ABSTRACT
In Games People Play, Eric Berne skillfully presented a series of amusing anecdotes to illustrate how people manipulate each other in order to achieve their own ends in social interactions. Notwithstanding that many of Berne's examples are of pathological behavior, the person's purpose in such games in both normal and abnormal interactions is to maneuver another person into a vulnerable position or to elicit from him behavior that will benefit the manipulator. The interconnectedness of outcomes for various possible interactions of two or more persons can be represented in matrix form. The structure of outcomes associated with the mutual response choices of persons in interaction may indicate the type and amount of power that each has over the other. Thibaut and Kelley have suggested that an index of interpersonal power can be measured by the extent to which one person can affect the range of outcomes the other receives.
