Centrality in social networks: ii. experimental results

Three competing hypotheses about structural centrality are explored by means of a replication of the early MIT experiments on communication structure and group problem-solving. It is shown that although two of the three kinds of measures of centrality have a demonstrable effect on individual responses and group processes, the classic measure of centrality based on distance is unrelated to any experimental variable. A suggestion is made that the positive results provided by distance-based centrality in earlier experiments is an artifact of the particular structures chosen for experimentation.