpersonal attractiveness. The term is closely associated with the work of the Austrian-born psychiatrist J.L. Moreno, who developed the method as a research and therapeutic technique. Sociometry has come to have several meanings; it is most commonly confined to the quantitative treatment of preferential interpersonal relations, but it is also used to mean the quantitative treatment of all kinds of interpersonal relations. The emphasis may be psychological or sociological. A sociometric measure assesses the attractions (and sometimes the repulsions) within a given group, usually by having each member of the group specify other persons in the group with whom he would (or would not) like to participate in a given activity. Many variations on this technique exist for studying different aspects of social preference. Much work has focused on the concept of sociometric status. This includes studies of leadership; of social adjustment, ranging from the social isolate, or unchosen individual, to the sociometric star, or highly chosen; of the relationship between sociometric status and other personality variables, demographic variables, and intelligence; and of minority-group prejudice.