Group processes and individuals

Question 1

Group processes

Answer 1

A system of behaviours and psychological processes occurring between social groups.

Question 2

Social facilitation

Answer 2

The tendency for the presence of others to improve a person’s performance on a task.
Research in the area of social facilitation divides into two approaches:
Audience effect- examines the impact on individual behaviour that a passive audience has
Co-action effect- examines the impact on behaviour of being alongside others doing the same task

Question 3

Triplett (1897)

Co-action

Answer 3

He conducted the earliest research carried out on social facilitation
Procedure:
He studied a cyclist’s performance when alone and compared it with the same cyclist’s performance, when racing against another cyclist.

Findings:
The cyclist was slowest when he was only racing against the clock and not another cyclist

Conclusion:
He theorised that the faster times were because the presence of others made individuals more competitive.

Question 4

Triplett (1898)

Co-action

Answer 4

Studies the competitiveness of children.
Procedure:
In one condition- a child was given a fishing line and asked to wind it up as fast as possible
In the other condition- the children were in pairs but working alone

Findings:
Children performed much better in the paired condition

Conclusion:
Subsequent research led Triplett to conclude that the presence of others led to an increase in performance even in other, non-competitive situations. He largely allocated this to increased arousal.

Triplett’s experiments demonstrate the co-action effect

Question 5

Floyd Allport (1924)

Answer 5

Conducted studies in which participants sat either alone or with other participants and did a variety of tasks such as word-association tasks and simple math tests.

Findings:
People preformed better when in a group setting than when alone for the majority of tasks.

Question 6

Audience effect studies

Answer 6

Travis (1925) found that well-trained subjects were better at a psychomotor task in front of spectators.

However, Pessin (1934) found an opposite audience effect, subjects required fewer trials at learning a list of nonsense words when alone than when in front of an audience.

Question 7

Evaluation

Answer 7

De Castro (1994) studied how social facilitation affects eating habits. He showed that the presence of family and friends increased food intake to a greater level, in comparison to the presence of mere companions. This is possibly due to having less inhibitions to food intake when with familiar people.

Social facilitation has real life application

Other factors may influence social facilitation, such as affective factors. Cottrell (1968) believes that its not the presence of others that is important for social facilitation. but the anxiety of being evaluated by them. The presence of others triggers an acquired arousal drive based on evaluation anxiety.

Question 8

Social loafing

Answer 8

The tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working in groups than when working individually, to achieve a goal.

Question 9

Ringelmann (1913)

Answer 9

He found that members of a group tended to exert less effort in pulling a rope than individuals did alone.
The more people in a group, the less measured force of rope-pulling was used by some individuals.

It was replicated by Ingham et al (1974) using two types of groups:
1- real participants in groups of various sizes (like Ringelmann’s setup)
2- Pseudo- groups with only one real participant (where they pretended to pull on the rope)

Findings:
There was a decrease in the participants’ performance, with groups of participants who all exerted effort, facing the largest declines
The pseudo-groups were isolated from coordination effects since only one real participant was pulling, hence proving it was motivational loss instead of poor coordination that accounted for the performance decline.

Limitation:
This research could not establish proper cause and effect- it was not clear as to whether the findings was the result of the individuals in a group putting less effort or poor coordination within the group.

Question 10

Bibb Latané et al (1979)

Answer 10

They replicated previous social loafing findings.
Procedure:
They blindfolded male college students while making them wear headphones that masked all noise.
They were then asked to shout both in actual groups and in pseudo-groups in which they shouted alone but believed they were shouting with others.

Findings:
When participants believed one other person was shouting they shouted 82% as intensely as they did alone.
With five other shouting their effort decreased to 74%

Conclusion:
Increasing the number of people in a group reduced the relative social pressure on one person

Strength:
Supported by Karau and Williams (2001) who studied social loafing online. The main finding was that individuals were more likely to produce less effort if they felt that it would not contribute much to the overall group performance. Suggests the importance of social loafing n group settings.

Question 11

Factors that contribute to social loafing (only some)

Answer 11

Diffusion of responsibility:
The more people there are in a group, the greater the diffusion of responsibility and decreased feeling of personal accountability. The individual puts in less effort in the collective task, because they feel they will not be validly rewarded even if they put more work in.

Motivation:
More motivated individuals are likely to engage in social facilitation where as less motivated ones are more likely to engage in social loafing.

Dispensability of effort:
If it is perceived that others have better skills and abilities, the member can feel unimportant and lead to them to contribute little, if anything at all.

Question 12

Group decision-making

Answer 12

In our social nature there are many times when groups are required to make decisions, whether its a family deciding where to go on vacation or a government body making decisions on tax cuts.

Question 13

Group polarisation

Answer 13

Occurs when the group decision is more extreme that the original attitudes of members of the group.

Reasons why group polarisation occurs:

Normative social influence theory- group polarisation occurs because of an individual’s desire to be liked by the group.

Informational social influence theory- people tend to enter a discussion knowing there are alternate views and change their opinion favouring the side which provides more evidence in its argument. This mainly occurs when an individual is unsure in what they believe.

Question 14

Risky shift

Answer 14

As a result of group decision-making, both the group and the individual support a more risky decision.

Stoner (1961) used choice dilemmas an found the group decisions on average were riskier than that of the individual members.

Question 15

Groupthink

Answer 15

Making irrational and dysfunctional decisions spurred by the desire for cohesiveness in the group or the discouragement of dissent.

Factors that cause groupthink:
High group cohesiveness- members avoid argument and want to maintain unity at all costs

Structural faults- a closed leadership style (announces their view before discussion), group insulation (not exposed to alternative perspectives), over uniformity of social backgrounds/ ideology

Situational context- stressful external threats such as time pressures leads to quick decision-making.

Question 16

Group membership effects

Answer 16

Deindividuation

In group/ out group effect

Question 17

Deindividuation

Answer 17

Highlights that the transgression of general societal norms results from the anonymity of the person within a group or crowd. (Diener 1980)

Under such conditions, individuals may behave differently than they would when alone.

Social identity- The part of self-concept that depends on the groups to which we belong

Evidence:
Zimbardo (1969)- explored the role of anonymity on deindividuation.
He demonstrate it in a Milgram style study that required female Ps to deliver shocks to another participant.
One group, the ‘anonymous’ group wore white lab coats, and were kept away from the other Ps and were not referred to by their names
The other group wore their normal clothes, wore name tags and could be seen by other Ps
Both groups could see the ‘learners’ receive the shocks

Findings:
The group that were made to feel anonymous delivered shocks for twice as long as the control group without anonymity

Question 18

In-group/ Out-group effect

Answer 18

In-group- a social group of which a person psychologically identifies as being a member of.

Out-group- a social group with which an individual does not identify.

This allows to develop in-group bias whereby people favour their own group to the out-group in the way they evaluate them and behave.
At its worse, this can lead to discrimination and negative stereotyping.

These effects can be seen in several areas in life:
Politics- labor and conservatives
Social class- lower class and middle class
Catholics and protestants

Realistic conflict theory- when two groups with different interests compete for the same goal which can lead to prejudice. If they have the same interests they may be able to cooperate with the absence of prejudice.

Question 19

Social identity theory

Answer 19

According to the social identity theory, social behaviour is determined by the character and motivations of the person as an individual (interpersonal behaviour) as well as by the person’s group membership (intergroup behaviour).

Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem as groups give us a sense of social identity and a sense of belonging to the social world.

There are 3 key stages when we become a member of an in-group:

Social categorisation- where we categorise/ label ourselves. If we can assign people to a category then that tells us things about those people.

Social identification- by identifying to one group rather than another, we adopt that identity in our own and others’ eyes.
A student will act the way one is meant to act and will conform to the norms of the group.
There will be an emotional significance to our identification with a group, and our self-esteem will become bound up with group membership.

Social comparison- once we have categorized ourselves as part of a group and have identified with that group we then tend to compare that group with other groups.
If our self-esteem is to be maintained our group needs to compare favorably with other groups.
This is critical to understanding prejudice, because once two groups identify themselves as rivals, they are forced to compete in order for the members to maintain their self-esteem.