Group Dynamics Ch 8 Flashcards
Social Power
The capacity to produce intended effects in interpersonal contexts.
Obedience
Compliance with authoritative directives pertaining to a given situation, including changes in behaviour in response to instructions, orders, and demands issued by those with authority.
Power Bases
Sources of social power in a group, including one’s degree of control over rewards and punishment, authority in the group, attractiveness, expertise, and access to and control over information needed by group members (originally described by John French and Bertram Raven).
Reward Power
Power based on control over the distribution of rewards (both personal and impersonal) given or offered to group members.
Coercive Power
Power based on the ability to punish or threaten others who do not comply with requests or demands.
Agentic State
A psychological state that occurs when subordinates in an organized status hierarchy experience such a marked reduction in autonomy that they are unable to resist authorities orders (proposed by Stanley Milgram).
Legitimate Power
Power based on an individuals socially sanctioned claim to a position or role that includes the right to require and demand compliance with his or her directives.
Referent Power
Power derived from social relationships between individuals, including identification with, attraction to, or respect for another person or group.
Charisma
From the Greek xarisma (a divine gift of grace), the ascription of the extraordinary or supernatural acumen, ability, and value to a leader by his or her followers.
Expert Power
Power based on the belief that an individual possess superior knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Informational Power
Power based on the potential use of informational resources, including rational, argument, persuasion, or explanation.
Power Tactics
Specific strategies used to influence others, usually to gain a particular objective or advantage.
Foot-in-the-door technique
Influencing a person by extracting compliance to a small initial request before then making the second, more substantial, request.
Pecking Order
A stable, ordered pattern of individual variations in prestige, status, authority among group members.
Bullying
Repetitively teasing, ridiculing, provoking, or tormenting others through various type of irritating, harassing, or aggressive actions, such as name-calling, threats, insults, and physical injury.
Expectation-States Theory
An explanation of status differentiation in groups, which assumes that group members allocate status to group members judged to be competent at the task at hand and to group members who have qualities that the members think are indicators of competence and potential.
Specific Status Characteristics
In status characteristics theory, task-specific behavioural and personal characteristics that people consider when estimating the relative competency, ability, and social value of themselves and others.
Diffuse Status Characteristic
In status characteristics theory, general personal qualities such as age, race, and ethnicity, that people consider when estimating the relative competency, ability, and social value of themselves and others.
Status Generalization
The tendency for individuals known to have achieved or been ascribed authority, respect, and prestige in one context to enjoy relatively higher status in other, unrelated, contexts (e.g., celebrity who exercises influence on a group even though this diffuse status characteristic is not relevant in the current group context.
Solo Status
The state of being the only group member who is representative of a specific social category in an otherwise homogenous group (e.g., a man in an all female group).
Iron Law of Oligarchy
The principle of political and social control that predicts that, in any group, power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals (an oligarchy) who will act in ways that protect and enhance their power (described by Robert Michels).
Interpersonal Complementarity Hypothesis
The predicted tendency for certain behaviours to evoke behaviours from others that are congrous with the initial behaviour, with positive behaviours evoking positive behaviours, dominant behaviours evoking submissive behaviours, and submissive behaviours evoking dominant behaviours.
Approach/Inhibition Theory
An integrative conceptual analysis of the transformative effects of power that finds power to be psychologically and behaviourally activating but the lack of power inhibiting (posited by Dacher Keltner and his colleagues).
Bathsheba Syndrome
The tendency for high-status members to claim unfair and inappropriate privileges and honours, including predacious sexual activities.
Revolutionary coalition
A subgroup formed within the larger group that seeks to disrupt or change the groups authority structure.
Lucifer Effect
The transformation of benign individuals into morally corrupt individuals by powerful, but malevolent, social institutions; named for the biblical character Lucifer, an angel who fell from grace and was transformed into Satan (proposed by Philip Zombardo).
