Lecture 8 - Intragroup and Intergroup Processes

Question 1

What is a group in Social Psychology?

Answer 1

In social psychology, groups refer to at least two people who share common characteristic/s or goals that are socially meaningful to themselves or others.

Question 2

In Social Psychology, what does it mean when we talk about interdependence?

Answer 2

Group interdependence refers to the extent to which each members thoughts, feelings and actions influence and impact the others.

Question 3

What are the two subcategories of interdepence that are referred to in social psychology?

Answer 3

Task interdependence and Social Interdependence.
Task inderdependence refers to the extent to which members are reliant on each other for the mastery of certain material goals through collective performance.
Social interdependence refers to the extent to which members are reliant on each other for feelings of relatedness, connection, respect and acceptance.

Question 4

What are some of the types of groups focused on in social psychology?

Answer 4

Primary or intimacy groups - e.g. family and friends - primary role these groups serve is social interdependence.
Secondary or task groups - e.g. sports group, debate group, work colleagues - main concern/importance is task interdependence, but social interdepence can influence task success/performance.

Question 5

What is one of the most famous models/theories of Group Formation used in Social Psychology?

Answer 5

Tuckman’s 1965 theory of group formation (generally new groups) involves five steps:
1. Forming - people come together and try and understand the structure/hierarchy of the group - usually facilitated by a group organiser
2. Storming - negotiation and conflict - can be task and relationship and process conflicts - generally relationship and process conflicts can be quite detrimental, but task conflicts can eventually be beneficial and drive progress, growth, creativity etc, unless also accompanied by relational and process conflict
3. Norming - once conflicts start to settle and resolve, norms start to appear, people feel a stronger sense of belonging/membership and trust in other members
4. Performing - Members feel committed to the group and performance is at highest - there is a large exchange of information, conflicts that do arise are resolved for efficiently and effectively
5. Adjourning - in this stage there is dissolution of the group, e.g. because the group fulfilled their role/goal. This can be a difficult time if the group has become part of the members’ identity.

NB: Not all groups go through these phases, and also these phases are not always linear. There can be regression etc.

Question 6

According to Tuckman’s 1965 theory of Group Formation, when is group performance at its peak?

Answer 6

During the Performing stage of group formation, rather understandably.

Question 7

What is Group Socialization?

Answer 7

Group socialisation refers to the cognitive, behavioural and affective changes that occur for people as they join and leave pre-existing groups.
Moreland and Levine (1988) propose three phases of these changes and social influences from both the new member and the existing members.
1. Investigaton: the new member gathers information about the group and vice versa.
2. Socialization: The group attempts to mould the new member into one of them, to make a ‘team player’. In this process the new member begins to adopt the norms, internalise group knowledge and becomes committed.
3. Maintenance: once the new member has gone through socialisation they then take on a specific role and feel committed to engaging in and acting out the role, at least in the context of the group.

Question 8

What is Social Facilitation and what was one of the seminal works that studied this phenomenon?

Answer 8

Social Facilitation refers to the phenomenon that people perform better when there are other present.
Triplett (1898) was one of the first to examine this is in a scientific way, using his ‘competition machine’.

Question 9

Why was Triplett’s theory of social facilitation revised after Markus’ 1978 experiment?

Answer 9

Markus (1978) performed an experiment where people performed two types of tasks; one familiar and one novel (putting on shoes or dressing in clothes that were novel and complicated). They performed these tasks under three conditions: with someone present, with someone watching them or alone. What they found was that performance of the task was improved for the familiar task, but impaired for the unfamiliar task.
I can really relate to this, thinking about starting a new job.
This finding lead to the revising of Triplett’s theory of Social Facilitation: the presence of others improves performance if the task is familiar, and impairs performance if the task is unfamiliar.
i.e. the influence of social faciliation is task-specific.

Question 10

What is Social Loafing and what was one of the seminal studies that looked at this phenomenon?

Answer 10

Social Loafing refers to the tendency to exert less effort on a task if you are in a group. A seminal work in this area was done by Latane et al. (1979) looking at the loudness of clapping and cheering when people were alone or in a group, finding that as group size increased volume decreased for both clapping and cheering.

Question 11

What are some ways to decrease likelihood of social loafing?
Four ways discussed.

Answer 11

Some ways to decrease social loafing are:
1. Decrease group size.
2. Improve the actual task by making it interesting and more involved.
3. Increase accountability.
4. Increase commitment to or identification with the group.

Question 12

Is Social Loafing more common in Collectivist or Individualistic cultures?

Answer 12

Social Loafing is more common in Individualistic cultures.

Question 13

What is de-individuation?

Answer 13

De-individuation refers to the psychological state where the group norms and values are more salient than a person’s individual norms and values.

Question 14

What was one of the seminal works discussed in the lecture that looked at de-individuation in groups?

Answer 14

In 1979 Johnson and Downing performed an experiment where they had participants dress up in either a nurse or klan uniform and then either have a face covering (mask for nurse, hood for klan uniform) or not and then they had these participants engage in a Milgram-like experiment where they had to deliver “shocks” to other participants in a “learning task”.
What they found was that those in the nurse uniform delivered less shocks, and even less when they had the mask on. On the other hand, those wearing the klan uniform delivered more shocks and even more shocks when they had the hood on.
The interpretation of these results was that when we decrease individuation through having people where uniforms that represent membership to a group with well-established norms and values they are more likely to engage in behaviour that is in aligment with those norms and values and are more likely to do this when they are are even less individuated (As in the case of when they wore face coverings).

Question 15

What is meant by intergroup processes?

Answer 15

This term refers to the psychological processes that occur when we become and are members of a group.

Question 16

What is Social Categorisation?

Answer 16

Social categoristation refers to the psychological process of categorising people into groups, stereotypes, identities based on common or perceived characteristics.

Question 17

What is self-categorisation?

Answer 17

Self-categorisation refers to how we categorise ourselves in reference to others and whether we are part of the same or different groups. We perceive ourselves as representative of a group and as others as representative of their group, as opposed to us all being individuals.
When self-categorisation occurs in the extreme, there can be de-individuation, where a person loses sight of their individual values and beliefs and becomes enmeshed with the group values and beliefs.

Question 18

What is Doise’s Category Differentiation model (1978)?

Answer 18

My understanding is that in this model the similarities between group members are accentuated and the differences between groups are highlighted, increasing the sense of us and them.
When previously unlabelled points/characteristics are made salient and part of group membership classifications, then the similarities between group member are accentuated and the differences between different groups are accentuated. This results in, often arbitary, distinictions between people that have real-world influences on peoples’ experience of life.

Question 19

In a study done by Platz and Hosch (1988) what were they looking at and what were their findings?

Answer 19

In this study they looked at Texas store clerks of different races - Anglo-America, African-American, and Mexican-American. Using confederates of these different races as customers, they wanted to see the effect of race on whether the store clerks would remember the customers. What they found was that the clerks had a higher accuracy of remembering the customers if they were of the same race as them.
This was evidence for the idea that we are more able to remember individuals and identify them/see more characteristics that make up their unique identity when they are a part of the same racial group.

Question 20

What is one of the main, and often damaging, consequences of Social Categorisation?

Answer 20

The generation of Stereotypes.

Question 21

Define Stereotypes and Stereotyping.

Answer 21

Stereotypes are a result of social categorisation. Stereotypes are a cognitive representation of the traits, characteristics and beliefs about a certain group. Whilst not the same as prejudice, stereotypes are where prejudice arises from.
Stereotyping is the cognitive process of viewing someone through the lens of a preconceived idea of what it means to be a member of a certain group.
Stereotypes can be automatically activated, such as perceiving just gender and automatically adjusting perception of an individual.

Question 22

What is an Implicit Association Test?

Answer 22

Implicit Association Tests (IATs) were first presented by Greenwald et al. (1998) and are an implicit measure of associations between social categories and other concepts.
They measure our implicit attitudes, such as self-esteem or prejudice, or stereotypes.
They work by measuring the response time to correctly responding to words associated with different group memberships and concepts given the rules of the task. An example would be, tap your left hand if a man’s name or a word associated with career appears on the left, and tap your right hand if a woman’s name or a word associated with family appears on the right. Response times are measured and then measured again with the concept words are switched. If there is an implicit attitude to associated men with career and women with family then the response times in the second round will be longer than in the first round/or the measure of error.

Question 23

What was the study done by Duncan in 1976 that looked at how we view behaviour based on stereotypes and what were the findings?

Answer 23

Duncan (1976) did a study where one confederate shoved another confederate in such a way where it was ambigous as to whether the shove was playful or aggressive. The shover and shoved confederate were either African-American or Anglo-American. Anglo-American participants observed this shove and then were asked whether they thought the shove was aggressive or not. When the shover was African-American then the white participants were much more likely to say that the shove was aggressive than when the shover was white. This was evidence for the stereotypes that white americans have about black americans, namely that black people are aggressive.

Question 24

Stereotypes spill over into prejudice and discrimination. In terms of cognition (beliefs), attitudes and behaviour describe the difference and association between stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination.

Answer 24

Stereotypes are the beliefs we have about people based on their membership to a group.
Prejudice refers to the attitudes (generally negative) we have toward people based on the stereotypes we have of their group membership.
Discrimination refers to negative behaviour exhibited and directed toward people based on their group membership, which is initiated by prejudice, which in turn is generated from stereotypes.
NB: Positive prejudice can still lead to negative discrimination.

Question 25

What is Ingroup Favouritism?

Answer 25

Tendency to value ingroup members more favourably than outgroup members (valuing me and mine).

Question 26

Ingroup favouritism occurs under minimal conditions. What was the study done by Tajfel et al (1971) that demonstrated this?

Answer 26

Tajfel et al (1971) did an experiment where they showed participants two paintings - a Klee and a Kandinsky and asked them which one they liked more. Once they had chosen they were then allocated to a group of either Klee or Kandinsky fans. They never met any of the other members or knew who they were. They were then given a number of points or resources and asked how many they wanted to allocate to certain individuals, knowing their group membership. It was found that people were more likely to allocate more points/resources to those that were in the same group as them, despite never having met these other members.
This provided evidence for the fact that the mere creation of categories elicits ingroup favouritism.

Question 27

Why is ingroup favouritism such an automatic and strong cognitive process?

Answer 27

Well, it can be looked at in many ways, one of which is understanding that people want to feel good about me and mine/themselves and to this end want to view the group they are a part of as good. It can also easily be understood as coming down to evolution and survival. Valuing and looking after our group will boost the likelihood of their, and in turn, our survival.

Question 28

In terms of groups, what drives to going from us AND them to us VS them?

Answer 28

Competition and perceived threats.

Question 29

What is the Realistic Conflict Theory proposed by LeVine and Campbell, 1972?

Answer 29

Levine and Campbell’s theory states intergroup HOSTILITY arises from competition among groups for scarce (and this valuable) material resources.

Question 30

What was the study done by Taylor and Moriarty in 1987 that looked at ingroup favouritism?

Answer 30

They looked at how race influenced intergroup ratings based on whether there was competition within a task or not. What they found was that ingroup favouritism was higher when the task involved a comepetion. That is, competition increases ingroup favouritism.

Question 31

What is Integrated Threat Theory?

Answer 31

Proposed by Stephan and Stephan (1985), this theory takes into account that it is not just scarcity or competition for material things that causes hositility between groups, but rather hositility can also be driven by conflicting or differing beliefs and values, such as religion, known as SYMBOLIC THREATS.
Integrated Threat Theory also takes into account how competition, or perceived competition, can increase hostility between groups. But also adds another level beyond symbolic and material threats, which is intergroup anxiety. Intergroup anxiety refers to the perception of threat, that may not even be present, and the anxiety that arises from interacting with members of outgroups, which may result in ridcule, embarrassment or rejection.

Question 32

What is intergroup anxiety?

Answer 32

Intergroup anxiety refers to feelings of perceived threat between groups that may not be present, but due to this feeling of us and them it is perceived.

Question 33

In a meta-analysis looking at the effect on realistic, symbolic and anxiety threats on attitudes toward outgroups, what was the take away from the meta-analysis done by Riek et al. (2006)?

Answer 33

They found that perceived and actual realistic, symbolic and anxiety threats were positively correlated with negative outgroup attitudes.

Question 34

What is Social Identity Theory?

Answer 34

SIT refers to the idea that we have both a personal and social indentity. Our group identity has significant effects on how we perceive outgroups and can lead to stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination.
Even under minimal categorisation conditions ingroup favouritism is exhibited.
We value our group over outgroups as a way of valuing me and mine and ensuring survival.
In the presence of competition and threat intergroup hostility in exacerbatecd.

Question 35

What are some of the benefits observed when different groups have more contact with each other?

Answer 35

The more contact groups have with each other the less prejudice they express toward each other.
This contact is more effective in reducing prejudice when the groups have equal status and there is no competition.
Pettigrew and Tropp (2008) propose that this decrease in prejudice as a result of contact between groups occurs because contact allows people to gain more knowledge (first-hand knowledge) of other groups, anxiety is reduced as experience with members of other groups provides experiential evidence that this anxiety is not necessarily necessary, and lastly intergroup contact increases empathy and perspective taking, all of which decrease intergroup prejudice.

Question 36

What is extended contact when talking about intergroup prejudices?

Answer 36

Extended contact refers to knowing that other members of your group have friendly relationships with outgroup members. Extended contact has similar, perhaps mitigated, effect of decreasing outgroup prejudices as having direct contact between groups.

Question 37

Looking at extended contact what was the study done by Wright et al. (1997)?

Answer 37

This study looked at the effect of extended contact on outgroup prejudices. They did this by creating groups based on “personality” of participants and labelled them blue and green. They then had a member from each group (confederates) engage with each other either in a hostile, friendly, or neutral way in front of other group members and then had the members rate both their ingroup and the outgroup member based on traits and performance.
What they found was that in the neutral condition ingroup members were rated more favourably (ingroup favouritism).
In the hostile conditions the ingroup members were rate more favourably than outgroup members and in the friendly condition ingroup and outgroup members were rated with similar favourablity. This shows the effect of extended contact dexreasing likelihood of intergroup prejudice.

Question 38

What effect do Shared Goals have on intergroup prejudice?

Answer 38

Having shared goals (that are valued by all groups and where all groups have equal status and the groups are successful) can decrease intergroup prejudice and improve cooperation and acceptance and shared humanity.

Question 39

What does the Robber’s Cave experiment done by Sherif et al. (1961) tell us about how shared goals influence intergroup prejudice?

Answer 39

In this experiment, it is found that when there is a superordinate goal (where team members have to work together to achieve a common goal) decrease intergroup prejudices.

Question 40

How can changing cognitive categorization decrease intergroup prejudice and what is one of the seminal works that looked at this?

Answer 40

The semial work was that done by Gaertner et al. (1989) where participants were put into groups and then came together to do a task. There were three conditions prior to the task. 1) The group stayed as separate groups, 2) the groups came together and were now considered one group, 3) everyone was told they were no longer part of a group but would be working as individuals.
They then evaluated how participants rated other participants.
As expected, when the groups stayed as separate groups ingroup favouritism was observed, but when participants were considered part of one group or as individuals ingroup favouritism decreased significantly.
These findings provided evidence for the idea that changing people’s cognititve representation of groups/categorizations can change attitudes and appraisals of outgroup members.

Question 41

What is the out-group homegeneity effect?

Answer 41

When people view outgroup members being all the same.