Chapter 7

Question 1

What is a group?

Answer 1

Two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as “us”.

Question 2

What is social facilitation?

Answer 2

• strengthening of dominant responses owing to the presence of others

Question 3

Why is our arousal increased in the presence of others?

Answer 3

• Evaluation apprehension
• Driven by distraction
• Mere presence

Question 4

What kinds of behaviour does social facilitation enhance or impair?

Answer 4

• enhances easy/simple behaviour

* impairs complex/difficult behaviour

Question 5

What is social loafing?

Answer 5

• tendency for people to exert less effort when they’re pooled than when they are individually accountable

Question 6

Which scenarios promote social loafing or social facilitation?

Answer 6

PROMOTES SOCIAL LOAFING
• individual efforts pooled + no evaluation
• lack of evaluation apprehension leads to relaxation

PROMOTES SOCIAL FACILITATION:
• individual efforts evaluated increases apprehension/arousal
• belief that their individual effort matters

Question 7

What were the results of Calhoun’s rat colony crowding study?

Answer 7

• rat colony lives in a quarter acre pen
→ population stabilizes at about 150

• divides pen into 4 sections
→ 2 largest males each claimed one section along with a small harem of females
→ rest of the colony lived in terribly overcrowded conditions

•  breakdown in mating and nest building
→ eating of the young
→ random an inappropriate aggression
→ others passive and withdrawn
→ infant mortality 80%
→ adults showed marked signs of stress related illness and premature death

Question 8

What is a primary territory?

Answer 8

• occupant has exclusive control

Question 9

What is a secondary territory?

Answer 9

• shared with others but there is still exclusionary control

Question 10

What is a public territory?

Answer 10

• uncontrolled areas used by whoever is first to arrive

Question 11

Why do people mark out territories?

Answer 11

• sense of security, predictability and control
• sense of importance
• self identity and uniqueness
• protection from those who are feared or disliked

Question 12

What is deindividuation?

Answer 12

• doing together what we would not do alone

* loss of self awareness and evaluation apprehension when the situation allows one to feel anonymous

Question 13

What conditions are needed to create a mob mentality?

Answer 13

• deindividuation combined with high states of arousal and a diffusion of responsibility
• disinhibits violent and unacceptable behavior

Question 14

How do riots occur?

Answer 14

• there must be convergence i.e. a certain type of person who would incite socially unacceptable behaviour
• their actions spread throughout the crowds by means of contagion
• creates a norm of callousness or cynicism; illusion of consensus for violence and extreme acts

Question 15

What are positive and negative examples of convergence?

Answer 15

POSITIVE
•  cheering at sporting events
•  spring break behaviour
•  Mardi Gras
•  pop icons

NEGATIVE
•  riots and mobs
•  lynchings
•  wartime atrocities
•  police beatings
•  road rage
•  escape panics

Question 16

What are symptoms of groupthink?

Answer 16

• overestimating the group’s might and right
→ illusion of invulnerability
→ unquestioned belief in group’s morality

• close-mindedness
→ rationalization
→ stereotyped view of opponent

•  pressures toward uniformity
→ conformity pressure
→ self-censorship
→ illusion of unanimity
→ mindguards

Question 17

How to prevent groupthink?

Answer 17

• be impartial
• assign a devil’s advocate
• subdivide the group
• invite critiques from outside experts
• call a “second-chance” meeting to air lingering doubts
• enhance group problem-solving

Question 18

How does one enhance group problem-solving?

Answer 18

• combine group and solitary brainstorming
• have group members interact by writing
• incorporate electronic brainstorming

Question 19

What is task leadership?

Answer 19

• goal-directed or goal-oriented type of leadership
• good when you need to stay focused on goals and move as a unit toward common objectives
• can be compared to dictatorships

Question 20

What is social leadership?

Answer 20

• good at getting members of the team excited about their task, increasing energy, inspiring team spirit, and reducing conflict
• democratic type of leadership
• high performing teams

Question 21

What is transactional leadership?

Answer 21

• also known as managerial leadership
• focuses on the role of supervision, organization and group performance
• promotes compliance of his/her followers through both rewards and punishments
• effective in crisis and emergency situations, as well as for projects that need to be carried out in a specific way

Question 22

What is transformational leadership?

Answer 22

• inspire positive changes in those who follow
• connecting the follower’s sense of identity and self to the project and the collective identity of the organization
• challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work

Question 23

What are some findings that evaluation apprehension explains?

Answer 23

• people perform best when co-actor is slightly superior
• arousal lessens when a high-status group is diluted by opinions that don’t matter as much to them
• social-facilitation effects are greatest when others are unfamiliar and hard to keep an eye on

Question 24

What factors promote deindividuation?

Answer 24

• Group size
• Physical anonymity
• Arousing and distracting activities

Question 25

What is group polarization?

Answer 25

• group-produced enhacement of pre-existing tendencies

* strengthening members’ average tendency

Question 26

How does informational influence explain group polarization?

Answer 26

• hearing someone else’s argument adds to the ones you have already
• active participation produces more attitude change than passive listening

Question 27

What is groupthink?

Answer 27

• mode of thinking where concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action