week 8 groups Flashcards
What is a group?
• Definition: two or more people who share some common characteristic (or goal) that is socially meaningful to themselves or for others
Groups differ with regard to how much interaction & interdependence exists between members
what is interdependant of group
the extent to which each group member’s thoughts, feelings and actions impact the others
– Task interdependence: Reliant on each other for mastery of material rewards through performance of collective tasks
– Social interdependence: Reliant on each other for feelings of connectedness, respect, and acceptance
Types of groups
Primary or intimacy groups
• Family, circle of close friends
• Most concern for social interdependence
– But can solve problems and tasks together
Secondary or task groups
• Work teams, committees
• Most concern for task interdependence
– But social interdependence can influence performance
Group formation process
Typical (not invariable) stages of efforts to coordinate task and social interdependence
Tuckman (1965)
• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing
• Adjourning
Forming
• Individuals come together to form a group
• Members try to understand the nature of interdependence, group structure (e.g., hierarchy) and group’s goals
• Often facilitated by group leader who can articulate the above
Storming
Once nominally formed, negotiation occurs around roles and responsibilities
This can involve conflict (‘storm’)
• Task conflict – different views on content, structure and goals
• Relationship conflict – clashing personalities
• Process conflict – different views on strategies and tactics
Conflict can impact later performance and commitment (de Wit et al., 2012)
• Relationship and process conflict decrease performance
• Task conflict can increase performance if managed well
Norming
Once (if) conflict decreases, group norms emerge
• Norm: general tendencies of expected behaviour within groups
This stage is characterized by consensus, harmony, stability, commitment and cohesion and the development of a group-related social identity
• Disagreements are resolved into consensual norms
• Members feel sense of trust and liking
• Commitment to group is high
Performing
Members cooperate to solve problems, make decisions, or produce outputs
• Exchange of information
• Productive resolution of disagreements
• Continued commitment to group goals
Adjourning
Dissolution of group
• Group has fulfilled purpose or was set to end at a particular time
• Often marked by period of evaluating work, sharing feelings about group
• Dissolution of group can be stressful if commitment made it important identity for members
Group socialization: joining pre-existing groups
What if the group already exists?
Group socialization: cognitive, affective and behavioural changes that occur as individuals join and leave groups
Moreland and Levine (1988)
• Mutual processes
– Investigation: potential member seeks information about group; group seeks information about potential member
– Socialization: group tries to mold the individual into one of them – a ‘team player’; member acquires and internalizes group knowledge, adopts norms, becomes committed, form identity
– Maintenance: now a fully committed member, the individual takes on a specific role within the group
Social facilitation
Social facilitation: increase in the likelihood of highly accessible responses (and decrease in likelihood of less accessible responses), due to the presence of others
Triplett (1898)
• Presence of other improved task performance
Whether the presence of others will help performance depends on the task at hand:Markus (1978)
• Familiar task: putting on and taking off one’s own shoes
• Unfamiliar task: dressing and undressing in new, unfamiliar items of clothing
• Alone vs. mere presence (present) vs. attentive audience (watched) by
• Mere presence and being watched improves performance of familiar actions, but impairs performance of unfamiliar actions
Arousal and facilitation of the ‘dominant response’
The presence of others can increase arousal
• Evaluation apprehension
• Distraction
Increased arousal can lead to better performance for well-rehearsed, accessible responses (‘dominant responses’), but worse performance novel, complex, inaccessible responses (‘nondominant responses)
Social loafing
Social loafing: tendency to exert less effort on a task when done in a group than when alone
Latane, Williams and Harkins (1979)
• Clap or cheer as loudly as possible
• Alone or in a group
Reducing social loafing
• Change nature of the task
– Interesting, involving tasks show less loafing
• Increase accountability
• Reduce group size
• Increase commitment to or identification with group
– Cross cultural differences
– People from collectivist cultures show less loafing than those from individualist cultures
De-individuation: acting like a group member
De-individuation: psychological state in which group or social identity completely dominates personal or individual identity so that group norms become maximally salient
• One acts as a prototypical group member (not an individual)
Caused by anonymity, wearing uniforms, being in a crowd of group members
• By being just one among many similar others
Increases accessibility of group norms
• Decreases accessibility of personal standards
• Can produce negative or positive behavior
Acting on the basis of accessible group norms
Johnson & Downing (1979): Manipulated norms (positive/ negative) and anonymity
• Dressed as KKK or nurses
• Some outfits covered faces; other did not (change in anomality)
• Asked to deliver shocks in a learning task to learner
-uniform does effect the chance of giving shock, exacerbated by anominity
Why is social group important
• Influence what we think, feel and do
• Form one of the key bases of social perception
Social categorization
• Process of classifying and perceiving people as members of social groups/categories rather than as unique individuals
• Based on shared group characteristics
This process can be quite efficient and automatic
• Especially for certain features age, gender, ‘race’
• But also status, occupation, sexual orientation and more
Self-categorization
Self-categorization: process of seeing oneself as a group member
• Social identities are accessible
• In extreme form: de-individuation
This is likely when:
• Accessibility: We experience direct reminders of group membership (e.g., being called an Australian; University of Melbourne student)
• Salience: In the presence of outgroup members
– When in the presence of people who don’t belong to our groups
– In a minority
Consequences for perceptions of inter and intra group structure
Category differentiation model (Doise, 1978):
• Intergroup differentiation
• Within group homogeneity (especially for outgroups)
‘Group-ness’ is amplified
Outgroup homogeneity experiment
Cross-race identification bias (‘other race’ effect)
• Platz & Hosch (1988)
– Texas convenience store clerks
– Identification of customers
– Increased accuracy for own ingroup vs outgroups
Stereotypes
Stereotype: cognitive representation of impressions/expectancies about a social group (probable behaviors, traits, features) (cf. prejudice)
– Associate a group with a range of characteristics
• Stereotyping: process of viewing an individual in light of a stereotype
Stereotype Content Model (SCM;
Fiske et al., 2002)
Measurement based on warmth and competent
Activation of stereotypes
Stereotypes can be automatically activated
• Even the mere presence of a social category cue (e.g., category label, salient category feature) can be enough to activate (make accessible) a range of stereotype content
Implicit Associations Test (IAT; Greenwald et al.,1998)
• Implicit measure of associations between social categories and other concepts
– IAT has also been used to measure attitudes (e.g., prejudice and self-esteem)
Sterotype judgement
Stereotypes can bias judgments about individuals
• Change the way that ambiguous behavior is interpreted
Duncan (1976) Sterotype judgement
• White American participants witness an ambiguous shove (aggressive or playful) between confederates of different social categories
• Stereotype of group to which shover belonged influenced interpretation
• Aggression was (and perhaps still is) part of the African American stereotype; here it shapes interpretation of the ambiguous shove
Stereotypes, prejudice and
discrimination
• Stereotype: cognitive representations of impressions of groups that people form by associating the groups with particular characteristics (beliefs)
• Prejudice: positive or negative evaluations of a social group or its members (attitudes)
• Discrimination: positive or negative behaviour directed toward a social group or its members
Ingroup favouritism
We tend to have more favourable attitudes and behaviours towards the groups to which we belong than to groups to which we don’t belong
• Ingroups: groups to which we belong
• Outgroups: groups to which we don’t belong
Ingroup favouritism, ingroup bias, intergroup bias, intergroup discrimination
• Preference (in attitudes or behaviours) for ingroups over outgroups
Social Identity Theory (SIT),reason
® Our selves are composed of personal and group-related (social) aspects/identities.
® People prefer to have a positive self-concept (valuing me and mine) – in order to maintain positive self-esteem.
® We are motivated to increase the positivity of our own groups relative to outgroups.
Thus, we favour ingroups.
® In a sense, we value our group (mine) as a way of valuing ‘me’
The minimal conditions of us vs.
them thinking
• Ingroup favoritism occurs under minimal conditions
• Tajfel et al (1971)
– Klee or Kandinsky
– Point allocation task
– Ingroup favoritism
• Mere categorisation (based on minimal group conditions) elicited ingroup favoritism
Group serving biases
Oskamp & Hardy (1968): it’s positive when the ingroup does it
Ultimate Attribution Error (Pettigrew, 1979)
• Ingroup positive behaviors – disposition; outgroup positive behaviors – situation
• Ingroup negative behaviors – situation; outgroup negative behaviors - disposition
– E.g., Ariyanto et al (2009)
Escalation
Categorization lays the groundwork
Other factors escalate us vs them framing into conflict
• Competition
• Threat
Competition
® Realistic conflict theory (LeVine & Campbell, 1972) suggest that intergroup hostility arises from competition amongst groups for scarce (and thus valued) material resources.
® Taylor & Moriarty (1987) divided participants into two groups, and asked them to problem solve for reward (devise a marketing campaign). There were two conditions
– interdependent vs competitive. Ingroup favouritism was exacerbated under the competition condition
Intergroup Threat
Integrated Threat Theory (Stephan & Stephan, 1985)
• Realistic threat: threats to the material well-being of the ingroup, such as their economic benefits, political power, and health
• Symbolic threat: threats to the ingroup’s system of values
• Intergroup anxiety: feelings of anxiety people experience during intergroup interactions associated with negative outcomes for the self (embarrassed,
rejected, ridiculed)
Riek et al (2006) on threat
Meta analysis
• Aggregated across 95 studies
• Realistic, symbolic and anxiety positively associated with negative outgroup attitudes
Methods of prejudice reduction
‘Contact’
• Extended contact
• Imagined contact
Changing categorization
Superordinate goals
Optimal conditions of prejudice reduction
The more contact one has with an outgroup, the less prejudice one expresses
Contact is most effective when: equal status, shared goals, authority sanction, absence of competition
(Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Tropp 2006)
How does contact decrease prejudice
How? (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008)
• Knowledge of out group
• Anxiety lower
• Empathy/perspective taking increase
Extended contact
knowledge that other ingroup members have outgroup friends can reduce intergroup bias
Wright et al. (1997)
Phase 1: two groups formed (on the basis of “personality”) and labeled blue or green
• Phase 2: one participant from each group
• (both actually confederates) chosen to interact
– Friendly, Hostile, Neutral
• Phase 3: ingroup and outgroup evaluations– traits (e.g., intelligent, confident, inflexible, indifferent) and performance qualities (e.g., communicates effectively, effective problem solver)
-evaluation depend on the quality of interaction
Empathy and perspective taking
® Putting oneself in another’s shoes emotionally (empathy) or cognitively (perspective taking) decrease group favouritism.
® Galinsky & Moskowitz (2000) formed groups based on the minimal group paradigm, and found that taking the perspective of an outgroup member reduces ingroup favouritism
Changing categorization
® Involves changing the cognitive representation of outgroup members so that it is no longer simply ‘us’ versus ‘them’.
® Re-categorization involves ‘us’ and ‘them’ becoming a superordinate ‘we’.
® De-categorization involves ‘they’ becoming individuals.
Gaertner et al., (1989) categorization
Participants initially form two 3 person groups (A and B) and interact within-groups (in spatial proximity)
• Come up with group names
Next, come together to do a task
Manipulation:
• Control: retain original two group structure and identity (aaabbb)
• Re-categorization: form one new, superordinate group with new structure and identity (ababab)
• De-categorization: separate individuals, with nicknames (ababab)
Evaluations of original ingroup and outgroup members
Re>De>control
Promoting cooperation
The Robber’s Cave (Sherif et al., 1961)
Summer camp
Two groups: Eagles and Rattlers
Tournament (i.e., competition)• Intergroup conflict
But then, cooperative interaction
• Superordinate goals: shared goals that can be achieved only if groups work together
