group processes Flashcards
What is a group according to Johnson and Johnson (1987) ?
-“A group is two or more individuals in face-to-face interaction, each aware of his or her membership in the group, each aware of the others who belong to the group, and each aware of their positive interdependence as they strive to achieve mutual goals”
(R) What were the 7 points that Johnson and Johnson (1987) said?
1: Interaction with each other
2: Perceive themselves as belonging to group
3: Interdependent
4: Join together to achieve a goal
5: Satisfy a need through joint association
6: Interactions structured by roles and norms
7: Influence each other
(R) What is group entitativity?
-High entitativity = clear boundaries and are internally well-structured, interdependent
-Low entitativity = fuzzy boundaries and structure
What does Allport (1924) suggest?
-”If we take care of the individual, the groups will take care of themselves”
What are the types of groups according to Lickel et al., (2000)
-Strong interpersonal relationships
-Formed to fulfil tasks
-Groups based on large social categories
-Groups based on weak social relationships
-Transitory groups
Describe strong interpersonal relationships
-Families
-Small groups of close friends
Describe formed to fulfil tasks
-Committees
-Work groups
Describe groups based on large social categories
-Womens
-Americans
Describe groups based on weak social relationships
-People who enjoy Taylor Swift music
-People from same local area
Describe transitory groups
-People waiting at the bus stop
-People waiting the same queue
Describe minimal groups (Tajfel et al. 1971)
-Shows bias such as in group favouritism
-Split into 2 groups
-People allocated more money to their ‘own’ group than the other group
-Effect couldn’t be explained by self interest and existing friendships
What did Triplett (1898) find in regards to social facilitation?
-Observed track cyclists
-Found performances were faster when timed alone and timed alongside other cyclists
-Said that the presence of an audience made them do better
What principle did Allport (1920) come up with?
-Generalised effect called ‘mere presence’
-Entirely passive and unresponsive audience that is only physically present
-Improvement in performance due to mere presence of others
Describe the idea of social inhibition (Bond and Titus, 1983)
-Contradicts social facilitation
-Presence of an audience can impair performance for humans and animals
-E.g. complex task such as typing name backwards (Schmitt et al., 1986)
-E.g. Men take longer to urinate when someone is next to them (Middlemist et al., 1976)
Describe Zajonc’s Drive Theory (1965)
-Argued mere presence creates increase in arousal and energises dominant response, which is what is typically done in a situation
-If dominant response is correct (easy) = performance is facilitated
-If dominant response is incorrect (difficult) = performance is inhibited
Describe the idea of Evaluation Apprehension (Cottrell, 1972)
-The idea that rather than just having a mere presence, people are also judging you as well
-Approval and dissapproval based on others’ evaluations
Describe the study conducted by Cottrell et al. (1968)
-Blindfolded condition
-Merely present condition
-Attentive audience condition
-Found that social facilitation was there when there was attentive audience
Describe the study conducted by Markus (1978)
-Time taken to dress in familiar clothes (easy) compared to unfamiliar clothes (difficult)
-Alone condition, attentive audience condition and inattentive audience condition
-Attentive audience speeded up performance in easy task
-Not much difference in difficult task
Describe the study conducted by Schmitt et al. (1986)
-Asked ppts to type name or code backwards
-Mere presence of others made people perform simple task quicker and difficult task slower
-Adding in evaluation apprehension condition made little difference to typing speed
Describe the Distraction-Conflict Theory
-People become distracted and focused on what others are doing, resulting in them performing worse
What did Sanders et al. (1978) find in regards to this?
-Ppts completed an easy or difficult digit task
-Alone condition
-Someone doing same task/different task
-People performed worse when someone did same thing as them due to more distraction
What is The Ringelmann Effect?
-Also known as social loafing
-When in a group people tend to put less effort into tasks due to them believing that everyone in the group should take responsibility
What are the 2 reasons for this effect?
-Coordination loss - too much movement and jostling, can’t obtain full potential
-Motivation loss - ppts don’t try as hard
Describe the research done by Latane et al. (1979) into social loafing
-Recording amount of clapping, shouting and cheering noise made by a person (blindfolded)
-Reduced by 29% in 2 person groups
-Reduced by 49% in 4 person groups
-Reduced by 60% in 6 person groups
-Shows that being with an individual makes you perform less
Why does this occur?
-Output Equity - people lose motivation and put less effort in
-Evaluation Apprehension - only believe their efforts are being judged when acting alone
How do we reduce loafing?
-Identifiability - when people believe individual contributions to a task can be identified
-Individual responsibility - when people know they can make a unique contribution to task
How was this shown through replications across groups (Karau and Williams, 1993)?
-Effect is smaller for subjects from Eastern cultures
What is the Collective Effort Model (Karau and Williams, 1993) ?
-People put effort into a task when:
1: They believe their input will have an impact
2: If the task if likely to bring them something that they value e.g. grades, money etc.
What is group performance?
-Group behaviour can differ from behaviour of individuals
-How groups arrive at decisions and deals with problems isn’t an exception
What is group polarisation (Moscovici and Zavalloni, 1969) ?
-People discuss topics with those who are similarly minded, can strengthen attitudes
-Found that group discussions enhances French students positive attitude towards their president and enhanced already negative attitude towards Americans
What did McGlynn et al., (1995) find?
-When groups get together and critique each other ideas, they come up with better quality ideas
What did Mullen et al., (1991) find?
-More effective when small rather than large groups and if experimenter isn’t present to monitor the process
What is group problem solving?
-Ensure combination of group and individual brainstorming (Brown and Paulus, 2002)
What is groupthink (Janis, 1982) ?
-Where objections to poor group decisions are suppressed to maintain group harmony
What conditions does groupthink occur under?
-Stressful situation without clear and correct solution
-Cohesive group of like-minded people, cut off from external influences
What consequences are there of groupthink?
-Group doesn’t carry out adequate research
-Alternative options aren’t considered, group members cascade around same opinion
-Risks aren’t adequately assessed
