Chapter 9 - Group Processes Flashcards
What is a group?
2 or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense that their needs and goals cause them to influence each other.
Usually larger than 2, with 2 people sometimes referred to as a dyad
Why do people join groups? (4)
1) Allows us to accomplish objectives that would be more difficult to meet individually
2) Fulfils a basic need to belong
3) Helps to define who we are - the need to be unique. People also have the need to feel distinctive from those who do not belong to the same groups.
- can be done by using other people as sources of information, helping us resolve ambiguity about the nature of the social world
- provides a lens through which we can understand the world and our place in it, hence groups become an important part of our identity.
4) Helps us establish social norms, the explicit or implicit norms defining what is acceptable behaviour.
Why do people have the basic need to want to belong somewhere?
In our evolutionary past, there was a substantial advantage to establishing bonds with other people.
People who bonded together were better able to hunt for and grow food, find mates, and care for children.
Hence, it is argued that the need to belong has become entrenched in all societies, and people in all cultures are motivated to form relationships with other people and to resist the dissolution of these relationships.
People monitor their status in groups and look for any sign that they might be rejected.
Asked people to recall a time when they had been rejected by others → they estimated the temperature of the current room they were in to be 5 degrees lower than did people who were asked to recall a time when they were accepted by others.
How does belonging to a group help us define who we are?
Can use other people as sources of information, helping us resolve ambiguity about the nature of the social world.
Provides a lens through which we can understand the world and our place in it, hence groups become an important part of our identity.
Explain how one’s reasons for wanting to belong to a group can be a continuum. (like it isn’t 50% of this and 50% of that)
If you belong to an individualistic culture, chances are that this equilibrium point will be more skewed towards the need to be unique.
If you belong to a collectivistic culture, this equilibrium point will be more skewed towards the need to belong.
Each culture’s equilibrium is different.
What is the optimal group size? Why?
5-6
Can fulfill both functions by giving us a sense of belonging with our fellow group members and also making us feel special and distinctive.
Large groups: Might have a sense of belonging, but difficult to feel unique. Or that you find it difficult to fulfill both needs.
Distinguish between social norms and social roles.
Social norms: How all group members should act
Social roles: How people holding certain positions should act
How do group norms work in shaping behaviour within a group?
All societies have norms about which behaviours are acceptable, some of which all members are expected to obey (eg everyone should be quiet in a library) and some of which vary from group to group (eg what is appropriate to wear in weddings and funerals).
These norms are a powerful determinant of behaviour.
The power of norms to shape behaviour becomes clear when we violate them too often: We are shunned by other group members and, in extreme cases, pressured to leave the group.
Social roles are _______ expectations in a group about how particular people are supposed to behave
shared.
How do social roles help ease people into how they are supposed to behave?
People know what to expect from each other. When members of a group follow a set of clearly defined roles, they tend to be satisfied and perform well.
Provide an example about how people can get so far into a role that their personal identities and personalities get lost.
Stanford prison experiment
Was supposed to be held over 2 weeks, but was terminated after 6 days.
The students quickly assumed these roles
Guards became abusive and humiliated the prisoners. The prisoners became helpless, passive and withdrawn.
All these happened even though the students were aware that they were in a psych experiment and the prison was only make-believe.
However, the roles of guard and prisoner were so compelling and powerful that this simple truth was often overlooked.
People got so far into their roles that their personal identities and sense of decency somehow got lost.
Another criticism of this experiment apart from its obvious ethical issues: Participants were able to quickly figure out what the study was about and role-played in the manner that they thought was expected of them.
However, it is clear that it didn’t take coercion, bribery or weeks and weeks of training to prompt these guards and prisoners to slip easily into their roles and that, in particular, some of these student guards clearly and quickly took things too far.
Define group cohesiveness
Qualities of a group that bind members together and promote liking between them.
If a group’s main purpose is to meet up for social reasons and hang out with each other (LIKE SOOPREM KORT), how will cohesiveness play a part in bonding them?
The more cohesive the group, the better. The more its members are likely to stay in the group, take part in group activities, and try to recruit new like-minded members.
If the group’s main purpose is to solve problems together, the more cohesive the group, the better the solutions they produce. True or false?
False. You can say that solving problems well does allow members to be more cohesive, but the reverse is not true GENERALLY.
Distinguish between tasks that require close teamwork vs little teamwork in determining if the group will need to be cohesive to work on problems well together.
For work requiring little teamwork, cohesiveness isn’t a prerequisite for good problem solving.
However, if the work done requires much teamwork, then yes cohesiveness is required so that members will cooperate closely with each other.
What is the risk that comes with getting a closely-knit group to make decisions?
Cohesiveness can get in the way of optimal performance if maintaining good relations among group members becomes more important than finding good solutions to the problem.
In a group context, people like others who are similar to them more. True or false?
True
Most of the time, members of a group tend to be alike in age, sex, beliefs and opinions. (high homogeneity in groups)
Many groups tend to attract people who are already similar before they join.
Groups tend to operate in ways that encourage similarity in the members.
People tend to gravitate towards groups with similar others, and such similarity typically predicts group cohesiveness.
Discuss the role of diversity in decision making by groups using an example.
Study: College students were assigned to brainstorming groups ranging in size from 3-5. Half of these groups were comprised entirely of white students, and the other half of the groups were racially diverse.
They were all assigned the same task: to spend 15 minutes brainstorming ideas for how best to attract more tourists to USA.
At the end of each session, participants were asked how much they liked the other members of their group.
Members of all-White groups reported liking their fellow group members more than did members of diverse groups.
However, just because a group is cohesive does not mean it is performing at its optimal level.
The diverse groups had come up with more feasible and effective possibilities.
Participants may have enjoyed being in a group with similar others, but their performance was strongest when in a diverse group.
These findings are consistent with more general conclusions that while diversity (of all types, not just related to race), can sometimes can at the expense of a group’s cohesiveness and morale, a diversity of backgrounds or perspectives often predicts improved performance in terms of group creativity, information sharing, and flexible problem solving.
Explains why many companies and institutions currently spend effort and resources to achieve diversity in their ranks
Believe that it will lead to improved performance, whether in terms of learning environment or the corporate bottom line → in correlational terms, they are right.
If a diverse group were to work together, they would not resolve this differences over time and would not see themselves as similar in other aspects.
True or false?
false. if not we can’t coexist LOL
These groups manage to look past these differences and take pride in their diversity. Threats to cohesiveness and morale posed by diversity are usually short-term, lessening over time as group members learn to work with one other and even come to take pride in their group’s diversity.
Distinguish between social faciliation and social loafing
Social facilitation: can recognise individual efforts, so you do worse at complex tasks, but better at simple ones.
Social loafing: cannot recognise individual efforts, so you do worse at simple tasks but better at complex tasks.
Define social facilitation
When people are in the presence of others and their individual performance can be evaluated, the tendency to perform better on simple tasks and worse on complex tasks.
Discuss the role of arousal in social facilitation.
The presence of others increases physiological arousal (ie our bodies become more energized)
When such arousal exists, it is easier to perform a dominant response (eg something we are good at) but harder to do something complex or learn something new.
When performing a difficult task, arousal caused by people watching you will cause you to feel flustered and do less well than if you are alone.
Why do we experience heightened arousal in the presence of others? Explain 3 reasons, with one of them covering the concept of evaluation apprehension.
1) The presence of other people makes us more alert.
- When we are by ourselves reading a book, we don’t have to pay attention to anything else other than the book. Don’t have to worry that anyone will ask us a question, or do anything that prompts a response from us.
- However, when someone else is in the room, we have to be alert to the possibility that he/she will do something that requires us to respond. People are not very predictable either, hence we end up being in a state of greater alertness to prepare ourselves for the possibility that they will do something.
- This alertness, or vigilance, causes arousal.
2) People are often concerned about how others are evaluating them.
- When other people can see how you are doing, the stakes are raised: you feel as if the other people are evaluating you; you will be embarrassed if you do poorly and pleased if you do well.
- This concern about being judged, called evaluation apprehension, can cause arousal.
- According to this view, it is not the mere presence of others but rather, the presence of others who are evaluating us that causes arousal and subsequent social facilitation.
3) The presence of others can be quite distracting.
- Similar to the notion that we need to be alert in the presence of others, except that it focuses on the idea that any source of distraction - be it in the presence of other people or noise from the party going on in the apartment upstairs - will put us in a state of conflict because it is difficult to pay attention to two things at the same time.
- This divided attention causes arousal.
- Consistent with this interpretation, nonsocial sources of distraction (Eg a flashing light) can cause the same kinds of social facilitation effects as the presence of other people.
You should study in the presence of others. True/false?
You should do exams alone. True or false?
False for both
1) should not do so because the content is likely to be still challenging to us at that point at that point of time. In such situations, the arousal caused by the presence of other people will make it more difficult to concentrate.
The presence of our favourite TV characters (human characters or cartoon characters apply) also causes such arousal.
2) Depends on the situation. If the content is easy for you then you should do it in the presence of others as being beside them produces arousal that helps to improve your performance. but if it’s difficult then maybe you should do it alone.
What is social loafing?
When people are in the presence of others and their individual performance cannot be evaluated, the tendency to perform worse on simple or unimportant tasks but better on complex or important tasks. Being with other people can also mean that we can merge into a group, and we become less noticeable than when we are alone → we should feel relaxed, and thus feel less evaluation apprehension.
