Chapter 8: Group Processes Flashcards
What is a Group?
It is a set of individuals
What are the characteristics of a group?
Involves direct interactions with each other over a period of time
Has joint membership in a social category based on sex, race, or other attributes
There is a shared fate, shared identity, or set of goals
What are Collectives?
These are people engaging in a common activity but having little direct interaction with each other
What is the Social Brain Hypothesis?
The unusually large size of primates’ brains evolved because of their unusually complex social world
What are the Stages of Group Development?
Forming Storming Norming Performing Adjourning
What is the Forming Stage of Group Development?
Members orient themselves to the group and act in polite and exploratory ways with each other
What is the Storming Stage of Group Development?
Members try to influence the group so that it best fits their own needs, become more assertive about direction, and what roles they want to play in the group. Conflict, hostility and excitement come with this stage
What is the Norming Stage of Group Development?
Members reconcile conflicts that emerge during Storming and they develop a common sense of purpose and perspective. They establish norms and roles and begin to feel more commitment to the group.
What is the Performing Stage of Group Development?
Members try to perform their tasks and maximize the group’s performance, operating within their roles in the group, and trying to solve problems in order to achieve their shared goals.
What is the Adjourning Stage of Group Development?
Members disengage from the group, distancing themselves from other members and reducing their activities with the group especially when benefits no longer outweigh the costs
What is the Punctuated Equilibrium Model?
Groups go through periods of inertia or relative inactivity until triggered by awareness of times and deadlines, which can cause a sudden shift in activity and dynamics
What are Roles in Group Processes?
They are a set of expected behaviors both formal and informal
What are the two types of roles in Group Processes?
Instrumental Roles
Expressive Roles
What are Instrumental Roles?
Roles which help people or the group achieve their task
What are Expressive Roles in Groups?
Roles of people who provide emotional support and maintain morale of the group
What are the two types of conditions in Groups?
Homogeneous Condition
Congruent Condition
What is a Homogeneous Condition?
When the group consists qof two individuals who were both strong on the same dimension
What is a Congruent Condition?
When members were strong in different dimensions, they performed better
What are Norms?
Rules of conduct for members, formal and informal
What is Group Cohesiveness?
Forces exerted on a group that push its members closer together through feelings of intimacy, unity, ad commitment to group goals
What is the Zajonc Solution?
There are three steps from presence to performance.
Presence of others creates general physiological arousal which energizes behavior
Strengthened dominant response enhances a individual’s tendency to perform
Quality of performance varies according to the type of task
What is Social Facilitation?
The presence of others facilitates the dominant response, not necessarily the task itself
What is the Mere Presence Theory?
It is the proposition that the mere presence of others is sufficient to produce social facilitation effects
What is the Evaluation Apprehension Theory?
A theory that the presence of others will produce social facilitation effects only when those others are seen as potential evaluators
What is the 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
Who proposed Social Loafing?
Bibb Latane
What is Social Loafing?
A group-produced reduction in individual output on tasks where contributions are pooled
How can Social Loafing be reduced?
When individuals believe that their own performance ca be identified and evaluated
When the task is important or meaningful
When individuals believe that their effort is necessary for a successful outcome
When the group expects to be punished for poor performance
When the group is small and cohesive
Which factors reduce Social Loafing?
Limit the scope of the project
Keep group small
Use peer evaluations
What is the Collective Effort Model?
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 they value
What is Social Compensation?
Increasing efforts on collective tasks to try to compensate for anticipated social loafing or poor performance of other group members
What is the Sucker Effect?
Not wanting to be a sucker who does all the work while everryone else goofs off, this results in poor performance
Who were the proponents of Group Mind?
Gabriel Tarde and Gustav LeBon
What is Group Mind?
Also known as Mob Behavior
Under the sway of the crowd, people can turn into uncontrollable mobs
What is Deindividuation?
The loss of a person’s sense of individuality and the reduction of normal constraints against deviant behavior.
What did Philip Zimbardo say about Individuation?
Arousal, Anonymity, and reduced feelings of Individual Responsibility together contribute to Individuation
What are environmental cues that make Deviant Behavior more likely to occur?
Accountability Cues
Attentional Cues
What are Accountability Cues?
The chances that individuals will commit deviant acts depend on accountability. When accountability is low, they may deliberately choose to engage in gratifying but usually inhibited behaviors
What are Attentional Cues?
These cues focus attention away from the self; reacts more to the immediate situation, reacts less to internal standards of conduct, and is less sensitive to long-term consequences of behavior
What is SIDE?
It is the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE)..
It is a model of group behavior that explains deindividuation effects as the result of a shift from personal identity to social identity.
What is Process Loss?
When a group performs worse than its potential
What are the types of Group Tasks?
Additive Tasks
Conjunctive Tasks
Disjunctive Tasks
What are Additive Tasks?
The group product is the sum of all the members’ contributions
What are Conjunctive Tasks?
The group product is determined by the individual with the poorest performance
What are Disjunctive Tasks?
Group product is determined by the performance of the individual with the best performance
What is Process Gain?
When groups outperform even the best members on some kinds of tasks
Who was the proponent of Brainstorming?
Alex Osborn
What is Brainstorming?
It is designed to enhance productivity of problem-solving groups.
It is the process by which all ideas are expressed. The more ideas, the better. Good/Bad ideas are welcome without criticism. All ideas belong to the group and are built on.
What factors reduce effectiveness of Brainstorming?
Production Blocking
Free Riding
Evaluation Apprehension
Performance Matching
What is Production Blocking?
It is a problem when people are waiting for their turn to speak and they forget what they have to say
What is Free Riding?
Some individuals may feel less motivated to work hard themselves
What is Evaluation Apprehension in Relation to Brainstorming?
People might worry about what other people will think about their ideas
What is Performance Matching?
Group members work as hard as they see others work
What is Risky Shift?
The tendency for groups to become riskier than the average of the individuals
When does Group Polarization happen?
When group discussion tends to enhance or exaggerate the initial leanings of the group
What are the causes of Group Polarization?
Persuasion Arguments Theory
Social Comparison Theory
What does the Persuasive Arguments Theory say?
The greater the number and persuasiveness of the arguments to which group members are exposed, the more extreme their attitudes become
What is the Social Comparison Theory?
Individuals develop their view of social reality by comparing themselves with others
What is Groupthink?
It is an excessive tendency to seek concurrence among group members; the need for argument takes priority over the motivation to obtain accurate information and make appropriate decisions
What are the characteristics of Groupthink?
High group cohesiveness
Group structure is in disarray: similar backgrounds, isolation from other people, directed by a strong leader, no systematic procedure for making and reviewing decisions
Situations are stressful: there is a sense of urgency and reassuring support from other group members is greater
What are the symptoms of Groupthink?
Group’s overestimation
Close-mindedness
Increased pressure toward uniformity
Defective decisionmaking
What are examples of defective decisionmaking?
Incomplete survey of alternatives, objectives, and to work out contingency plan
Failure to examine risks of preferred choice and to reappraise initially rejected alternatives
Poor information search
Selective bias in processing information at hand
What are examples of increased pressure toward uniformity?
Mindguards and pressure on dissenters
Self-censorship
Illusion of unanimity
What are the ways to prevent Groupthink?
Consult widely with outsiders
Encourage criticism and not take a strong stand early in the group discussion
Establish a strong norm of critical review: Devil’s Advocate and Second Chance Meeting
What is the Escalation Effect?
It is also known as Entrapment. It occurs we commitment to a failing course of action is increased to justify investments already made
What is Biased Sampling?
When a group fails to consider important information that is not common knowledge to the group. Inadequately informed, the group may make a bad decision
What is a Communication Network?
It defines who can speak with whom based on the group’s structure
What is Transactive Memory?
It is a shared system for remembering information together more efficiently than they can do so alone
What are characteristics of a group’s norms that can improve a group’s performance?
The norms need to emphasize independent, critical analysis
The norms need to allow for discussions of unshared information
What kinds of goals can improve group performance?
Goals which are specific, challenging, and reachable
Incentives must be in place when these goals are achieved
Under what conditions can teams be effective?
When they are interdependent for some common purpose and have some stability of membership
When the overall purpose is challenging, clear, and consequential
When the teams are small with clear norms, specific behaviors that are valued and unacceptable are defined
When there is a reward system with positive consequences for excellent team performance
When technical assistance and training are available to the team
What are Group Support Systems?
These are specialized interactive computer programs that are used to guide group meetings, collaborative work, and decision-making processes
How do Computerized Group Systems address problems of Groupthink?
Anonymous Input
Direct Role of the Leader is Reduced
Simultaneous Input is allowed
Non-assertive members are given a chance to speak up
There is a systematic agenda for information gathering and decisionmaking
Focus on ideas rather than people and relationships within the group
What is a Social Dilemma?
A situation in which a self-interested choice by everyone will create the worst outcome for the group
What is the Prisoner’s Dilemma?
One party must make a cooperative or competitive move in relation to the other party
If both parties compete, they both lose
If both parties cooperate, there are moderate gains.
If one cooperates and the other competes, the one who competes gets more
What is a Resource Dilemma?
How two or more people share a limited resource.
What is a Commons Dilemma?
If people take as much as they want for a limited resource that does not replenish itself, nothing will be left for anyone
What is a Public Goods Dilemma?
All individuals are supposed to contribute resources to a common goal
How can Social Dilemmas be solved?
Through Individual and cultural differences: being prosocial, having a cooperative orientation, trusting others, being a member of a collectivistic culture
Through Situational Factors: being in a good mood, successful experience managing resources and working cooperatively, exposure to unselfish models, and having reason to expect others to cooperate
Through Group Dynamics: acting as an individual rather than in a group, being in a small group rather than in a large group, sharing a social identity or being in a superordinate group
How can Structural Arrangements resolve Social Dilemmas?
Payoff/Reward structurer rewards cooperative behavior and or punishes selfish behavior
Resources can be removed from public domain and handed over to the private sector
Establish authority to control the resources
What are the types of Social Value Orientations?
Prosocial/Cooperative Orientation
Individualist Orientation
Competitive Orientation
What is the Prosocial/Cooperative Orientation?
An orientation which seeks to maximize joint gain or achieve equal outcomes
What is the Individualist Orientation?
An orientation that seeks to maximize their own gain
What is a Competitive Orientation?
An orientation that seeks to maximize their own gain relative to others
What factors promote and sustain escalation of between group conflict?
Group Polarization Process Pressure to Conform Escalation of Commitment Premature Use of Threat Capacity Negative Perception of "the other"
How does Group Polarization Process promote and sustain escalation of between-group conflict?
When a group goes through Group Polarization,there is a chance that there will be increasing extremity of group members’ attitudes and opinions
How does Pressure to Conform promote and sustain escalation of between-group conflict?
Group cohesiveness and groupthink can make it difficult for individuals to oppose the group’s increasingly aggressive position
How does Escalation of Commitment promote and sustain escalation of between-group conflict?
When it seeks to justify past investments through the commitment of additional resources
How does the Premature Use of Threat Capacity promote and sustain escalation of between-group conflict?
The premature use of threat capacity triggers aggressive retaliation
How does the negative perception of the other promote and sustain escalation of between-group conflict?
It promotes acceptance of aggressive behavior and enhances cohesiveness o the ingroup “us” against the outgroup “them”
When does Mirror Image occur?
When a group starts seeing the enemy as the enemy sees the
What is Dehumanization?
It is a perception that people lack human qualities or are “subhuman.” It is the ultimate version of “us” versus “them”
What is GRIT?
It is Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction. One group takes the first move toward cooperation by making an initial concession, waits for a response from the other side, and reciprocates that move.
Who was the proponent of GRIT?
Charles Osgood
What is an Integrative Agreement?
Both parties obtain outcomes that are superior to a 50-50 split; negotiators start at extreme positions and gradually work toward a mutually acceptable midpoint.
What is the Fixed Pie Syndrome?
It is a belief that whatever one won, the other one lost when in fact, each of them could have had the whole thing.
What is an Arbitrator?
A person who has the power to impose a settlement
What is a mediator?
A person who works with them to try to reach a voluntary agreement; can increase the likelihood of reaching a cooperative solution
What is the Western cultural assumptions of negotiation?
It is a business.
Rational and analytic arguments are used to make poihnts with ot contradiction.
Written contracts are binding, oral contracts are not
Current information are important and more valid.
Time is important and deadlines are set and adhered to.
What are the Eastern cultural assumptions of negotiation?
First, develop a trusting relationship
Arguments can be holistic, emotionality and contradictions are tolerated.
Oral contracts are meaningful to clarify intentions.
History and tradition are more valid. Information needs to be understood in its greater context.
Relationships must be built first.
Who proposed the Mere Presence Theory?
Norman Triplett
Who proposed the Stages of Group Development?
Bruce Tuckman
How do groups benefit from Superordinate Goals?
It can help establish a common ground between groups in conflict. It increases empathy. It enhances helpfulness and reduces aggression. It can also produce a superordinate identity.
Who proposed Groupthink?
Irving Janis
Who proposed the Punctuated Equilibrium Model?
Connie Gersick
Who proposed Process Loss?
Ivan Steiner
Who was the proponent of Process Loss?
Ivan Steiner
Who proposed Social Facilitation?
Charles Osgood or Norman Triplett
Who proposed the Mere Presence Theory?
Max Ringlemann
Who proposed Evaluation Apprehension Theory?
Robert Zajonc
Who proposed the risky shift?
Robert Cartwright
Who was the proponent of the Punctuated Equilibrium Model?
Connie Gersick
