Groups Flashcards
power of the social situation
- Central idea of social psych
- how people think, feel, and behave is driven to surprisingly large degree by social situation
- Ex. We are like fish in a current – our behaviour can be strongly affected by a powerful current – but at first, we might not even notice we’re in it!
- Social psych provides map of currents
Stanford Prison Experiment
- normal college students -> sadistic guards and passive prisoners
- key things at work:
- power of situation
- subjective perception
- deindividuation
SPE: subjective perception
- Prisoners powerless, guards can do whatever they want
- Prison had psychological reality -> even though they knew where they really were, they were reacting to the situation as though it were real
- compare to objective reality: Basement of Stanford Psychology Building
SPE: deindividuation
- Group identity overrides individual identity
- More likely when high anonymity
- Ex. uniforms, sunglasses, numbers instead of names
SPE: methodological issues
- Demand characteristics/Experimenter expectancy effects may have occurred (people doing what they thought Zimbardo wanted)
- Small sample size (9 participants)
- Couldn’t be completed due to ethical issues
Parallels between SPE and Vancouver riots
- Power of situation, deindividuation, etc.
- Allocation of blame – even normal people got caught up and did crazy things, bad things weren’t necessarily done by bad people
Estimating Group Contributions Study (Schroeder et al): What did they do?
conducted studies of groups to see if people would accurately estimate their own contributions
Estimating Group Contributions Study (Schroeder et al): What did they find?
- the bigger the group, the bigger the overestimation of one’s own contributions
- if you have to also consider other’s contributions, overclaiming of your own is reduced
- self-esteem isn’t related to overclaiming
Estimating Group Contributions Study (Schroeder et al): Why did they find what they did?
- the bigger the group, the easier it is to overlook people’s contributions -> people rely more on their own egocentric assessments of contributions (and remember, your own contribs. are more available/salient)
- thinking of other’s contribs. reduces egocentrism
- overclaiming happened even for tasks that didn’t matter (ie. hand-grip task)
deindividuation: trick-or-treat experiment
- Trick-or-treaters were told to take 1 candy, and then left alone
- Groups (vs. Solo trick-or-treaters) more likely to take extra
- Kids who were asked their names and where they lived also less likely (familiarity created, reducing deindividuation)
advantages of groups
- Teams produce more high-impact work than solo individuals -> this trend is increasing over time
- Larger pool of knowledge
- Check each other’s errors
groups do well when:
- They listen to the group member who knows the most (even if they don’t talk the most)
- Groups need to figure out who knows what, and make a plan for harnessing that knowledge
- There is a clear right answer
- ex. Intellective tasks: ones with a right answer, like anagrams (ex. AISYR -> SYRIA), NOT judgmental tasks/judgment calls (ex. How many Syrian refugees should Canada accept?)
groups go astray when:
- Failure to listen to most knowledgeable group member
- Failure to share unique info (Groups tend to spend the most time discussing info they share/have in common)
- Group polarization: members’ initial shared beliefs before more extreme (ie. Polarized) as a result of group interaction -> Not inherently bad, but can produce problematic outcomes
“C”
- collective intelligence of a group
- How well group performs across wide variety of tasks
C study (Wooley et al): what did they do?
randomly assigned people to groups and asked them to perform a variety of tasks (ex. Solving puzzles, brainstorming, negotiating over limited resources, etc.)
