Groups Flashcards
Group think
Group decision making style characterized by an excessive tendency among group members to seek agreement
What kind of group process caused the Challenger explosion?
Group think - launched despite warnings
Group Polarization
Exaggeration of initial tendencies in the thinking of group members through group discussion
How do you avoid group think? (3)
Assign “devil’s advocates”, include outside opinions, create smaller groups
What is the “risky shift phenomenon” and what type of thinking causes it?
- Tendency of group members to decide on a more extreme course of action than they usually would
- Group polarization
Why does groupthink lead to poor decision making
Conformity processes
Why does group polarization lead to poor decision making?
Cognitive processes
Social facilitation
When in a group, your performance will either be enhanced or destroyed
Zajonc solution
- presence of others creates arousal
- Increased arousal -> performance of the dominant response
- Dominant depends on task (easy task, dominant response is usually correct & vice versa)
According to Zajonc, how would someone perform on a difficult task in front of others
Impaired performance
According to Micheals et al., how would a skilled pool player perform alone vs infront of others
Alone, good. In front of others, better
Is social facilitation exclusive to humans?
No
Results of Zajonc (1969) study on cockroaches and social facilitation
Simple track - pairs did better, in front of crowd did better
Complex track - alone did better, no crowd did better
Social loafing
Diffusion of evaluation in group (think own input cannot be tracked)
How do you reduce social loafing?
Find some way to point out the loafers
