Chapter 9 - Group Processes - Influence in Social Groups Flashcards
Group
Two or more people who interact
and are interdependent in the
sense that their needs and goals
cause them to influence each other
Social Roles
Shared expectations in a group
about how particular people are
supposed to behave
Group Cohesiveness
Qualities of a group that bind
members together and promote
liking between them
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
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
Deindividuation
The loosening of normal constraints
on behavior when people
can’t be identified (such as when
they are in a crowd)
Process Loss
Any aspect of group interaction
that inhibits good problem solving
Transactive Memory
The combined memory of a
group that is more efficient than
the memory of the individual
members
Groupthink
A kind of decision process in which maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic manner
Antecedents of groupthink
- The group is highly cohesive:
- Group isolation: The group is
isolated, protected from hearing
alternative viewpoints. - A directive leader: The leader
controls the discussion and makes
his or her wishes known. - High stress: The members
perceive threats to the group. - Poor decision-making
procedures: No standard methods
to consider alternative viewpoints.
Symptoms of groupthink
a) Illusion of invulnerability: The group feels it is invincible and can do no wrong.
b) Belief in the moral correctness of the group: “God is on our side.”
c) Stereotyped views of out-group: Opposing sides are viewed in a simplistic, stereotyped manner.
d) Self-censorship: People decide not to voice contrary opinions so as not to “rock the boat.”
e) Direct pressure on dissenters to conform: If people do voice contrary opinions, they are pressured by others to
conform to the majority.
f) Illusion of unanimity: An illusion is created that everyone agrees—for example, by not calling on people known to disagree.
g) Mindguards: Group members protect the leader from contrary viewpoints.
Consequences of group think
- Incomplete survey of alternatives: The group fails to consider all other possible viewpoints and outcomes.
- Failure to examine the risks of the favored alternative: Discussion focuses on the good things expected to happen, at expense of considering bad things that might.
- Poor information search: The group selectively relies upon information that supports its viewpoint.
- Failure to develop contingency plans: Overly confident in its decision, the group does not consider a Plan B (or C or D).
How to make group think less likely
- Remain impartial. A leader should not take a directive role but should remain impartial.
- Seek outside opinions. The group should invite outside opinions from people who are not members and who are thus less concerned with maintaining group cohesiveness.
- Create subgroups. A leader can divide the group into subgroups that first meet separately and then meet together to discuss their different recommendations.
- Seek anonymous opinions. A group might also take a secret ballot or ask members to write down their opinions anonymously; doing so ensures that people give their true opinions, uncensored by a fear of recrimination from the group.
Group Polarization
The tendency for groups to make
decisions that are more extreme
than the initial inclinations of
their members
Why does group polarisation occur?
- persuasive arguments interpretation - all individuals bring to the group a set of arguments supporting their initial recommendation. One aspect of being in a group is that you might be exposed
to persuasive arguments you hadn’t thought of before. - social comparison interpretation - when people discuss an issue in a group, they first check out how everyone else feels. What does the group value: being risky or being cautious? In an effort to fit in and be liked, many people then take a position that is similar to everyone else’s but even just a little bit more extreme. In this way, individuals support the group’s values and also present themselves in a positive light—as “good” group members.
Great Person Theory
The idea that certain key personality
traits make a person a good
leader, regardless of the situation
Transactional Leaders
Leaders who set clear, short-term
goals and reward people who
meet them
Transformational Leaders
Leaders who inspire followers to
focus on common, long-term goals
Contingency Theory
of Leadership
The idea that the effectiveness of a leader depends both on how task or relationship-oriented the leader is and on the amount of control the leader has over the group
Task-Oriented Leaders
Leaders who are concerned
more with getting the job done
than with workers’ feelings and
relationships
Relationship-Oriented Leaders
Leaders who are concerned
more with workers’ feelings and
relationships
Social Dilemma
A conflict in which the most beneficial
action for an individual will,
if chosen by most people, have
harmful effects on everyone
Tit-for-Tat Strategy
A means of encouraging cooperation by at first acting cooperatively but then always responding the way your opponent did (cooperatively or competitively) on the previous trial
Negotiation
A form of communication between opposing sides in a conflict in which offers and counteroffers are made and a solution occurs only when both parties agree
Integrative Solution
A solution to a conflict whereby the parties make trade-offs on issues, with each side conceding the most on issues that are unimportant to it but important to the
other side
• Why Do People Join Groups?
The need to belong to groups may be innate. Groups also allow us to accomplish difficult objectives, serve as a source
of information about the social world, and are an important part of our social identities. People are sensitive to rejection from groups and do what they can to avoid it. Groups also make people feel distinctive from members of other groups.
Describe how individuals perform differently when others are around.
- Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us - When people’s individual efforts on a task can be evaluated, the mere presence of others leads to social facilitation: Their performance is enhanced on simple tasks but impaired on complex
tasks.
• Social Loafing: When the Presence of Others Relaxes Us When people’s individual efforts cannot be evaluated, the mere presence of others leads to relaxation and social loafing: Performance is impaired on simple or unimportant tasks but enhanced
on complex tasks.
• Gender and Cultural Differences in Social
Loafing: Who Slacks Off the Most? - Social loafing is more prevalent among men than women and more prevalent in Western than Asian cultures.
-• Deindividuation: Getting Lost in the Crowd The mere presence of others can also lead to more serious consequences such as deindividuation, the loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people are in crowds.
Compare the decision-making outcomes of
individuals versus groups, and explain the
impact of leadership in group outcomes.
• Group Decisions: Are Two (or More) Heads Better Than One?
- Process Loss: When Group Interactions Inhibit Good Problem Solving
- Group Polarization: Going to Extremes
- Leadership in Groups
Summarize the factors that determine whether individual and group conflict will escalate or be resolved.
- Social Dilemmas These occur when the most beneficial action for an individual will, if chosen by most people, have harmful effects for everyone. A commonly studied social dilemma is the prisoner’s dilemma, in which two people must decide whether to look out for only their own interests or for their partner’s interests as well. Creating
trust is crucial in solving this kind of conflict, and a variety of situational factors can render individual
cooperation more likely.
• Using Threats to Resolve Conflict Research has found that using threats tends to escalate rather than resolve conflicts, even more so when both sides have equal threat capacity.
• Negotiation and Bargaining When two sides are negotiating and bargaining, it is important to look for an integrative solution whereby each side concedes the most on issues that are unimportant to it but are important to its adversary.
Zimbardo standford prison study 1971
• Guards –Abusive – Verbally harassed, humiliated prisoners • Prisoners – Passive – Helpless – Withdrawn Parallel events at Abu Ghraib prison (Iraq), where US military guards systematically abused and humiliated prisoners.
baumeister and leary 1995
A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being
Eisenberger 2012 - emotional pain
can retreat emotional pain with panadol! taking painkillers actually assists in feeling less emotional pain indicating there is similar areas of the brain being activated.
Minimal Group Paradigm
Tajfel, Flament, Billig& Bundy (1971).
Mere assignment to groups has been found to produce discrimination.
• Created arbitrary groups with no contact and no history
• 14 year old Bristol schoolboys shown slides of pairs of modern art, had toindicate preference
• Assigned to group (Klee-preference or Kandinsky preference) and given a number
• Asked to allocate points (money) to unknown members of own and othergroup members using matrices
• It is important that the task is ambiguous. Participants could interpret it in many ways.
RESULTS:
- participants will give more to their in-group then out group but didn’t take the maximum and didn’t give the minimum, tried to be fair but a little bit more to the in group, just wanted to make positive of hteir group.
– Participants favoured members of their own group
– This was tempered by a fairness norm
– Participants frequently sacrificed higher ingroup profits in favour of relative gainover the outgroup
• Mere categorisation is sufficient for discrimination
GROUP MIND - LEBON 1895 -
through anonymity people felt like htey could do anything.
- also through contagion
- through suggestibility
Related to social idenity theory - when you categorise yourself as part of the group you start behaving like the rest of the group.
FLOYD HENRY ALLPORT - believed indiviudal in the crowd behaves just as he would alone only more so.
SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY - why do people discriminate on the basis of group membership - Tajfel, Turner 1979.
group memberships form part of our identity - our self-esteem is tied up in our identifications
- Social identity derives from group memberships
group memberships form part of the self-concept - People are motivated have a positive self-concept
self-esteem partly derives from group memberships. - Can perceive the group more positively through favorable comparisons with other groups.
motivated to make own group look better than other groups.
Describe early v more recent views of crowd
Early views of the crowd:
– As its own entity, a wild animal, to which individuals are subverted (LeBon)
– As the sum of the individuals who comprise it (F.H. Allport)
• More recent view –crowd as rational
• Deindividuation as explanation for behaviour in groups. Stanford Prison, for example.
- Group cohesiveness is particularly important for a group when
a. the group has formed for primarily social reasons.
b. the group’s primary objective is problem solving.
c. the group is diverse in terms of gender but not when it is diverse in terms of race.
d. financial decision making is involved.
a? a. the group has formed for primarily social reasons.
The presence of others can lead to social facilitation or social loafing, what variables distinguish the 2?
evaluation, arousal, and the complexity of the tasks.
Describe social faciliation
Presence of others: 1. - Individual efforts can be evaluated v - alertness - evaluation-apprehension - distraction/conflict v - arousal which leads to: - enhanced performance on simple tasks - impaired performance on complex tasks
Describe social loafing
Presence of others: - individual efforts cannot be evaluated v - no evaluation apprehension v Relaxation v - Impaired performance on simple tasks - enhanced performance on complex tasks
Gender and cultural differences in social loafing: who slacks off the most?
- tendency to social loaf stronger in men than women
- Women tend to be higher than men in relational interdependence, which is the tendency to focus on and care about personal relationships with other individuals.
- tendency to loaf is stronger in Western cultures than Asian cultures, which may be due to the different self-definitions prevalent
in these cultures - Asians are more likely to have
an interdependent view of the self,
Are people more likely to social loaf with team members from same or different culture? and why?
people are more likely to loaf when they expect to work together with team members from a different culture
- This seems to occur because we more easily develop bonds and a
sense of accountability to similar others, and also come to expect less cooperation
from dissimilar others.
What does deindividuation lead to?
- makes people feel less accountable
- increases obedience to group norms
when is groupthink likely to occur?
- highly cohesive,
- isolated from contrary opinions, and
- ruled by a directive leader
deutch and kraus the trucking study
Deutsch and Krauss (1962) studied cooperation (and the lack thereof) by asking participants to play
a trucking game. In the game, players earned money by driving from one point to another as quickly
as possible. As in the image below, the shortest route required crossing a one-lane road, but both
companies could not use this road at the same time. When players were given gates they could use
to restrict the other player’s use of the one-lane road, both companies made even less money.
