Group Processes Flashcards
What is a group and why do people join?
A set of individuals who interact overtime and have shared fate, goals or identity.
It shapes identity, allows people to reach goals, choice reduces, emotional support, it tells you what to do.
What is an effect of not being in a group?
Social ostracism.
Peoples wellbeing and interconnectedness may reduce as a result of being excluded.
What is group cohesion and how are goals achieved?
The extent to which forces push group members closer together through feelings of intimacy, unity, and commitment.
Group goals and plans are better achieved with specific, reachable, challenging goals.
What were the effects of the Zimbardo Samford prison experiment?
Showed the extremity of peoples willingness to adopt roles; to the point were awareness of an experiment was removed. It became so personalised that identity was sacrificed and the experiment had to be stopped. This had lasting psychological effects.
How is status related to perception of roles, particularly through the lens of social comparison theory (Festinger)?
Some roles/role occupants/groups have more prestige than others. Festinger theorised that we hold others who successfully compete with us in higher regard.
How do norms underpin how groups function?
There are formal and informal rules of conduct that groups adhere to. They provide guidelines on how to behave as a typical group member. These norms then influence the individual in the absence of a group: they are carried in the head of the individual.
What is social facilitation?
A process whereby the presence of others enhances performance on easy tasks but impairs performance on difficult tasks.
What is Tripplets (1898) experiment into the effects of social facilitation?
People cycles faster when paced than when alone.
What is Zajonc’s (1965) drive theory (audience effects)?
Arousal drives energy to produce dominant responses (others’ mere presence produces social facilitation). If a task is perceived as subjectively easy, the presence of others enhances performance. On a subjectively perceived difficult task, the dominant response is often incorrect, and thus the presence of others impairs performance.
What is Cotrells evaluation apprehension theory (Audience effects)?
Attentive others produce a fear of evaluation.
Baron’s distraction-conflict theory (audience effects)?
There is attentional conflict when a distraction (either person or object) is present. When you are good at something, you are able to tune it out.
What is social loafing?
group-produced reduction in individual output on tasks where contributions are pooled
What did Ringlemann (1913) want to understand about performance varying as a function of group size?
Ringlemann wanted to understand if performance varied due to a loss of coordination or motivation.
How did Ingham rule out coordination as a variation in performance?
He used a rope pulling experiment and coordination did not change.
What did Latane find about social loafing?
He found that the larger the group the more an individual’s motivation was lowered thus the cause of social loafing.
