Chapter 8 Group Processes Flashcards
What is a group?
A set of individuals who directly interact over time and have shared fate, goals, or identity.
Why do we form groups?
- Survival advantage
- The need to belong
Group Cohesiveness
The extent to which forces push group members closer together, such as through feelings of intimacy, unity, and commitment to group goals.
The more cohesive a group is, the more its members are likely to:
- Stay in the group
- Take part in group activities
- Try to recruit new like-minded members
Cohesiveness and group performance: PRO
If task needs close cooperation, cohesiveness helps group performance
Cohesiveness and group performance: CON
Cohesiveness can lead to narrow-mindedness and conformity, which can hinder performance
Social Facilitation
A process whereby the presence of others enhances performance on easy tasks but impairs performance on difficult tasks.
Three explanations for the arousal in social facilitation:
- Mere presence: Other people cause us to become alert and vigilant
- Evaluation apprehension theory: Other people make us feel apprehensive about how we are being evaluated
- Distraction-Conflict theory: Other people distract us from the task at hand
Mere presence hypothesis
The proposition that the mere presence of others is sufficient to produce social facilitation effects
Evaluation apprehension theory
A theory that the presence of others will produce
social facilitation effects only when those others are seen as potential evaluators.
Distraction conflict theory
A theory that the presence of others will
produce social facilitation effects only
when those others distract from the
task and create attentional conflict.
Social Loafing
A group-produced reduction in individual output on tasks where contributions are pooled.
Collective effort model
The theory that individuals will exert effort on a collective task to the degree that they think their individual efforts will be important, relevant, and
meaningful for achieving outcomes that they value.
Deindividuation
The loss of a person’s sense of individuality and the reduction of normal constraints against deviant behavior
What are factors that increase deindividuation?
- Unaccountability
- Increased obedience to group norms
- Anonymity
How can we counteract deindividuation?
- Increase self-awareness
- The presence of mirrors
- Large name tags
- Individualized clothing
Process loss
The reduction in group performance due to obstacles created by group processes, such
as problems of coordination and motivation
Additive task
The group product is the sum of all the members’ contributions.
Examples: donating to a charity or making noise at a pep rally
Conjunctive task
The group product is determined by the individual with the poorest performance (weakest link)
Examples: Mountain-climbing teams or an offensive line trying to protect the quarterback on a pass play in football.
Disjunctive task
The group product is (or can be) determined by the performance of the individual with the best performance
Example: best shot during team golfing
Process gain
The increase in group performance so that the group outperforms the individuals who make
up the group
Brainstorming
A technique that attempts to increase the production of creative ideas by encouraging
group members to speak freely without criticizing their own or others’ contributions
Group polarization
The exaggeration of initial tendencies
in the thinking of group members
through group discussion
Groupthink
A group decision-making style characterized by an excessive tendency among group
members to seek concurrence.
Ways to prevent group thinking:
- Remain impartial
- Seek outside opinions, from independent evaluators or experts
- Create subgroups
- Seek anonymous opinions
- Encouraging members to raise objections and concerns
- Assign one or more members to be a “Devil’s advocate”
How to reduce social loafing?
Make individuals accountable
When is social loafing most likely to not occur?
When…
1. the task is challenging, appealing, involving
2. group members are friends
3. big reward for effort
Why do groups make us do strange things?
- social facilitation
- social loafing
- Deindividuation
Transactive memory
A shared system for remembering information that enables multiple people to remember information together more efficiently than they could do so alone
